The information banks produce drives their lending decisions and macroeconomic outcomes, but this information is inherently difficult to analyse because it is private. We construct a novel measure of bank information quality from confidential regulatory data that include banks’ private risk assessments for US corporate loans. Information quality improves as local economic conditions deteriorate, particularly for new loans, large loans, and loans with higher expected losses. Information quality also declines during periods of rapid local house price appreciation. Our results provide empirical support for theories of countercyclical information production in credit markets.

Short sellers care about (i) how overvalued an asset is and (ii) when the overvaluation will be corrected. Hence, short selling costs should be higher over horizons when negative information is more likely to arrive. This article presents a model formalizing this intuition and tests the model using the put–call parity condition. Forward shorting costs predict future costs and stock returns, consistent with an expectations hypothesis in the shorting market. Additionally, an upward sloping term structure around earnings announcements increases the probability of a negative earnings surprise, evidence that short selling costs are higher over horizons when negative information is more likely to arrive. My findings suggest that the term structure of short selling costs conveys how long overpricings are expected to persist.

In July 2013, Moody’s unexpectedly increased the amount of equity credit speculative-grade firms receive for preferred stock from 50% to 100%. Firms affected by the rule change were suddenly considered less levered by Moody’s, even though their balance sheets did not change. These firms responded by issuing debt to restore the original leverage ratio as defined by Moody’s and growing their assets. The rule change transferred value from debt to equity holders and led to an increase in preferred stock issuance. How rating agencies assess risk thus has a significant causal impact on firms’ financing, investment, and security design decisions.

Theories of competition typically predict a positive relationship between market concentration and prices. However, in loan markets, adverse selection can reverse this relationship as riskier borrowers become more likely to receive funding. Using supervisory data, we show that interest rates, borrower risk, and lending volume are higher in markets with more banks. We also create a novel measure of markup that is orthogonal to borrower risk, and find that, consistent with adverse selection, markups are higher after repeated borrowing relationships. Finally, we use a shock to large banks' lending costs to provide further support for the adverse selection channel.