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6 results

Competition and loan contracting

Xunhua Su; Jin Cao; Einar C Kjenstad; Xiaoyu Zhang
Review of Finance 2026 30(4), 1187-1225
A theoretical model of the borrower–lender relationship predicts that increased competitive threats lead to a reduction in loan covenant restrictiveness that is stronger for groups of borrowers who face constraints to their ability to raise external financing or compete in the product market. These predictions arise because competition impacts the dynamics of borrower performance so that lenders must trade off the benefit of controlling agency problems against a heightened cost of lost product market opportunities for the borrower, ultimately lowering the optimal use of covenants. We find strong empirical support for these predictions, highlighting an important role of competition for optimal financial contracting rooted in underlying agency problems.

Happily ever after? Lender diversification and performance sensitivity in post-IPO loans

Luca X. Lin; Xiaoyu Zhang
Journal of Corporate Finance 2025 92, 102774 open access
Going public reduces information asymmetry between a firm’s incumbent and potential new lenders. However, we show that while loan spreads are lower in post-IPO loans due to increased lender competition, the likelihood of having interest-increasing performance-pricing, which automatically increases spreads if firm performance deteriorates, is substantially heightened, only for loans from new lenders. This indicates that new lenders remain skeptical despite a more “level playing field.” Newly public firms need to commit to performance-sensitive debt to convince outside lenders, despite gaining a credible mechanism to disseminate information to them. Pricing grids do get amended more often ex-post for such loans, reflecting a lender learning process. Newly public firms are indeed still more likely to obtain loans from new lenders post-IPO. Our results suggest that performance pricing can serve to address the remaining information gap with new lenders beyond hard-information disclosure, allowing firms to better diversify their lender base.

Loan market benefits of (High) IPO underpricing

Xunhua Su; Donghang Zhang; Xiaoyu Zhang
Journal of Financial Intermediation 2025 61, 101132 open access
We provide novel evidence on the loan market benefits of high IPO underpricing. We show that greater underpricing is associated with a significantly larger within-firm reduction of post-IPO borrowing costs. This benefit of underpricing is less pronounced for firms with high ex-ante information asymmetry and is concentrated in firms with a high demand for advertisements. In addition, neither price revision before the IPO nor the short-term or long-term stock return after the IPO has a similar effect. Our results suggest that underpricing affects borrowing costs through an attention channel and highlight a real economic effect of underpricing from the loan market.

Intergenerational bankruptcy risks: Learning from parents’ mistakes

Sumit Agarwal; Tien Foo Sing; Xiaoyu Zhang
Journal of Financial Intermediation 2024 59, 101087
This study investigates inter-generational transmissions of parental bankruptcy shock on children's financial behavior in adulthood. Our results show that younger children who were 9 years or below when their parents declared bankruptcy were 2–3 % points less likely to declare bankruptcy than their older siblings who were 10 years and older when the parents’ bankruptcy event occurred. We rule out alternative hypotheses, including birth order, cohort effects, and truncated sample bias. We find corroborative evidence for the “parent socialization” channel, where bankrupt parents, through interactions with children during childhood years, influence their financial behavior and reduce the risks of their children repeating the same mistakes in adulthood.

Do Product Market Threats Discipline Corporate Misconduct?

Jie Chen; Xunhua Su; Xuan Tian; Bin Xu; Xiaoyu Zhang
Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 2026 open access
Firms with more competitive threats from the product market are less likely to commit violations and pay lower penalties. These findings are robust to alternative measures, specifications, and subsamples, as well as different attempts that mitigate endogeneity concerns. Further analyses reveal that the disciplining effect of competition is more pronounced when managers have greater incentives to shirk and when internal governance is weaker, and that violations are associated with poor product market performance only in the presence of competitive pressure. Firms under competitive pressure are more likely to adopt ESG-related incentives in executive compensation contracts and exhibit better worker safety practices. Overall, our evidence suggests that product market threats reduce managerial slack in combating misconduct by increasing the expected damage of violations.

Nonstandard Errors

Albert J. Menkveld; Anna Dreber; Felix Holzmeister; Jürgen Huber; Magnus Johannesson; Michael Kirchler; SEBASTIAN NEUSÜß; Michael Razen; Utz Weitzel; DAVID ABAD-DÍAZ; Menachem Abudy; Tobias Adrian; Yacine Aït-Sahalia; Olivier Akmansoy; Jamie Alcock; Vitali Alexeev; Arash Aloosh; LIVIA AMATO; Diego Amaya; James J. Angel; ALEJANDRO T. AVETIKIAN; AMADEUS BACH; EDWIN BAIDOO; GAETAN BAKALLI; LI BAO; Andrea Barbon; OKSANA BASHCHENKO; Parampreet Christopher Bindra; Geir Høidal Bjønnes; Jeffrey R. Black; Bernard S. Black; DIMITAR BOGOEV; SANTIAGO BOHORQUEZ CORREA; Oleg Bondarenko; CHARLES S. BOS; Ciril Bosch-Rosa; ELIE BOURI; Christian T. Brownlees; ANNA CALAMIA; Viet Nga Cao; Gunther Capelle-Blancard; LAURA M. CAPERA ROMERO; Massimiliano Caporin; Allen Carrion; TOLGA CASKURLU; Bidisha Chakrabarty; Jian Chen; Mikhail Chernov; WILLIAM CHEUNG; LUDWIG B. CHINCARINI; Tarun Chordia; SHEUNG-CHI CHOW; BENJAMIN CLAPHAM; Jean-Edouard Colliard; Carole Comerton-Forde; EDWARD CURRAN; THONG DAO; WALE DARE; Ryan J. Davies; RICCARDO DE BLASIS; GIANLUCA F. DE NARD; Fany Declerck; OLEG DEEV; Hans Degryse; SOLOMON Y. DEKU; CHRISTOPHE DESAGRE; Mathijs A. van Dijk; Chukwuma Dim; Thomas Dimpfl; YUN JIANG DONG; PHILIP A. DRUMMOND; Tom L. Dudda; TEODOR DUEVSKI; Ariadna Dumitrescu; Teodor Dyakov; Anne Haubo Dyhrberg; Michał Dzieliński; ASLI EKSI; Izidin El Kalak; Saskia ter Ellen; Nicolas Eugster; Martin D. D. Evans; Michael Farrell; ESTER FELEZ-VINAS; Gerardo Ferrara; EL MEHDI FERROUHI; Andrea Flori; JONATHAN T. FLUHARTY-JAIDEE; Sean Foley; Kingsley Y. L. Fong; Thierry Foucault; TATIANA FRANUS; Francesco A. Franzoni; Bart Frijns; MICHAEL FRÖMMEL; SERVANNA M. FU; Sascha Füllbrunn; BAOQING GAN; GE GAO; Thomas Gehrig; ROLAND GEMAYEL; DIRK GERRITSEN; Javier Gil-Bazo; Dudley Gilder; Lawrence R. Glosten; THOMAS GOMEZ; Arseny Gorbenko; Joachim Grammig; Vincent Grégoire; Ufuk Güçbilmez; Björn Hagströmer; JULIEN HAMBUCKERS; ERIK HAPNES; Jeffrey H. Harris; Lawrence Harris; SIMON HARTMANN; JEAN-BAPTISTE HASSE; Nikolaus Hautsch; XUE-ZHONG (TONY) HE; Davidson Heath; SIMON HEDIGER; Terrence Hendershott; Ann Marie Hibbert; Erik Hjalmarsson; Seth A. Hoelscher; Peter Hoffmann; Craig W. Holden; Alex R. Horenstein; Wenqian Huang; DA HUANG; Christophe Hurlin; KONRAD ILCZUK; ALEXEY IVASHCHENKO; Subramanian R. Iyer; Hossein Jahanshahloo; NAJI JALKH; Charles M. Jones; SIMON JURKATIS; Petri Jylhä; ANDREAS T. KAECK; GABRIEL KAISER; ARZÉ KARAM; Egle Karmaziene; BERNHARD KASSNER; Markku Kaustia; EKATERINA KAZAK; Fearghal Kearney; Vincent van Kervel; SAAD A. KHAN; MARTA K. KHOMYN; Tony Klein; OLGA KLEIN; Alexander Klos; Michael Koetter; Aleksey Kolokolov; Robert A. Korajczyk; Roman Kozhan; Jan P. Krahnen; PAUL KUHLE; Amy Kwan; QUENTIN LAJAUNIE; F. Y. Eric C. Lam; Marie Lambert; Hugues Langlois; JENS LAUSEN; Tobias Lauter; Markus Leippold; VLADIMIR LEVIN; YIJIE LI; HUI LI; CHEE YOONG LIEW; THOMAS LINDNER; Oliver Linton; JIACHENG LIU; Anqi Liu; Guillermo Llorente; Matthijs Lof; ARIEL LOHR; FRANCIS LONGSTAFF; Alejandro Lopez-Lira; Shawn Mankad; NICOLA MANO; ALEXIS MARCHAL; Charles Martineau; Francesco Mazzola; Debrah Meloso; MICHAEL G. MI; Roxana Mihet; Vijay Mohan; Sophie Moinas; DAVID MOORE; Liangyi Mu; Dmitriy Muravyev; Dermot Murphy; GABOR NESZVEDA; CHRISTIAN NEUMEIER; Ulf Nielsson; Mahendrarajah Nimalendran; Sven Nolte; LARS L. NORDEN; Peter O’Neill; Khaled Obaid; BERNT A. ØDEGAARD; Per Östberg; EMILIANO PAGNOTTA; Marcus Painter; Stefan Palan; IMON J. PALIT; Andreas Park; Roberto Pascual; Paolo Pasquariello; Ľuboš Pástor; VINAY PA℡; Andrew J. Patton; Neil D. Pearson; Loriana Pelizzon; MICHELE PELLI; Matthias Pelster; Christophe Pérignon; CAMERON PFIFFER; Richard Philip; TOMÁŠ PLÍHAL; PUNEET PRAKASH; OLIVER-ALEXANDER PRESS; TINA PRODROMOU; Marcel Prokopczuk; Talis Putnins; YA QIAN; GAURAV RAIZADA; David Rakowski; Angelo Ranaldo; Luca Regis; Stefan Reitz; Thomas Renault; REX W. RENJIE; Roberto Renò; Steven J. Riddiough; Kalle Rinne; PAUL RINTAMÄKI; Ryan Riordan; THOMAS RITTMANNSBERGER; IÑAKI RODRÍGUEZ LONGARELA; Dominik Roesch; LAVINIA ROGNONE; Brian Roseman; Ioanid Roşu; Saurabh Roy; NICOLAS RUDOLF; STEPHEN R. RUSH; Khaladdin Rzayev; ALEKSANDRA A. RZEŹNIK; Anthony Sanford; Harikumar Sankaran; Asani Sarkar; Lucio Sarno; Olivier Scaillet; STEFAN SCHARNOWSKI; KLAUS R. SCHENK-HOPPÉ; ANDREA SCHERTLER; MICHAEL SCHNEIDER; FLORIAN SCHROEDER; Norman Schürhoff; Philipp Schuster; MARCO A. SCHWARZ; Mark S. Seasholes; Norman J. Seeger; Or Shachar; Andriy Shkilko; JESSICA SHUI; MARIO SIKIC; Giorgia Simion; Lee A. Smales; Paul Söderlind; Elvira Sojli; Konstantin Sokolov; JANTJE SÖNKSEN; Laima Spokeviciute; Denitsa Stefanova; Marti G. Subrahmanyam; BARNABAS SZASZI; Oleksandr Talavera; Yuehua Tang; Nick Taylor; Wing Wah Tham; Erik Theissen; Julian Thimme; Ian Tonks; Hai Tran; Luca Trapin; Anders B. Trolle; M. ANDREEA VADUVA; Giorgio Valente; Robert A. Van Ness; Aurelio Vasquez; Thanos Verousis; Patrick Verwijmeren; ANDERS VILHELMSSON; Grigory Vilkov; Vladimir Vladimirov; SEBASTIAN VOGEL; Stefan Voigt; Wolf Wagner; THOMAS WALTHER; Patrick Weiss; Michel van der Wel; Ingrid M. Werner; P. Joakim Westerholm; Christian Westheide; HANS C. WIKA; Evert Wipplinger; Michael Wolf; Christian C. P. Wolff; LEONARD WOLK; WING-KEUNG WONG; Jan Wrampelmeyer; Zhen-Xing Wu; Shuo Xia; Dacheng Xiu; KE XU; CAIHONG XU; Pradeep K. Yadav; JOSÉ YAGÜE; Cheng Yan; Antti Yang; Woongsun Yoo; WENJIA YU; YIHE YU; Shihao Yu; Bart Z. Yueshen; Darya Yuferova; MARCIN ZAMOJSKI; Abalfazl Zareei; STEFAN M. ZEISBERGER; LU ZHANG; S. Sarah Zhang; Xiaoyu Zhang; LU ZHAO; Zhuo Zhong; Z. IVY ZHOU; CHEN ZHOU; XINGYU S. ZHU; Marius Zoican; REMCO ZWINKELS
Journal of Finance 2024 79(3), 2339-2390 open access
In statistics, samples are drawn from a population in a data‐generating process (DGP). Standard errors measure the uncertainty in estimates of population parameters. In science, evidence is generated to test hypotheses in an evidence‐generating process (EGP). We claim that EGP variation across researchers adds uncertainty—nonstandard errors (NSEs). We study NSEs by letting 164 teams test the same hypotheses on the same data. NSEs turn out to be sizable, but smaller for more reproducible or higher rated research. Adding peer‐review stages reduces NSEs. We further find that this type of uncertainty is underestimated by participants.