We examine the borrowing costs of dual-class firms from a life-cycle perspective. Using a sample of U.S. listed firms, we find that dual-class firms face significantly higher loan spreads than single-class firms only during the growth stage, with no meaningful differences in the introduction or maturity stages. This result is robust to a range of tests addressing self-selection, simultaneity, and omitted variable concerns. We interpret this pattern through the hold-up theory of relationship lending: bank-dependent dual-class firms exhibit a hump-shaped borrowing cost profile over the life cycle, with spreads peaking in the growth stage when banks exploit informational advantages. Our findings indicate that the cost of dual-class ownership is inherently dynamic and operates through debt financing channels.

We examine how bank concentration affects corporate cash holdings through firms’ access to external financing. Using a panel of U.S. public firms from 1994 to 2017, we show that higher bank concentration reduces firms’ access to bank credit, leading to higher precautionary cash holdings. Employing a structural equation modeling approach, we document a significant mediation effect of credit access, consistent with the bank market power hypothesis. The effect strengthens following the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, suggesting that changes in the banking structure amplify the transmission of financial constraints to corporate liquidity policies. Cross-sectional evidence indicates that the effect is more pronounced among financially constrained, non-NYSE, and high-intangible firms. Our findings highlight a key channel through which banking market structure influences corporate financial policies, linking bank concentration to firms’ liquidity management via credit supply conditions.

This research proposes a novel firm-based model for pricing cyber insurance. Our model considers two types of cyber risk: virus attacks and data breaches. Virus attacks deliver adverse shocks to the firm's productivity, while data breaches cause premium customer departures that worsen the prospect of the firm's product demand. We derive the endogenous structural form of cyber losses in firms and utilize it to solve the formula for cyber insurance premiums. Our quantitative results show that the consensus prediction about a strictly positive premiumrisk nexus is no longer valid. Asymmetries in the sub-premium's sensitivity to cyber risks from different sources and the premium customer loss rates jointly shape the complexity of the relation between cyber insurance premiums and cyber risks. Improvements in the product demand conditions enhance firms' incentives to hedge cyber losses and push premiums higher. Lastly, we discuss the influence of product price competition on premiums.

This paper examines the contrasting views of regulators and bankers on risk management in the financial sector, highlighting that regulatory uncertainty and compliance risks can result in costs far exceeding those of meeting regulatory requirements. Four real-world cases illustrate this: (1) the disapproval of the board-elected chairman of Nanshan Life Insurance by the Taiwan Financial Supervisory Commission, (2) regulatory shifts in Taiwan's insurance sector due to changes in leadership, (3) the US$180 million fine on Mega Bank of Taiwan for noncompliance with U.S. anti-money laundering regulations, and (4) the write-off of Credit Suisse's CoCo bonds by the Swiss regulator. These cases demonstrate the challenges posed by regulatory actions on financial institutions, highlighting the difficulty of balancing regulatory uncertainty and compliance risks faced by these institutions. The study offers critical insights for policymakers and financial institutions on managing these risks in a highly regulated environment.

This paper investigates the global loan pricing puzzle, focusing on the significantly higher interest rate spreads in the U.S. compared to the European market. Using syndicated loan data from U.S. and European firms between 1992 and 2014, we find that bank information rents are the primary driver behind this disparity. U.S. banks leverage their informational advantages to extract higher borrowing costs from firms, particularly through credit lines, where their pricing power is most pronounced. In contrast, European firms benefit from a more competitive lending environment, where relationship lending practices result in lower interest rate spreads. Additionally, we find that these cost differences are more substantial during non-recessionary periods, suggesting that market structure and lender behavior, rather than macroeconomic downturns, explain the persistent spread differences between the two regions.

Using a sample of 83 Canadian property-casualty insurance companies from 1996 to 2010, we examine the impact of underwriting and investment choices on the insurers’ capital level and adjustment speed. An aggressive investment policy (risky equity investments) and a heavy reliance on reinsurance underwriting activities have the opposite effect on insurers’ capital level, though both lead to a slower capital adjustment speed. Meanwhile, insurers reshuffling their underwriting and investments significantly change their capital. With an integrated framework that considers underwriting cycles and regulatory pressure, insurers are slower in their capital adjustments in hard markets of the underwriting cycle, and higher regulatory pressure for an insurer moderates the positive relationship between capital level and adjustment speed.

The study examines the effect of low cash and debt (LCD) on corporate governance (CG) and whether country characteristics matter more for CG of LCD firms than other firms. The cash value approach can address this research question given the proven positive link between CG and cash value. A review of comprehensive firm-level data across 88 countries from 1996–2019 firmly reveals better CG for LCD firms than for other firms. Additionally, country characteristics prove to affect CG particularly for LCD firms. Specifically, CG of LCD firms advances when economic or financial development improves, financial system is market-based rather than bank-based, shareholder protection improves, or national governance strengthens. As for other firms, CG is less influenced by country characteristics. Overall, the study contributes to existing research by showing that LCD positively affects CG and LCD firms can better capitalize on favorable external environment to improve CG than other firms.

This study examines whether and how human rights (HR) have bearings on the value of cash. Given the positive effect of HR improvement on corporate governance (CG) and that of CG on cash value, HR should positively affect cash value through CG. Using 23 Organization of Islamic Cooperation countries and 88 other countries during the period 1995–2019 as the sample, this study finds that the value of cash and excess cash is lower in Islamic countries than in other countries. Additionally, HR have a positive effect on cash value, but this effect is weaker for Islamic countries than for other countries. Furthermore, economic development (ED) (rule of law (RL)) reinforces the positive effect of HR on cash value, and this effect is stronger (weaker) for Islamic countries than for other countries. Study results provide important implications. Given the observed striking differences in results between Islamic and other countries, future related research should consider them to improve validity and reliability of empirical results. Multinationals or firms that consider establishing subsidiaries in foreign countries should also consider country-specific factors, like types of countries, HR, ED, and RL, because they may affect the agency and external financing costs. Furthermore, national governments can evaluate the effectiveness of HR promotion by referring to the study results regarding HR's positive effect on cash value such that they can fine tune their HR and economic policy as well as enforcement of RL to better achieve their intended goal of improving HR and CG.

Traditional tradeoff theories puzzlingly predict that firms use high leverage, issue debt carrying a high duration and low yield spread, and have optimal debt policies highly affected by managerial risk-shifting behavior. We offer an ambiguity-based explanation for these corporate debt puzzles. The key intuition is that ambiguity-averse managers hold the worst-case belief about EBIT growth, resulting in upward (downward) distortion of bankruptcy (restructuring) probability. While firms under ambiguity aversion take less leverage, optimal leverage increases with ambiguity (if holding information constraints fixed). Our theoretical predictions about the impact of ambiguity aversion on corporate debt financing are supported by empirical evidence. Moreover, we document that the tradeoff models allowing for ambiguity aversion achieve a better performance in fitting real data, and information-constraint heterogeneities can be a distinctive determinant of leverage variations.

This study examines whether and how Sharia compliance and national governance affect the value of corporate cash holding (cash) in Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) countries. Study results indicate that cash can enhance firm value and such cash value is higher for Sharia-compliant firms than for Sharia non-compliant firms. In addition, cash is particularly valuable when national governance is strong. Furthermore, the positive effect of Sharia compliance on cash value is more pronounced when national governance is strong. Results suggest that internal governance (i.e., Sharia compliance) and external governance (i.e., national governance) should be in sync to maximize cash value.

This study measures liquidity in the catastrophe (CAT) bond market and the liquidity premium embedded in CAT bond spreads. The empirical results show that time to maturity, yield volatility, and yield dispersion from the primary market are the three most effective liquidity proxies. Given these three proxies, the average estimated liquidity premium in the CAT bond market is 67.57bps, accounting for only 9.42% of the average CAT bond spread (717.37bps) in the secondary market during the period 2002-2016. The average CAT bond liquidity premium is higher than the corporate bond liquidity premium of a similar risk class by about 35bps during the pre-crisis period. The more significant part of the high-yield spreads, 90.58%, is attributed to other risk natures of CAT bonds. Lastly, the liquidity premium increases dramatically after occurrences of severe natural catastrophes as well as during the 2008 financial crisis.

In this study, we examine whether overconfident CEOs strive to smooth dividends. Our findings show overconfident CEOs increase dividends more as earnings increase and decrease dividends less as earnings decline, resulting in downward dividend stickiness. This asymmetric dividend payout is consistent with the selective self-attribution bias. Furthermore, the effect of managerial overconfidence on dividend stickiness is more pronounced for firms without catering incentives. In addition, overconfident CEOs do not manage share repurchases as they do for dividends. Therefore, we do not find a positive effect of managerial overconfidence on total payout stickiness.

We examine the impact of common institutional ownership (CIO) of firms in the same industry on their cost of bank loans using data on Taiwan-listed firms from 1996 to 2021. The evidence shows that CIO is negatively related to loan spreads. When decomposing our sample according to a firm's life cycle and family ownership, the negative relation is significant only in the mature stage of a firm's life cycle and for family-owned firms. The subsample evidence suggests that CIO enhances effective monitoring to increase firm value, lowering loan spreads. We also find that the negative relation becomes statistically insignificant during the financial crisis period because that CIO tends to reduce investments in the same industry, thus weakening its effect during the global financial crisis.

We employ three systemic risk measures of banks, including the systemic risk index (SRISK) and marginal expected shortfall (MES) of Brownlees and Engle (2017) and the conditional Value-at-Risk (ΔCoVaR) of Adrian and Brunnermeier (2016), to analyze bank's exposure and contribution to systemic risk in the banking system when a financial crisis occurs. We find evidence that time-varying systemic risk exists, and systemic risk exposures escalate with the interconnectedness of banks. We also find revenue diversification is another significant factor that reduces a bank's exposure to systemic risk but not for banks in Taiwan and Singapore.

This study proposes an efficient approach for the pricing of VIX derivatives under the affine framework and investigates the respective value of two variance components and variance jumps in the pricing of VIX derivatives. Our numerical results show that our approach significantly reduce the computational burden. Our empirical findings provide support for the use of two-variance component models as the means of capturing the fickle term structure of VIX derivatives, and the use of variance jumps is vital when included in the long-run variance component.

This research explores whether a dual-class ownership structure affects a firm’s propensity to stockpile cash reserves over the life cycle stages. Using a sample of U.S. dual-class firms, evidence shows that the cash holdings of dual-class firms are significantly lower than that of single-class firms by 2.42%. The dual-class firms that exploit external debt financing deploy more cash for acquisition activities. More importantly, dual-class firms decrease their cash holdings by only 2.8% when growing from young to mature, while single-class firms decrease that by 5.88%. During the mature stage, the dual-class firms experience a larger fall in operating net cash flow, cash acquisition expenditure, and debt financing than do single-class firms. These findings, however, are only significant for firms with high information asymmetry. Our evidence of changes in cash holdings shows that agency costs associated with dual-class ownership increase over the life cycle.

This study examines the impact of Shenzhen Stock Exchange's (SZSE) information disclosure ratings on investment efficiency in China. Based on a sample of Chinese A-share listed companies on the SZSE from 2001 to 2018, we discover that superior information disclosure ratings improve investment efficiency after controlling for various firm- and industry-level variables. Our findings remain valid after various robustness tests and using instrumental variables to address the endogeneity problem. Specifically, we find that improving information disclosure ratings help firms attract more investor attention, which leads to higher investment efficiency. In addition, this information disclosure effect is more pronounced for underinvestment firms and firms on the main board than for smaller firms on SEM (small- and medium-sized enterprise) and GEM (growth enterprise market) boards. Our evidence supports the idea that regulatory activities for information disclosure ratings of companies listed on China's stock exchanges improve investment efficiency.