Corporate Loan Spreads and Economic Activity
Anthony Saunders, Alessandro Spina, Sascha Steffen, Daniel Streitz
Review of Financial Studies,
No. 2,
2025
Abstract
We use secondary corporate loan-market prices to construct a novel loan-market-based credit spread. This measure has considerable predictive power for economic activity across macroeconomic outcomes in both the U.S. and Europe and captures unique information not contained in public market credit spreads. Loan-market borrowers are compositionally different and particularly sensitive to supply-side frictions as well as financial frictions that emanate from their own balance sheets. This evidence highlights the joint role of financial intermediary and borrower balance-sheet frictions in understanding macroeconomic developments and enriches our understanding of which type of financial frictions matter for the economy.
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Creditor-control Rights and the Nonsynchronicity of Global CDS Markets
Iftekhar Hasan, Miriam Marra, Eliza Wu, Gaiyan Zhang
Review of Corporate Finance Studies,
No. 1,
2025
Abstract
We analyze how creditor rights affect the nonsynchronicity of global corporate credit default swap spreads (CDS-NS). CDS-NS is negatively related to the country-level creditor-control rights, especially to the “restrictions on reorganization” component, where creditor-shareholder conflicts are high. The effect is concentrated in firms with high investment intensity, asset growth, information opacity, and risk. Pro-creditor bankruptcy reforms led to a decline in CDS-NS, indicating lower firm-specific idiosyncratic information being priced in credit markets. A strategic-disclosure incentive among debtors avoiding creditor intervention seems more dominant than the disciplining effect, suggesting how strengthening creditor rights affects power rebalancing between creditors and shareholders.
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Environmental Incidents and Sustainability Pricing
Huyen Nguyen, Sochima Uzonwanne
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 17,
2024
Abstract
We investigate whether lenders employ sustainability pricing provisions to manage borrowers’ environmental risk. Using unexpected negative environmental incidents of borrowers as exogenous shocks that reveal information on environmental risk, we find that lenders manage borrowers’ environmental risk by conventional tools such as imposing higher interest rates, utilizing financial and net worth covenants, showing reluctance to refinance, and demanding increased collateral. In contrast, the inclusion of sustainability pricing provisions in loan agreements for high environmental risk borrowers is reduced by 11 percentage points. Our study suggests that sustainability pricing provisions may not primarily serve as risk management tools but rather as instruments to attract demand from institutional investors and facilitate secondary market transactions.
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The Bright Side of Bank Lobbying: Evidence from the Corporate Loan Market
Manthos D. Delis, Iftekhar Hasan, Thomas Y. To, Eliza Wu
Journal of Corporate Finance,
June
2024
Abstract
Bank lobbying has a bitter taste in most forums, ringing the bell of preferential treatment of big banks from governments and regulators. Using corporate loan facilities and hand-matched information on bank lobbying from 1999 to 2017, we show that lobbying banks increase their borrowers' overall performance. This positive effect is stronger for opaque and credit-constrained borrowers, when the lobbying lender possesses valuable information on the borrower, and for borrowers with strong corporate governance. Our findings are consistent with the theory positing that lobbying can provide access to valuable lender-borrower information, resulting in improved efficiency in large firms' corporate financing.
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Do Public Bank Guarantees Affect Labor Market Outcomes? Evidence from Individual Employment and Wages
Laura Baessler, Georg Gebhardt, Reint E. Gropp, Andre Guettler, Ahmet Taskin
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 7,
2024
Abstract
We investigate whether employees in Germany benefit from public bank guarantees in terms of employment probability and wages. To that end, we exploit the removal of public bank guarantees in Germany in 2001 as a quasi-natural experiment. Our results show that bank guarantees lead to higher employment, but lower wage prospects for employees after working in affected establishments. Overall the results suggest that employees do not benefit from bank guarantees.
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Is Risk the Fuel of the Business Cycle? Financial Frictions and Oil Market Disturbances
Christoph Schult
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 4,
2024
Abstract
I estimate a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model for the United States that incorporates oil market shocks and risk shocks working through credit market frictions. The findings of this analysis indicate that risk shocks play a crucial role during the Great Recession and the Dot-Com bubble but not during other economic downturns. Credit market frictions do not amplify persistent oil market shocks. This result holds as long as entry and exit rates of entrepreneurs are independent of the business cycle.
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Media Response
Media Response Februrary 2025 IWH: Die deutsche Anämie in: Wirtschaftswoche, 14.02.2025 Oliver Holtemöller: Mitreden vor der Wahl! Was hilft der Wirtschaft aus der Krise? in: NDR,…
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Research Clusters
Three Research Clusters Research Cluster "Economic Dynamics and Stability" Research Questions This cluster focuses on empirical analyses of macroeconomic dynamics and stability.…
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Guiding Theme and Research Profile
Tasks of the IWH Guided by its mission statement , the IWH places the understanding of the determinants of long term growth processes at the centre of the research agenda. Long…
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Organisation of Research
Tasks of the IWH Guided by its mission statement , the IWH places the understanding of the determinants of long term growth processes at the centre of the research agenda. Long…
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