We study how corporate financing evolved during the Twentieth century in Britain. We document a remarkable transition from single to multiple firm-bank relationships. Larger, global, or transparent companies with greater needs for bank credit were more likely to add a bank, especially when located in more competitive local banking markets. Deregulation and intensifying competition in the bankin...

The international financial system has grown and evolved immensely over the past two decades. In the late 1950's the Eurocurrency market was only beginning to emerge, for all practical purposes there was no Eurobond market, and extensions of commercial credits were limited to the old commercial banking function of short term trade financing. All of that has changed. Total deposits in the Eurodo...

We measure how securitized assets, including mortgage-backed securities and other assetbacked securities, have shifted across financial institutions over this crisis and how the availability of financing has accommodated such shifts. Sectors dependent on repo financing – in particular, the hedge fund and broker-dealer sector – have reduced asset holdings, while the commercial banking sector, wh...

Using staggered changes to debt contract enforcement costs in India, we estimate it’s causal effect on financing and asset maturity. A reduction in enforcement costs is associated with an increase in long-term debt and a decrease in short-term debt and trade-credit. The increase in debt maturity is confined to firms that borrow from multiple and diverse set of lenders and to smaller firms. Firm...

A rapidly growing literature on the financing of distressed companies finds that troubled firms often secure relief from stress through asset restructuring, capital restructuring, or both. However, none of the earlier corporate distress restructuring studies have focused on the centrally important commercial banking industry which has been one of the most financially distressed industries of th...

In this paper, I investigate whether venture-backed companies can be negatively affected when others that share the same investor perform poorly. To this end, I examine the impact of the collapse of the technology bubble on non-information-technology (non-IT) companies held alongside internet companies in venture portfolios. Using a difference-in-differences framework, I find that the end of th...

Describing the Islamic financial system simply as 'interest-free' does not do justice to the system. Promotion of entrepreneurship, preservation of property rights, transparency and the sanctity of contractual obligations, which are crucial to any sound financial system, describe its essence. Today, Islamic financial and banking activities have reached an impressive size of over US$250bn, as co...

Banking systems vary widely in the degree of specialization they impose on financial intermediaries. In particular, banks are often limited to holding only one category of financial claims. By contrasting two polar extremes the ’American’ model of specialized banking and the ’German’ model of universal banking this paper explores the institutional consequences of such regulatory restrictions. I...