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- 2025
- Working Paper
The Limits of Insurance Demand and the Growing Protection Gap
By: Parinitha Sastry, Tess Scharlemann, Ishita Sen and Ana-Maria Tenekedjieva
In a world with rising risk, how much are U.S. households willing to pay for homeowners insurance, and what does their demand imply for the future of insurance markets? We provide the first estimates of household willingness to pay for homeowners insurance and the... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Unwinding Loan Prospecting Pressure Through Renegotiation: The Role of Loan Officer Changes in Debt Contracting
By: Jung Koo Kang, Regina Wittenberg Moerman and Jessie Cheong
We examine the impact of loan officer changes on debt contract design. Loan officers play a critical role in initiating and maintaining lending relationships but also face pressure to originate more loans, incentivizing them to offer loan terms more favorable than... View Details
- August 2023 (Revised February 2024)
- Case
DexAI
By: Jo Tango and Christina Wallace
During a challenging fundraising environment, the DexAI founders received two term sheets with nearly identical economic terms but very different legal ones. The entrepreneurs had to navigate: representations and warranties (their personal guarantees that the company's... View Details
- 2022
- Working Paper
The Issuance and Design of Sustainability-linked Loans
By: Maria Loumioti and George Serafeim
Sustainability-linked loans (i.e., syndicated loans for which pricing is linked to a sustainability performance indicator) have rapidly evolved into a significant private debt product. We find that sustainability-linked lending has been available mostly to borrowers... View Details
- June 2022 (Revised October 2022)
- Case
Can Goodr Fight Food Insecurity at Scale?
By: Daniel Isenberg and William R. Kerr
Jasmine Crowe founded Goodr to redirect food waste to people in need. Now a profitable enterprise, she’s searching for Series A funding and encountering pushback. Scaling and contract concerns are also at the forefront of her mind, but so are her values. Feeding... View Details
- October 2021 (Revised November 2022)
- Case
The 2012 Spanish Labor Reform: Lifting All Boats, or Leveling Down?
By: Vincent Pons, Rafael Di Tella, Santiago Botella and Elena Corsi
Since 1978, Spain had struggled to control unemployment. The country’s labor law was protective of employees hired long-term and companies used temporary contracts as buffers. In 2012, amid economic recession and a 23.6% unemployment rate, a center-right government of... View Details
Keywords: COVID-19 Pandemic; Labor Market; Unemployment; Recession; Globalized Markets and Industries; Government Legislation; International Relations; Working Conditions; Employment; Labor Unions; Contracts; Social Issues; Public Opinion; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Spain; European Union
- April–May 2021
- Article
The Influence of Loan Officers on Loan Contract Design and Performance
By: Robert Bushman, Janet Gao, Xiumin Martin and Joseph Pacelli
We investigate the extent to which loan officers generate independent, individual effects on the design and performance of syndicated loans. We construct a large database containing the identities of loan officers involved in structuring syndicated loan deals, allowing... View Details
- Article
CDS Trading and Nonrelationship Lending Dynamics
By: Jung Koo Kang, Christopher Williams and Regina Wittenberg-Moerman
We investigate how credit default swaps (CDSs) affect lenders’ incentives to initiate new lending relationships. We predict that CDSs reduce adverse selection that nonrelationship lead arrangers face when competing for loans. Consistently, we find that a loan is... View Details
- Working Paper
Covenant-Light Contracts and Creditor Coordination
By: Bo Becker and Victoria Ivashina
In 2015, 70% of newly issued leveraged loans had weaker enforcement features, called covenant-light or "cov-lite"; this is nearly a three-time increase in cov-lite issuance compared to a previous peak in 2007. We evaluate whether this development can be attributed to... View Details
- April 2015
- Article
Incentivizing Calculated Risk-Taking: Evidence from an Experiment with Commercial Bank Loan Officers
By: Shawn Cole, Martin Kanz and Leora Klapper
This paper uses a series of experiments with commercial bank loan officers to test the effect of performance incentives on risk assessment and lending decisions. We first show that while high-powered incentives lead to greater screening effort and more profitable... View Details
- March 2014
- Article
Cyclicality of Credit Supply: Firm Level Evidence
By: Bo Becker and Victoria Ivashina
Theory predicts that there is a close link between bank credit supply and the evolution of the business cycle. Yet fluctuations in bank-loan supply have been hard to quantify in the time series. While loan issuance falls in recessions, it is not clear if this is due to... View Details
- Article
Liability Structure in Small-Scale Finance
By: Fenella Carpena, Shawn Cole, Jeremy Shapiro and Bilal Zia
Microfinance, the provision of small individual and business loans, has experienced dramatic growth, reaching over 150 million borrowers worldwide. Much of the success of microfinance has been attributed to attempts to overcome the challenges of information asymmetries... View Details
- Article
Does the Classic Microfinance Model Discourage Entrepreneurship Among the Poor? Experimental Evidence from India
By: Erica Field, Rohini Pande, John Papp and Natalia Rigol
Do the repayment requirements of the classic microfinance contract inhibit investment in high-return but illiquid business opportunities among the poor? Using a field experiment, we compare the classic contract which requires that repayment begin immediately after loan... View Details
- November 2012 (Revised July 2013)
- Case
Gerry Pasciucco at AIG Financial Products
By: Gautam Mukunda and Thomas J. DeLong
Gerry Pasciucco was appointed to lead American International Group's Financial Products (AIGFP) group after the government bailout of AIG in 2008 and charged with the task of shutting down the division while minimizing the government's losses. AIGFP's failed trades had... View Details
- October 2012
- Case
Harrah's Entertainment
By: Paul A. Gompers, Kristin Mugford and J. Daniel Kim
This case examines the issues of establishing and managing a capital structure for the leveraged buyout of Harrah's Entertainment. View Details
- Article
Employee Selection as a Control System
By: Dennis Campbell
Theories from the economics, management control, and organizational behavior literatures predict that when it is difficult to align incentives by contracting on output, aligning preferences via employee selection may provide a useful alternative. This study... View Details
- September 2011 (Revised September 2011)
- Case
Penn Warranty Corporation
By: Richard S. Ruback and Royce Yudkoff
Penn Warranty Corporation sold warranty contracts to the used car market. During the recession in 2008/2009 Penn's sales declined by 26% Instead of growing by 11% as forecasted. Also, disruptions in financial and insurance markets created a cash shortfall. In the... View Details
- September 2010
- Article
Bank Lending During the Financial Crisis of 2008
This paper documents that new loans to large borrowers fell by 47% during the peak period of the financial crisis (fourth quarter of 2008) relative to the prior quarter and by 79% relative to the peak of the credit boom (second quarter of 2007). New lending for real... View Details
- August 2010
- Teaching Note
Vereinigung Hamburger Schiffsmakler und Schiffsagenten e.V.: Valuing Ships (TN)
By: Benjamin C. Esty and Albert W. Sheen
Teaching Note for 210058. View Details
- 2010
- Working Paper
Employee Selection as a Control System
By: Dennis Campbell
Theories from the economics, management control, and organizational behavior literatures predict that when it is difficult to align incentives by contracting on output, aligning preferences via employee selection may provide a useful alternative. This study... View Details