Clark Center Forum

Go back two or three decades and private credit was a small and rather niche segment of the financial ecosystem. If firms wanted to raise debt finance they generally either borrowed from a bank (either from a single institution or from a collection of entities via a syndicated loan) or raised the money on public […] 

 

This Finance survey examines (a) The large increase in the market for private credit as a substitute for bank finance substantially reduces systemic risk; (b) The growth in private credit is substantially higher because of regulations that disincentivize banks from lending to below investment grade private businesses

  

This European survey examines (a)  In pursuing social and environmental initiatives, the average public company generates more benefits than costs in terms of profits, (b) In pursuing social and environmental initiatives, public companies would benefit from a measurably lower cost of capital, (c) There are substantial social benefits when managers of public companies make choices that account for the impact of their decisions on customers, employees, and community members beyond the effects on shareholders 

This US survey examines: (a) Giving the President more direct influence over monetary policy would lead to substantially worse monetary policy decisions; (b) Imposing tariffs results in a substantial portion of the tariffs being borne by consumers of the country that enacts the tariffs, through price increases; (c) There is little empirical evidence that price gouging is causing high grocery prices; (d) Widespread use of price controls creates substantial economic distortions

  

Economics found itself back in the headlines in the United Kingdom this week. This time around though the issue was – thankfully – not declining standards, a slide in the value of sterling, or a near-crisis in government debt markets, all things with which British newspaper readers have become familiar with over the past two […] 

This Finance survey examines: It is appropriate advice for retail investors to tilt their portfolio away from the market portfolio towards factors that have been identified in the academic literature to earn positive abnormal returns relative to the Capital Asset Pricing Model 

It is highly unlikely that when the Founding Fathers gathered to design the new US constitution they were thinking about the needs of future economists. Regardless of this, the institutional structure they adopted for the new United States has proved to be a boon for empirically focused social scientists. The quirk of US Federalism which […] 

Today is a big day for Fed Watchers, with Fed  Chair Jerome Powell set to make his keynote address at the Kansas City Fed’s annual Jackson Hole symposium. At the time of writing, some hours before Powell takes to the podium, Bloomberg has gone as far as to carry a live countdown building up to […] 

Over the last decade a growing proportion of stock trading has been concentrated into the later stages of the day. As a story on Bloomberg, which caught the attention of many investors and market participants, put it in April – US stocks trade for 390 minutes a day, but only the last 10 minutes seem […]