Publications & Forthcoming Papers

In my research, I focus on central issues facing economies and markets, such as the implications of credit growth for economic growth and financial stability, the role of banks and “shadow banks” in this process, and the effectiveness of financial market regulation and monetary policy in addressing these issues. My research has been published in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies, among others. I have won several best paper awards, and I have been supported by the FDIC and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). I was also awarded the Lamfalussy Fellowship from the European Central Bank.

If you want to know more about my research, please read my Research Summary.

Below, you will find a list of curated publications with links to them and downloads for associated data when available. You can see my entire list of publications on my CV.

Corporate loan spreads and economic activity
Review of Financial Studies, 2025, Vol. 38 (2), 507–546.
​Co-authored with A. Saunders, A. Spina and D. Streitz
[Paper on SSRN] [Online Appendix][Presentation AFA 2022]

Why did bank stocks crash during COVID-19?
Review of Financial Studies, 2024, Vol. 37 (9), 2627–2684.
Co-authored with V. Acharya, M. Jager and R. Engle
[Paper on SSRN] [NBER] [Online Appendix][Presentation SFS Cavalcade 2022]

Contingent credit under stress
Annual Review of Financial Economics, 2024, Vol. 16, 2024
Co-authored with V. Acharya and M. Jager
[Paper on SSRN] [CEPR Version]

Submitted Papers

Shadow Always Touches the Feet: Implications of Bank Credit Lines to Non-Bank Financial Intermediaries ***Updated Version*** (October 2025)
Co-authored with V. Acharya, M. Gopal and M. Jager
[Paper SSRN] [CEPR] [Slides]

  • Conferences (among others): EFA (2024), AEA (2025), FIRS (2025)

CovenantAI - New Insights into Covenant Violations ***Updated Version *** (November 2025)
Co-authored with A. Saunders and P. M. Verhoff
[SSRN] [Slides] [Online Appendix]

Selected Conferences: NBER Big Data and Securities Markets (2023), UCLA Conference on Financial Markets (2024), Future of Financial Information Conference (2024), Harvard-Wharton Insolvency and Restructuring Conference (2024), MoFiR (2025)

From Tweets to Transactions: High-Frequency Inflation Expectations, Consumption, and Stock Returns ***Revised December 2025***
Co-authored with B. Born, N. Lamersdorf, and J. Schuster

  • Conferences: AEA 2024, EFA 2024

Climate Transition Risks of Banks ***Revised December 2025***
Co-authored with F. Martini, Z. Sautner and C. Theunisz
[Slides] [Online Appendix]

  • Conferences: EFA (2024)

Working Papers

The Cyclicality of Direct Lending***NEW March 2026***
Co-authored with F. Hinzen, G. Mondini, and P. Rintamaeki
[Paper SSRN] [Slides]

  • In direct lending, nonbank financial institutions originate bilaterally negotiated loans to risky firms. We document that issuance in this segment of the private credit market is countercyclical relative to issuance in other high-yield corporate credit markets, such as syndicated loans. This countercyclicality is the result of firms substituting across credit markets. Rather than forgo debt financing, firms switch to direct lending when credit conditions in other credit markets tighten. This substitution behavior is especially pronounced among sponsor-backed firms. Contrary to the concern that private credit could amplify credit supply shocks, our results indicate that private credit may dampen the corporate credit cycle. Thus, our findings have important implications for assessing the financial stability ramifications of the rapid growth in private credit.

The Funding Structure of Direct Lenders***NEW May 2026***
Co-authored with E. Mistopoulou
[Paper SSRN] [Slides]

  • Private credit funds intermediate illiquid, long-horizon loans with bank-dependent and increasingly encumbered liabilities, without the deposit-insurance or lender-of-last-resort backstops that support banks. We construct the first facility-level panel of the complete liability structure of U.S. Business Development Companies (BDCs) covering 195 BDCs, more than 2,900 funding facilities over the 2017 to 2025 period with $267 billion in outstanding debt as of 2025, and ask whether their funding structure is itself a source of fragility. We document a three-tier funding hierarchy: secured bank credit lines, CLO issuances, and unsecured notes. While public BDCs substitute toward unsecured notes, 72% of private-BDC debt is bank-originated, and the median private BDC has no unsecured market access. The maturity structure of these liabilities suggests that private BDCs bear bank-dependent rollover risk concentrated in small and mid-sized funds, which intensifies as portfolio credit quality deteriorates. Public BDCs face a growing unsecured maturity wall (from $2.4 billion in 2023 to $18.1 billion in 2026) whose near-term exposure predicts larger stock-price declines during credit stress, and only since 2023, once the wall became material and the Fed Funds rate was elevated; neither undrawn credit lines nor cash holdings attenuate this repricing, consistent with investors recognizing that bank liquidity backstops cannot resolve a rollover problem constrained by borrowing bases.

Do Institutional Investors Trade on Covenant Violations? ***NEW February 2026***
Co-authored with A. Saunders and P. M. Verhoff
[Paper SSRN]

  • Conferences: SFS Cavalcade (2026), FIRS (2026)

  • We develop CovenantAI, an artificial intelligence-powered covenant monitoring methodology, to examine whether institutional investors strategically trade around covenant violations in leveraged loan markets. We show a persistent decline in loan prices during the 100 days preceding violations, with a most pronounced drop 80 days prior to the violation: for example, we find cumulative abnormal returns of -6.39% during the [-80,-60] event window. Price effects are most severe for loans amended post-violation or those that remain in technical default. Loans predominantly owned by leverage-constrained CLOs exhibit steeper pre-violation price declines and more negative abnormal returns. Transaction-level data reveals the mechanism: constrained CLOs are persistent net sellers in the weeks before violations while unconstrained CLOs absorb these positions, and this trading asymmetry is strongest for loans that remain in technical default. The evidence identifies anticipatory risk transfer within the CLO sector, driven by the interaction of violation severity and investor-specific portfolio constraints.

Do Debt Investors Care About ESG Ratings?***Revised November 2025***
Co-authored with K. Fabisik, and L. Schaefer
[Paper SSRN]


Fragile Financing? How Corporate Reliance on Shadow Banking Affects their Access to Bank Liquidity*** Revised November 2025 ***
Co-authored with V. Acharya, M. Gopal and M. Jager
[Paper SSRN] [NBER Slides]

  • Conferences: NBER SI Corporate Finance (2025), EFA (2025)


When Flexibility Becomes Forbearance: Payment-in-Kind in Private Credit
*** Revised March 2026 ***
Co-authored with Paul Rintamaeki
[Online Appendix]


From Bridge Loans to CLOs to Private Credit: The Transformation of Pipeline Risk in LBO Financing
*** New Version March 2026 ***
Co-authored with R. Fahlenbrach, and S. Rothermund
[SSRN] [Slides] [Online Appendix]

Liquidity Dependence and the Waxing and Waning of Central Bank Balance Sheets
*** Revised Version *** (November 2023)
Co-authored with V. Acharya, R. Chauhan, and R. Rajan

[Online Appendix][Slides]


Similar Investors***Updated Version *** (September 2025)
Co-authored with C. Georg and D. Pierret

VoxEU column: Silicon Valley Bank’s insolvency highlights the risk of similar investors

  • Conferences: AFA 2024

Does Zombie Lending Impair Innovation?*** Completely Revised Version (January 2023) ***
Co-authored with C. Schmidt, Y. Schneider, J. Schuster and D. Streitz

Work in Progress

Stranded Liabilities
​Co-authored with A. Spina and D. Streitz