Archivio istituzionale della Ricerca - Bocconi
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Essays on Corporate Debt, Information, and Incentives
Get PDFThe primary objective of this thesis is to contribute to the literature on corporate debt by examining how to protect creditor interests from both corporate and regulatory perspectives. My research relies on novel data collected from SEC filings, including proxy statements (Form DEF 14A) and syndicated loan contracts (Exhibits of Form 8-K, 10-Q, or 10-K).
The first chapter considers creditors' interests within the framework of corporate compensation design, which is a joint work with David M. Reeb and Wanli Zhao. It contributes to the compensation literature by offering new evidence of using debt-related performance metrics (DPMs), such as credit ratings and debt-to-EBITDA ratios, in executive compensation contracts as a strategic response to the agency costs of debt. Our study is among the first to identify and examine a comprehensive set of DPMs. We show that borrowers obtain less debt financing in periods of high market credit risk while using DPMs more frequently as a response. The likelihood of including DPMs increases after creditors' monitoring incentives increase due to debt maturity pressure or credit quality deterioration. Before new borrowing, either in the form of bonds or loans, firms tend to include DPM in the compensation contract. More importantly, we find that the borrowing costs decrease after DPM inclusion.
The second chapter, which is solo-authored, considers creditors' interests within the context of modern technology used for private information dissemination. I focus on the significant communication and coordination costs in the syndicated loan market. I argue that technological advancements can mitigate these costs, thereby influencing the dynamics of the lending market. Specifically, using a novel dataset on the adoption of centralized information platforms—a tool facilitating communication between lead banks (arrangers) and participating lenders—I document a significant upward trend in platform adoption since the early 2000s. Leveraging the staggered adoption across arrangers, I find that following the initial adoption, arrangers facilitate greater volumes of syndicated lending, particularly to more leveraged borrowers. Platform adoption is associated with a broader participation base. This effect likely results from enhanced capacity to handle and process complex contracts for arrangers and participants. Importantly, this increased activity does not correspond with a higher loan default rate.
The third chapter, which is solo-authored, considers creditors' interests within the setting of mandatory disclosure of syndicated loan contracts. The SEC mandates the disclosure of syndicated loan contracts, yet little is known about the implications of this type of disclosure for the lending market. I argue that the disclosed loan contracts can convey hidden signals to outside lenders. Empirically, by analyzing the loan contracts disclosed via EDGAR, I observed that most contracts have been searched by outside lenders. Contracts with greater informational value, such as those involving riskier borrowers or larger loan arrangements, attract more attention. These search behaviors persist over time. I further investigate how these search behaviors affect lenders' subsequent loan contract designs. The results indicate that the search record does not significantly impact their pricing strategies but is associated with their covenant designs. The inadequacy of covenant information in other databases may explain these findings. Overall, these findings highlight the informational role of disclosed loan contracts in SEC filings for outside lenders
La pena come ‘contraccambio’? Qualche riflessione su fondamenti e scopi della pena nella prospettiva del diritto costituzionale
No full textLa pena è tradizionalmente considerata come ‘giusta reazione’ al reato: come, cioè, «contraccambio»1 del male che l’autore ha causato alla vittima e alla società tutta mediante la commissione del reato. Questo è il senso, d’altronde, della legge del taglione: il male della pena è una risposta, il più possibile omogenea, al male causato dal reato. Chi ha ucciso merita egli stesso la medesima sorte della sua vittima.
L’art. 27, terzo comma, Cost. apre però a una prospettiva tutta diversa: quella di una pena non solo conforme al senso di umanità, ma anche finalisticamente orientata alla ‘rieducazione’ del condannato. Una pena, dunque, non più funzionale alla punizione del reo, intesa come intenzionale inflizione di una sofferenza per una finalità di espiazione del male provocato; ma come cammino orientato a stimolare un cambiamento nella persona del reo, affinché si astenga in futuro dal commettere altri reati. Di qui la domanda, attorno alla quale ruoterà la mia piccola riflessione odierna: può davvero affermarsi che l’avvento della Costituzione, e del terzo comma dell’art. 27 in particolare, abbia segnato il definitivo superamento della concezione retributiva della pena2, imponendo – con la forza della legge suprema della Repubblica – un modello di pena esclusivamente orientato alla prevenzione speciale positiva
Domestic Judicial Non-Application of International Law in a Comparative Constitutional Law Perspective: Identitarian and Structural
Get PDFThis project is concerned with non-application of international law by domestic courts. It aims to discuss, from a comparative legal perspective, the reasoning that domestic courts develop to justify non-application of the international legal obligations binding on the state and whether and how such reasoning is influenced by the conception of statehood endorsed by the constitution.
In doing so, an alternative between structural and identitarian conflicts between national and international law is introduced. In cases of structural conflicts, the substance of the law is not considered and the conclusion that international law is inapplicable to the domestic sphere is determined by formal criteria only: grounds for such findings are, for example, that a treaty is unincorporated, that the Government is deemed to have acted ultra vires in ratifying it, or that its provision are found not to be self-executing. Conversely, in cases of identity-based resistance, the same conclusion is based on the finding of the axiological incompatibility of the international law norms at issue with the fundamental values of the national constitution, once their abstract applicability has been positively established by formal reasoning.
This alternative between structural and identitarian non-compliance is discussed in the light of conceptions of the state and its relationship with international law, and more specifically in the light of the alternative between modern and postmodern open statehood. In particular, it is asked whether the principle of open statehood has any bearing on how judicial non-compliance is framed and justified. Such an alternative between modern and postmodern open statehood is understood through the lens of the legal tradition, as an evolution of the idea of the state, which, in light of the current globalised state of affairs, can either reaffirm a modern conception of statehood in a conservative stance, or ‘adapt’ and reform it by incorporating an open conception of it.
The present project seeks to show that there is a correlation between modern statehood and structural conflicts, on the one hand, and post-modern, open statehood and identitarian conflicts, on the other. Indeed, modern statehood reaffirms the centrality of the state as the sole source of legal authority within the domestic legal system, and thus allows for the application of international law only insofar as it is authorised by the competent institutional actors through the relevant legal procedures: conflicts between national and international law are thus framed as structural conflicts, since the incorporation of international law becomes strictly conditional on the respect of said procedures. Conversely, openness to international law is characterised by a greater and more flexible, though not unlimited, penetration of international law within the domestic legal system, which is considered to be more permeable to non-state sources, at least in areas of law that show a marked cosmopolitan attitude (e.g., the protection of fundamental rights and the fight against climate change). As a result, the incorporation of international law goes beyond strict compliance with formal requirements and increasingly becomes a matter of axiological compatibility, if not continuity, with the domestic constitution. Thus, cases of judicial non-compliance with international law are mainly due to the axiological incompatibility between the two levels, rather than to the lack of formal requirements.
This research adopts a comparative method and looks specifically at the jurisdictions of the United Kingdom, Germany and Colombia, which are seen as prototypical representatives of modern (the United Kingdom) and post-modern, open statehood (Germany and Colombia)
Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) in clinical trials and in clinical practice: report from the XXI national conference of the Italian Association of Medical Oncology (AIOM)
Get PDFPROs and PREs measure patient related outcomes and experience.
In oncology they have to be clearly defined in order to discuss what they are effective for
Cut through the greenwash: strategies for authentic sustainability in fashion
No full textPerceived greenwashing refers to consumers’ ability to identify deceptive green marketing practices in product
advertisements. This study explores how perceived greenwashing impacts consumers’ willingness to pay for fashion
products. Using a qualitative approach and cross-case analysis, we evaluated data from approximately 2,500 Gen Z
and Millennial respondents in 2023, including both Italians and expats living in Italy. Our findings reveal that consumers’
perception of greenwashing significantly influences their behavior and willingness to pay. To address this, we propose a
managerial tool to assist brands in crafting credible sustainability claims, mitigating greenwashing risks, and reinforcing
authentic sustainability messages
Discrezionalità giudiziaria e principi costituzionali nelle decisioni sull’applicazione della sanzione penale
No full textChe ruolo svolgono i principi costituzionali nella fase di commisurazione della pena? Questo contributo analizza i principali principi che la Costituzione italiana detta in materia di pena e la loro rilevanza come criteri orientativi della discrezionalità giudiziale nella determinazione della pena al singolo condannato
Essays in Microeconomic Theory
Get PDFThis dissertation consists of three essays in microeconomic theory. The first chapter, co-authored with Daria Stepushina, examines equilibrium dynamics in a setting where private information about product quality can be disclosed by the seller and acquired by the buyer. This chapter studies an asymmetric information buyer-seller model with voluntary disclosure, characterizes equilibrium strategies, and analyzes the role of information costs and an (im)perfect authentication technology. The second chapter analyzes Bayesian persuasion in a network context, focusing on heterogeneous receivers and correlated messages. The sender aims to maximize the adoption of her preferred action by skeptical receivers without dissuading believers. This chapter introduces a novel definition for soft news strategies in networks and presents results on their characterization. The third chapter investigates the influence of pre-electoral polls on electoral outcomes. It considers strategic behavior among voters and pollsters and addresses empirical discrepancies between poll predictions and actual results. By proposing a theoretical model, this chapter aims to explain the mechanisms behind bandwagon and underdog effects, study competition among pollsters with misaligned interests, and explore the potential for polls to influence electoral outcomes
Extension of monotone operators and Lipschitz maps invariant for a group of isometries
Get PDFWe study monotone operators in reflexive Banach spaces that are invariant with respect to a group of suitable isometric isomorphisms andwe showthat they always admit a maximal extension which preserves the same invariance. A similar result applies to Lipschitz maps in Hilbert spaces, thus providing an invariant version of Kirzsbraun-Valentine extension Theorem. We then provide a relevant application to the case of monotone operators in Lp-spaces of random variables which are invariant with respect to measure-preserving isomorphisms, proving that they always admit maximal dissipative extensions which are still invariant by measure-preserving isomorphisms. We also show that such operators are law invariant, a much stronger property which is also inherited by their resolvents, the Moreau-Yosida approximations, and the associated semigroup of contractions. These results combine explicit representation formulae for the maximal extension of a monotone operator based on selfdual lagrangians and a refined study of measure-preserving maps in standard Borel spaces endowed with a nonatomic measure, with applications to the approximation of arbitrary couplings between measures by sequences of maps
Do ethnic minority audit partners face discrimination? Evidence from the Australian audit market
No full textThe professional literature has provided evidence of discrimination against ethnic minority professionals in a number of research contexts, including law, architecture, construction, and healthcare. However, research on ethnicity-based discrimination in the accounting profession has been sparser and has generally relied on ethnic minorities’ perceptions of discrimination rather than actual discrimination. In this study, we complement and extend this research by investigating whether ethnic minority audit partners are associated with lower audit fees than non-ethnic minority audit partners. We also consider whether the association between ethnicity and audit fees depends on the status of the audit firm in which audit partners work. We find that ethnic minority audit partners are associated with lower audit fees and that this holds true only when they work in lower-status audit firms. Supplementary analyses carried out on our data suggest that discrimination is more likely to be performed by audit clients than by audit firms as we do not find evidence that audit firms systematically and selectively allocate ethnic minority audit partners to clients with specific characteristics (e.g., potentially less lucrative clients). Our study contributes to the literature on ethnicity-based discrimination in the accounting profession, to the literature on professional stereotypes, and to the audit pricing literature