Scholars@Duke
Manju Puri

Manju Puri

J.B. Fuqua Distinguished Professor of Business Administration
Fuqua School of Business

Selected Publications

Private Equity and Financial Stability: Evidence from Failed-Bank Resolution in the Crisis

Journal Article Journal of Finance · February 1, 2025 This paper investigates the role of private equity (PE) in failed-bank resolutions after the 2008 financial crisis, using proprietary Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation failed-bank acquisition data. PE investors made substantial investments in underperf ... Full text Cite

FinTech Lending

Journal Article Annual Review of Financial Economics · November 1, 2022 In this article, we review the growing literature on financial technology (FinTech) lending - the provision of credit facilitated by technology that improves the customer-lender interaction or used in lenders screening and monitoring of borrowers. FinTech ... Full text Cite

What Explains Differences in Finance Research Productivity during the Pandemic?

Journal Article Journal of Finance · August 1, 2021 Based on a survey of American Finance Association members, we analyze how demographics, time allocation, production mechanisms, and institutional factors affect research production during the pandemic. Consistent with the literature, research productivity ... Full text Cite

On the Rise of FinTechs: Credit Scoring Using Digital Footprints

Journal Article Review of Financial Studies · July 1, 2020 We analyze the information content of a digital footprint - that is, information that users leave online simply by accessing or registering on a Web site - for predicting consumer default. We show that even simple, easily accessible variables from a digita ... Full text Cite

Loan Officer Incentives, Internal Rating Models, and Default Rates

Journal Article Review of Finance · May 1, 2020 Manipulation of hard information has been at the center of a wave of investigations into fraudulent bank behavior, such as mis-selling of mortgages and rigging of London Interbank Offered Rate and Foreign Exchange rates. Despite these prominent cases, litt ... Full text Cite

A corporate beauty contest

Scholarly Edition · September 1, 2017 We provide new evidence that the subjective "look of competence" rather than beauty is important for CEO selection and compensation. Our experiments, studying the facial traits of CEOs using nearly 2,000 subjects, link facial characteristics to both CEO co ... Full text Cite

What do a million observations have to say about loan defaults? Opening the black box of relationships

Journal Article Journal of Financial Intermediation · July 1, 2017 Using a unique dataset of more than 1 million loans made by 296 German banks, we evaluate the impact of many aspects of customer–bank relationships on loan default rates. Our research suggests a practical solution to reducing loan defaults for new customer ... Full text Cite

Adverse incentives in crowdfunding

Journal Article Management Science · March 1, 2017 This paper analyzes the substantially growing markets for crowdfunding, in which retail investors lend to borrowers without financial intermediaries. Critics suggest that these markets allow sophisticated investors to take advantage of unsophisticated inve ... Full text Cite

A Tale of Two Runs: Depositor Responses to Bank Solvency Risk

Journal Article Journal of Finance · December 1, 2016 We examine heterogeneity in depositor responses to solvency risk using depositor-level data for a bank that faced two different runs. We find that depositors with loans and bank staff are less likely to run than others during a low-solvency-risk shock, but ... Full text Cite

Does financing spur small business productivity? Evidence from a natural experiment

Scholarly Edition · June 1, 2015 We analyze how increased access to financing affects firm total factor productivity (TFP) by exploiting a natural experiment following interstate banking deregulations that increased access to bank financing. We find that firms' TFP increases after their s ... Full text Cite

Capital allocation and delegation of decision-making authority within firms

Scholarly Edition · March 1, 2015 We use a unique data set that contains information on more than 1,000 Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) around the world to investigate the degree to which executives delegate financial decisions and the circumstances that ... Full text Cite

Managerial attitudes and corporate actions

Journal Article Journal of Financial Economics · July 1, 2013 We administer psychometric tests to senior executives to obtain evidence on their underlying psychological traits and attitudes. We find US CEOs differ significantly from non-US CEOs in terms of their underlying attitudes. In addition, we find that CEOs ar ... Full text Cite

The economic psychology of entrepreneurship and family business

Journal Article Journal of Economics and Management Strategy · June 1, 2013 This paper studies the attitudes of entrepreneurs, both how they differ as a group from others in the economy, as well as how they differ from one another according to the mode of entry into entrepreneurship and whether or not the firm is a family business ... Full text Cite

A Survey of Venture Capital Research

Scholarly Edition · January 1, 2013 This survey reviews the growing body of academic work on venture capital. It lays out the major data sources used. It examines the work on venture capital investments in companies, looking at issues of selection, contracting, post-investment services, and ... Full text Cite

Managerial attitudes and corporate actions

Journal Article Journal of Financial Economics · 2013 Cite

On the Life Cycle Dynamics of Venture-Capital- and Non-Venture-Capital-Financed Firms

Journal Article Journal of Finance · December 1, 2012 We use data over 25 years to understand the life cycle dynamics of VC- and non-VC-financed firms. We find successful and failed VC-financed firms achieve larger scale but are not more profitable at exit than matched non-VC-financed firms. Cumulative failur ... Full text Cite

Understanding bank runs: The importance of depositor-bank relationships and networks

Journal Article American Economic Review · June 1, 2012 We use unique depositor-level data for a bank that faced a run to understand the factors that affect depositor behavior. We find uninsured depositors are most likely to run. Deposit insurance helps, but is only partially effective. Bank-depositor relations ... Full text Cite

Global retail lending in the aftermath of the US financial crisis: Distinguishing between supply and demand effects

Journal Article Journal of Financial Economics · June 1, 2011 This paper examines the broader effects of the US financial crisis on global lending to retail customers. In particular we examine retail bank lending in Germany using a unique data set of German savings banks during the period 2006 through 2008 for which ... Full text Cite

On loan sales, loan contracting, and lending relationships

Journal Article Review of Financial Studies · 2009 This paper examines the secondary market for loan sales and, in particular, loan contract design as a mechanism to resolve informational issues in loan sales and associated costs and benefits. Using loan-level data, we find that sold loans contain addition ... Full text Cite

On the importance of retail banking relationships

Journal Article Journal of Financial Economics · August 1, 2008 We use proprietary data to analyze the importance of retail banking relationships to commercial banks and their depositors when banks underwrite securities. We find lead underwriters' retail customers benefit as they demand and end up with significantly mo ... Full text Cite

Building Relationships Early: Banks in Venture Capital

Journal Article Review of Financial Studies · April 2008 Cite

Building relationships early: Banks in venture capital

Journal Article Review of Financial Studies · April 1, 2008 This paper examines bank behavior in venture capital. It considers the relation between a bank's venture capital investments and its subsequent lending, which can be thought of as intertemporal cross-selling. Theory suggests that unlike independent venture ... Full text Cite

Banks in Capital Markets

Journal Article · December 1, 2007 Banks are an important source of funding in economies all around the world, making it vital to understand how banks directly and indirectly affect funding through capital markets. Few regulatory issues have been as controversial as the appropriate scope of ... Full text Cite

Optimism and economic choice

Journal Article Journal of Financial Economics · October 1, 2007 We create a novel measure of optimism using the Survey of Consumer Finance by comparing self-reported life expectancy to that implied by statistical tables. This measure of optimism correlates with positive beliefs about future economic conditions and with ... Full text Cite

On the benefits of concurrent lending and underwriting

Journal Article Journal of Finance · December 1, 2005 This paper examines whether there are efficiencies that benefit issuers and underwriters when a financial intermediary concurrently lends to an issuer while also underwriting its public securities offering. We find issuers, particularly noninvestmentgrade ... Full text Cite

Enhancing security value by ownership restrictions: Evidence from a natural experiment

Journal Article Financial Management · December 1, 2005 We present new evidence from a natural experiment to show circumstances in which ownership restrictions can enhance value. Our evidence is based on multiple restricted bond issues by an emerging market issuer at 150 basis points lower than comparable bonds ... Full text Cite

Bank Borrowers and Loan Sales: New Evidence on the Uniqueness of Bank Loans

Journal Article Journal of Business · October 1, 2003 This article examines the information content of the sale announcement of a borrower's loans by its lending bank. We find significant negative stock returns for the borrower on the loan sale announcement, particularly for subpar loan sales, where the bank' ... Full text Cite

Credit Ratings, Collateral, and Loan Characteristics: Implications for Yield

Journal Article Journal of Business · July 1, 2003 This article studies how collateral affects bond yields. Using a large data set of public bonds, we document that collateralized debt has higher yield than general debt, after controlling for credit rating. Our model of agency problems between managers and ... Full text Cite

Debtor-in-possession financing and bankruptcy resolution: Empirical evidence

Journal Article Journal of Financial Economics · July 1, 2003 Debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing is unique secured financing available to firms filing for Chapter 11. Opponents of DIP financing argue that it leads to overinvestment. Alternatively, DIP financing can allow funding for positive net present value proje ... Full text Cite

On the Fundamental Role of Venture Capital

Journal Article Economic Review · 2002 Cite

Institutional allocation in initial public offerings: Empirical evidence

Journal Article Journal of Finance · January 1, 2002 We analyze institutional allocation in initial public offerings (IPOs) using a new data set of U.S. offerings between 1997 and 1998. We document a positive relationship between institutional allocation and day one IPO returns. This is partly explained by t ... Full text Cite

Venture capital and the professionalization of start-up firms: Empirical evidence

Journal Article Journal of Finance · January 1, 2002 This paper examines the impact venture capital can have on the development of new firms. Using a hand-collected data set on Silicon Valley start-ups, we find that venture capital is related to a variety of professionalization measures, such as human resour ... Full text Cite

The interaction between product market and financing strategy: The role of venture capital

Journal Article Review of Financial Studies · January 1, 2000 Venture capital financing is widely believed to be influential for new innovative companies. We provide empirical evidence that venture capital financing is related to product market strategies and outcomes of start-ups. Using a unique hand-collected datab ... Full text Cite

Commercial banks as underwriters: Implications for the going public process

Journal Article Journal of Financial Economics · January 1, 1999 Commercial bank entry into securities underwriting can affect underwriter behavior because, unlike investment houses, banks also lend to firms. This raises several issues. Are banks better certifiers of firms' securities than investment houses? If banks ho ... Full text Cite

Bank entry, competition, and the market for corporate securities underwriting

Journal Article Journal of Financial Economics · January 1, 1999 This paper examines the competitive effects of commercial bank entry into the corporate debt underwriting market, particularly with respect to underwriter spreads, ex-ante yields, and market concentration. We find that underwriter spreads and ex-ante yield ... Full text Cite

Bank underwriting of debt securities: Modern evidence

Journal Article Review of Financial Studies · January 1, 1997 This article examines debt securities underwritten by Section 2O subsidiaries of bank holding companies relative to those underwritten by investment bouses. Consistent with a net certification effect for banks, bank underwriting of lower credit rated firms ... Full text Cite

Commercial banks in investment banking: Conflict of interest or certification role?

Journal Article Journal of Financial Economics · January 1, 1996 When commercial banks make loans to firms and also underwrite securities, does this hamper or enhance their role as certifiers of firm value? This paper examines empirically the pricing of bank-underwritten securities as compared to investment-house-underw ... Full text Cite

The long-term default performance of bank underwritten security issues

Journal Article Journal of Banking and Finance · January 1, 1994 The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 barred commercial banks and their affiliates from underwriting and dealing in securities activities, amidst concerns that banks abused the trust of their depositors and clientele by systematically underwriting poor quality se ... Full text Cite