Marco Giometti

Ciao! Welcome to my website.

I am an Assistant Professor of Finance in the Business Department at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.

I received my PhD in Finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in May 2022.

My research focuses on Banking, Empirical Corporate Finance, Financial Contracting, and Political Economy.

You can download my CV here.

Contact: marco.giometti@uc3m.es | margiometti@gmail.com

Links: Google Scholar | LinkedIn | UC3M Webpage | ORCID

Research

Working Papers

Bank Specialization, Control Rights, and Real Effects (with Ozan Guler and Stefano Pietrosanti). June 2024.
 [formerly circulated as "Bank Specialization and the Design of Loan Contracts", FDIC Center for Financial Research Working Paper No. 2022-14]

We study the role of lenders' ability to collect and process information in financial contracting. Using a large sample of corporate loans, we analyze how banks' industry specialization affects the use of covenants and the outcomes of covenant violations among public U.S. firms. Lenders specialized in the borrower's industry impose less restrictive financial covenants, provide more customized loan terms, and reduce the investment drop following a covenant breach without harming firms' performance. Our results suggest that specialization improves contracting efficiency by lowering information asymmetries between borrowers and lenders.

Relationship Lending when Borrowers Are in Distress. August 2022.

In this paper I investigate whether relationship lending helps borrowers experiencing idiosyncratic financial distress. By constructing a novel dataset on syndicated lending that tracks the availability and pricing of credit for US corporate borrowers over three decades, I conclude that relationship lending benefits borrowers in distress. In particular, I explicitly distinguish loan renegotiations from new originations, and account for the state-contingent provisions on loan pricing often present in credit agreements. I compare loan terms granted to borrowers in distress by relationship and non-relationship lenders. By employing a within-firm approach to alleviate possible selection issues, I find that relationship lenders provide a higher credit amount, charge lower interest rates, and require similar collateral and fees. I show that firms benefit from relationship lending irrespective of their access to outside financing options. Overall, I provide support to theories of implicit commitment and reputational capital in lending relationships. 

Work in Progress

Bank Supervision and Firm Outcomes: Evidence from the SSM (with Luigi Infante and Massimiliano Stacchini)

Prudential Supervision and Bank Funding Costs (with Luigi Infante and Massimiliano Stacchini)

How Does Political Uncertainty Affect Bank Behavior? (with Martina Jasova, Caterina Mendicino, and Dominik Supera)

Globalization and Populism: Evidence from Italian Legislative Speeches (with Greta Ardito)

Invited Discussions

Court shopping, pro-debtor bias, and bankruptcy outcomes by Kris Boudt, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Rafael Matta, Shilin Zhang, 18th Belgian Financial Research Forum

Concentrating on Bailouts: Government Guarantees and Bank Asset Composition by Christian Eufinger, Juan Pablo Gorostiaga, and Björn Richter, 8th MadBar Workshop on Banking and Corporate Finance

Trust in Banks and Borrower Discouragement by Ali Recayi Ogcem, 30th Finance Forum of the Spanish Finance Association

Bank Competition and Bargaining over Refinancing by Marina Emiris, Francois Koulischer, and Christophe Spaenjers, Finance and Accounting 2023 Annual Research Symposium

How Does Debt Composition Influence Credit Risk? by Caglar Kaya, FMA 2023 European Conference

Bank Political Attitudes and Transaction Costs of Collective Action within Loan Syndicates by Sang Woo Sohn and Jianxin (Donny) Zhao, 12th Financial Markets and Corporate Governance Conference

Other Work

Persistence of Innovation and Knowledge Flows in Africa: An Empirical Investigation (with Francesco Lamperti and Roberto Mavilia). Innovation and Development. 2016. 6(2), 235-257. [Link]