Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
6-2026
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Program
Economics
Advisor
Christos Giannikos
Committee Members
Jun Jonathan Wang
Yochanan Shachmurove
Subject Categories
Corporate Finance | Economics | Finance
Keywords
Debt IPO, Corporate bond issuance, Community Reinvestment Act, Non-bank mortgage lending
Abstract
Debt markets are important for firms raising capital and for households borrowing, but we know very little about what happens the first time a firm or a community enters a public bond market. A firm's first public bond issue is called a Debt IPO, which marks a shift in its capital structure and indicates that the firm is pivoting from private placement to the public market. The 2024 data shows that non-bank lenders now originate more than two-thirds of U.S. residential mortgages, but the Community Reinvestment Act written in 1977 mostly applies to commercial institutions and excludes non-bank institutions. In the Debt IPO research in the first two chapters, I answer a few questions: how big is the equity response after controlling for macro conditions, does a Debt IPO affect real firm growth, and do the effects differ across industries? On the mortgage finance side, prior work has documented the rise of non-banks and the limits and advantages of CRA, but the pricing and denial rates of non-banks in LMI neighborhoods have not been measured against the CRA regulated institutions. The three chapters of my dissertation examine each of these aspects in order. In the first chapter, I use a Bayesian model with controls to measure abnormal returns for 171 U.S. Debt IPO announcements from 1984 to 2023. I find a bigger cumulative equity loss of roughly 1 to 3 percent in the 5 to 30 day period after the announcement day than previous literature reported, with the sharpest declines in competitive goods and services firms but little reaction among financials and REITs. In the second chapter, I document that for non-financial firms, a larger Debt IPO is associated with higher subsequent asset growth, and the effect is largest among smaller firms raising disproportionately large amounts relative to their revenue — a catch-up effect. The third chapter compares non-banks with CRA regulated lenders in LMI tracts. I find that non-banks serve more minority borrowers, but at a higher cost: roughly an 8.3 basis point rate spread premium in LMI tracts and higher origination charges.
Recommended Citation
Sun, Rui, "Essays in Corporate Finance and Mortgage Finance" (2026). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6722
