1,720,984 research outputs found
Financial intermediation and the great recession : microeconomic and macroeconomic issues
Full text linkDefence date: 20 March 2014Examining Board: Professor Nicola Pavoni, Università Bocconi (Supervisor); Professor Árpád Ábrahám, European University Institute; Professor Hans Degryse, University of Leuven; Professor Steven Ongena, University of Zurich.First made available online on 15 May 2014.This thesis consists of three manuscripts that analyze the role of financial intermediation in the Great Recession from both a microeconomic and macroeconomic perspective. Although these papers differ in the adopted methodologies, they share the idea that, to evaluate the real effects of the last recession, we need a deeper study of financial intermediation. The first chapter of this thesis is joint work with L. D'Aurizio and L. Romano. It documents the credit allocation by Italian banks following the failure of Lehman Brothers. The empirical analysis reveals that Italian family firms experienced a significantly smaller contraction in granted loans than non-family firms. It is showed that the difference in the amount of credit granted to family and non-family firms is related to an increased role for soft information in Italian banks' operations. The second chapter, joint work with D. Menno, quantifies the welfare effects of the drop in aggregate house prices for leveraged and un-leveraged households in the Great Recession. It features a dynamic general equilibrium model calibrated to the U.S. economy and simulates the 2007-2009 Great Recession as a contemporaneous shock to the financial intermediation sector and aggregate income. The estimates show that borrowers lost significantly more in terms of welfare than savers. In counter-factual experiments it has showed that this loss is larger the higher the households' leverage. The third chapter documents the relation between bank performance in the 2007-2008 financial crisis and CEO monetary incentives in a cross-country analysis. Results suggest that the sensitivity of CEOs' stock-option portfolios to share prices (option delta) in 2006 have strong predictive power for ex-post bank performance. By exploiting the cross-country variability in financial regulation, results show that incentives to take risk given by stock options are stronger in countries with explicit deposit insurance and weaker restrictions on bank investments
CEO compensation, regulation, and risk in banks: Theory and evidence from the financial crisis
No full textThis paper studies the relation between CEOs' monetary incentives, financial regulation and risk in banks. We develop a model where banks lend to opaque entrepreneurial projects to be monitored by bank managers. Bank managers are remunerated according to a pay-for-performance scheme and their effort is not observable to depositors and bank shareholders. Within a prudential regulatory framework that imposes a minimum capital ratio and a deposit insurance scheme, we study the effect of increasing the variable component of managerial compensation on bank risk in equilibrium. We test the model's predictions on a sample of large banks around the world, gauging how the monetary incentives for CEOs in 2006 affected their banks' stock price and volatility during the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Our international sample allows us to study the interaction between monetary incentives and financial regulation. We find that greater sensitivity of CEOs' equity portfolios to
stock prices and volatility is associated with poorer performance and greater risk at the banks where shareholder control is weaker and in countries with explicit deposit insurance
Family firms, soft information and bank lending in a financial crisis
No full textThis paper studies how access to bank lending differed between family and non-family firms in the 2007-2009 financial crisis. The theoretical prediction is that family block-holders' incentive structure results in lower agency conflict in the borrower-lender relationship. Using highly detailed data on bank-firm relations, we exploit the reduction in bank lending in Italy following the crisis in October 2008. We find statistically and economically significant evidence that the contraction in credit for family firms was smaller than that for non-family firms. Results are robust to ex-ante observable differences between the two types of firms and to time-varying bank fixed effects. We further show that the difference in the amount of credit granted to family and non-family firms is related to an increased role for soft information in Italian banks' operations, following the Lehman Brothers' failure. Finally, by identifying a match between those banks and family firms, we can control for time-varying unobserved heterogeneity among the firms and validate the hypothesis that our results are supply driven
Liquidity effects of Litigation Risk: Evidence from a Legal Shock
Full text linkTheory offers two diverging views on the effects of ex ante litigation risk on corporate liquidity proxied by cash holdings. Ex ante litigation risk, however, is difficult to measure. We test the liquidity effects of ex ante litigation risk by exploiting the phase-by-phase introduction of securities class actions (SCAs) in Korea. Following the increase in litigation risk, firms significantly increase their internal liquidity, especially those without directors’ and officers’ liability insurance and those that are financially constrained. The results hold robustly in difference-in-differences and regression discontinuity designs. We also find that the increase in ex ante SCA risk improves firms’ stock market liquidity and valuation, especially for firms that do not carry liability insurance. Taken together, the results are consistent with the arguments that SCAs increase firms’ liability risk and lower investors’ risk
Green Firms, Environmental Hazards, and Investment
No full textIn this work, we analyze the relation between environmental risks and firms’ investments, and whether this relationship is different for green firms. We merge balance sheet and patenting activity data on Italian firms in manufacturing sectors during the period 2010–2019 with information on environmental risk at the municipality level. We show that investments in capital assets are smaller on average for firms operating in municipalities with higher levels of environmental risk, particularly when the risk is hydrogeological or seismic in nature. This negative impact is significantly lower if firms operate in green sectors. This finding was reinforced after the ratification of the Paris Agreement and the consequent increased awareness of firms, investors, and policymakers about the importance of environmental risks and the ongoing ecological transition process
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