The Theory of Financial Intermediation

Traditional theories of intermediation are based on transaction costs and asymmetric information. They are designed to account for institutions which take deposits or issue insurance policies and channel funds to firms. However, in recent decades there have been significant changes. Although transaction costs and asymmetric information have declined, intermediation has increased. New markets for financial futures and options are mainly markets for intermediaries rather than individuals or firms. These changes are difficult to reconcile with the traditional theories. We discuss the role of intermediation in this new context stressing risk trading and participation costs.

Financial Transaction Tax: Small is Beautiful

The case for taxing financial transactions merely to raise more revenues from the financial sector is not particularly strong. Better alternatives to tax the financial sector are likely to be available. However, a tax on financial transactions could be justified in order to limit socially undesirable transactions when more direct means of doing so are unavailable for political or practical reasons. Some financial transactions are indeed likely to do more harm than good, especially when they contribute to the systemic risk of the financial system. However, such a financial transaction tax should be very small, much smaller than the negative externalities in question, because it is a blunt instrument that also drives out socially useful transactions. There is a case for taxing over-the-counter derivative transactions at a somewhat higher rate than exchange-based derivative transactions. More targeted remedies to drive out socially undesirable transactions should be sought in parallel, which would allow, after their implementation, to reduce or even phase out financialtransaction taxes

Systemic Risk

Governments and international organizations worry increasingly about systemic risk, under which the world’s financial system can collapse like a row of dominoes. There is widespread confusion, though, about the causes and even the definition of systemic risk, and uncertainty about how to control it. This Article offers a conceptual framework for examining what risks are truly “systemic,” what causes those risks, and how, if at all, those risks should be regulated. Scholars historically have tended to think of systemic risk primarily in terms of financial institutions such as banks. However, with the growth of disintermediation, in which companies can access capital-market funding without going through banks or other intermediary institutions, greater focus should be devoted to financial markets and the relationship between markets and institutions. This perspective reveals that systemic risk results from a type of tragedy of the commons in which market participants lack sufficient incentive, absent regulation, to limit risk-taking in order to reduce the systemic danger to others. Law, therefore, has a role in reducing systemic risk

Revenue diversification in emerging market banks: implications for financial performance

Shaped by structural forces of change, banking in emerging markets has recently experienced a decline in its traditional activities, leading banks to diversify into new business strategies. This paper examines whether the observed shift into non-interest based activities improves financial performance. Using a sample of 714 banks across 14 East-Asian and Latin-American countries over the post 1997-crisis changing structure, we find that diversification gains are more than offset by the cost of increased exposure to the non-interest income, specifically by the trading income volatility. But this diversification performance's effect is found to be no linear with risk, and significantly not uniform among banks and across business lines. An implication of these findings is that banking institutions can reap diversification benefits as long as they well-studied it depending on their specific characteristics, competences and risk levels, and as they choose the right niche

The History of the Quantitative Methods in Finance Conference Series. 1992-2007

This report charts the history of the Quantitative Methods in Finance (QMF) conference from its beginning in 1993 to the 15th conference in 2007. It lists alphabetically the 1037 speakers who presented at all 15 conferences and the titles of their papers.

Managing Food Industry Business and Financial Risks with Commodity-Linked Credit Instruments

This paper reviews the use and structure of commodity-linked credit instruments. It is argued that in the absence of contingent markets food firms face increasing financial risk reduced investment, and limited access to debt markets. One strategy is to issue commodity-linked credit whose payment structure is linked to the price of an underlying commodity. In some cases, a commodity-linked bond (CLB) can be structured to provide an incentive to investors by sharing in profit gains. If the goal is to hedge financial risks, CLB's can also be constructed that reduce the loan principle or coupons depending on price movements.Agribusiness, Risk and Uncertainty,

Equilibrium Portfolio Strategies in the Presence of Sentiment Risk and Excess Volatility

Our objective is to identify the trading strategy that would allow an investor to take advantage of "excessive" stock price volatility and "sentiment" fluctuations. We construct a general-equilibrium model of sentiment. In it, there are two classes of agents and stock prices are excessively volatile because one class is overconfident about a public signal. As a result, this class of overconfident agents changes its expectations too often, sometimes being excessively optimistic, sometimes being excessively pessimistic. We determine and analyze the trading strategy of the rational investors who are not overconfident about the signal. We find that, because overconfident traders introduce an additional source of risk, rational investors are deterred by their presence and reduce the proportion of wealth invested into equity except when they are extremely optimistic about future growth. Moreover, their optimal portfolio strategy is based not just on a current price divergence but also on their expectation of future sentiment behavior and a prediction concerning the speed of convergence of prices. Thus, the portfolio strategy includes a protection in case there is a deviation from that prediction. We find that long maturity bonds are an essential accompaniment of equity investment, as they serve to hedge this "sentiment risk."

Paper millionaires: How valuable is stock to a stockholder who is restricted from selling it?

Many firms have stockholders who face severe restrictions on their ability to sell their shares and diversify the risk of their personal wealth. We study the costs of these liquidity restrictions on stockholders using a continuous-time portfolio choice framework. These restrictions have major effects on the optimal investment and consumption strategies because of the need to hedge the illiquid stock position and smooth consumption in anticipation of the eventual lapse of the restrictions. These results provide a number of important insights about the effects of illiquidity in financial markets.