Cash Providers: Asset Dissemination over Intermediation Chains

Many financial assets are disseminated to final investors via chains of over-the-counter transactions between intermediaries (investors or dealers). We build a model where an agent buying some units of the asset can offer to sell part of them to an OTC partner. Intermediation chains are endogenously formed and impact the asset's market liquidity, its issuance, and who ultimately holds the asset. An increase in the intermediaries' funding liquidity (e.g. a lower haircut on the asset) makes intermediation less necessary but also makes it cheaper to issue the asset, increasing the total volume to be distributed and the number of intermediaries and agents holding the asset. We derive implications on liquidity in OTC markets, the dissemination of ''toxic" assets and the collateral policy of central banks and CCPs

Non-Standard Errors

In statistics, samples are drawn from a population in a data-generating process (DGP). Standard errors measure the uncertainty in estimates of population parameters. In science, evidence is generated to test hypotheses in an evidence-generating process (EGP). We claim that EGP variation across researchers adds uncertainty: Non-standard errors (NSEs). We study NSEs by letting 164 teams test the same hypotheses on the same data. NSEs turn out to be sizable, but smaller for better reproducible or higher rated research. Adding peer-review stages reduces NSEs. We further find that this type of uncertainty is underestimated by participants

Optimal Supervisory Architecture and Financial Integration in a Banking Union

Both in the United States and in the Euro Area, bank supervision is the joint responsibility of local and central supervisors. I study a model in which local supervisors do not internalize as many externalities as a central supervisor. Local supervisors are more lenient, but banks also have weaker incentives to hide information from them. These two forces can make a joint supervisory architecture optimal, with more weight put on centralized supervision when cross-border externalities are larger. Conversely, more centralized supervision endogenously encourages banks to integrate more cross-border. Due to this complementarity, the economy can be trapped in an equilibrium with both too little central supervision and too little financial integration, when a superior equilibrium would be achievable

Rational blinders: is it possible to regulate banks using their internal risk models? ∗ Job Market Paper

Financial institutions use quantitative risk models not only to manage their risks, but also to communicate information. The Basel regulation in particular uses banks’ own estimates to make capital requirements more sensitive to each bank’s risks, and both the models and the regulation have been blamed for their over-optimism. I link over-optimism to a hidden information problem between a regulator and a bank who knows better which models are correct. If the regulator treats this problem as “model risk ” and only uses tighter capital requirements (e.g. switches from Basel II to Basel III), a wider adoption of optimistic models to bypass the regulation and an increase of banks ’ risks can follow. On the other hand, there is a cost of ensuring banks use adequate models, which increases with the extent to which internal models are used to compute finer capital requirements. Informational constraints thus make the case for a model-based regulation much weaker. More broadly, this paper shows how economic incentives can impact the development of new predictive models

Asset Dissemination Through Dealer Markets

Many financial assets are disseminated to final investors via chains of over-the-counter transactions between dealers. We model such an intermediation process as a game with successive take-it-or-leave-it offers: A dealer buys several units of an asset, and can sell some of them to his customers or to a second dealer, who can sell to his customers or to a third dealer, and so on. In equilibrium, the asset is disseminated through a sequence of OTC transactions between dealers. The number of dealers involved, the inventories they keep, and the prices and quantities they offer are endogenously determined. Our model gives a framework to analyze how assets are disseminated through OTC markets, how liquidity evolves along a sequence of transactions, and varies across different sequences of different lengths

Asset Dissemination Through Dealer Markets

International audienceIn over-the-counter markets for assets, such as bonds and securitizations, large volumes can be split into smaller pieces and gradually sold to several final investors with the intermediation of multiple dealers. This paper proposes a model to study this process, called asset dissemination. A dealer buys several units of an asset from a customer and then sells some units to the dealer’s customers and to a second dealer, who sells to the second dealer’s customers and to a third dealer, and so on. The extent of dissemination is measured by the number of dealers involved and the total customer demand served. We show that asymmetric information on customer demand hinders both dimensions of dissemination. We also study how the quantity to disseminate and the dealers’ funding costs impact dissemination and the prices and quantities in interdealer transactions. This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance

Financial Restructuring and Resolution of Banks

How do resolution frameworks affect the private restructuring of distressed banks? We model a distressed bank’s shareholders and creditors negotiating a restructuring given asymmetric information about asset quality and externalities onto the government. This yields negotiation delays used to signal asset quality. We find that strict bail-in rules increase delays by worsening informational frictions and reducing bargaining surplus. We characterize optimal bail-in rules for the government. We then consider the government’s possible involvement in negotiations. We find this can lead to shorter or longer delays. Notably, the government may gin from committing not to partake in negotiations