Regulating Systemic Risk through Transparency: Tradeoffs in Making Data Public

Public or partial disclosure of financial data is a key element in the design of a new regulatory environment. We study the costs and benefits of higher public access to financial data and analyze qualitatively how frequency, disclosure lag and granularity of such open data can be chosen to maximize welfare, depending on the relative magnitude of economic frictions. We lay out a simple framework to choose optimal transparency of financial data.

The Perverse Effects of Partial Labor Market Reform: Fixed Duration Contracts in France

Rather than decrease firing costs across the board, a number of European countries have allowed firms to hire workers on fixed-duration contracts. At the end of a given duration, these contracts can be terminated at little or no cost. If workers are kept on however, the contracts become subject to regular firing costs. We argue in this paper that the effects of such a partial reform of employment protection may be perverse. The main effect may be high turnover in fixed-duration jobs, leading in turn to higher, not lower, unemployment. And, even if unemployment comes down, workers may actually be worse off, going through many spells of unemployment and fixed duration jobs, before obtaining a regular job. Looking at French data for young workers since the early 1980s, we conclude that the reforms have substantially increased turnover, without a substantial reduction in unemployment duration. If anything, their effect on welfare of young workers appears to have been negative.

Why Has CEO Pay Increased So Much?

This paper develops a simple equilibrium model of CEO pay. CEOs have different talents and are matched to firms in a competitive assignment model. In market equilibrium, a CEO%u2019s pay changes one for one with aggregate firm size, while changing much less with the size of his own firm. The model determines the level of CEO pay across firms and over time, offering a benchmark for calibratable corporate finance. The sixfold increase of CEO pay between 1980 and 2003 can be fully attributed to the six-fold increase in market capitalization of large US companies during that period. We find a very small dispersion in CEO talent, which nonetheless justifies large pay differences. The data broadly support the model. The size of large firms explains many of the patterns in CEO pay, across firms, over time, and between countries.

Why Has CEO Pay Increased So Much?

This paper develops a simple competitive model of CEO pay. It appears to explain much of the rise in CEO compensation in the US economy, without assuming managerial entrenchment, mishandling of options, or theft. CEOs have observable managerial talent and are matched to assets in a competitive assignment model. The marginal impact of a CEO's talent is assumed to increase with the value of the assets under his control. Under very general assumptions, using results from extreme value theory, the model determines the level of CEO pay across firms and over time, and the pay-sensitivity relations. We predict that the level of CEO compensation should increase one for one with the average market capitalization of large firms in the economy. Therefore, the eight-fold increase of CEO pay between 1980 and 2000 can be fully attributed to the increase in market capitalization of large US companies. The model predicts the cross-section Cobb-Douglass relation between pay and firm size and can be used to study other large changes at the top of the income distribution, and offers a benchmark for calibratable corporate financeExecutive compensation, wage distribution, Pareto distribution, wage inequality, assignment, incentives, pay performance sensitivity

Going for broke: New Century Financial Corporation, 2004-2006

Using loan level data, we investigate the lending behavior of a large subprime mortgage issuer prior to its bankruptcy in the beginning of 2007. In 2004, this firm suddenly started to massively issue new loans contracts that featured deferred amortization ("interestonly loans") to high income and high FICO households. We document that these loans were not only riskier, but also that their returns were more sensitive to real estate prices than standard contracts. Implicitly, this lender dramatically increased its exposure to its own legacy asset, which is what a standard model of portfolio selection in distress would predict. We provide additional evidence on New Century’s lending behavior, which are consistent with a risk shifting strategy. Finally, we are able to tie this sudden change in behavior to the sharp monetary policy tightening implemented by the Fed in the spring of 2004. Our findings shed new light on the relationship between monetary policy and risk taking by financial institutions.

A Calibratable Model of Optimal CEO Incentives in Market Equilibrium

This paper presents a unified framework for understanding the determinants of both CEO incentives and total pay levels in competitive market equilibrium. It embeds a modified principal-agent problem into a talent assignment model to endogenize both elements of compensation. The model's closed form solutions yield testable predictions for how incentives should vary across firms under optimal contracting. In particular, our calibrations show that the negative relationship between the CEO's effective equity stake and firm size is quantitatively consistent with efficiency and need not reflect rent extraction. Our model and data both also imply that the dollar change in wealth for a percentage change in firm value, scaled by annual pay, is independent of firm size. This may render it an attractive incentive measure as it is comparable between firms and over time. The theory also predicts a positive relationship between pay volatility and firm volatility, and that risk and effort affect total pay along the cross-section but not in the aggregate. Finally, we demonstrate that incentive compensation is effective at solving large agency problems, such as selecting corporate strategy, but smaller issues such as perk consumption are best addressed through direct monitoring.