Securitization, Transparency and Liquidity

We present a model in which issuers of asset backed securities choose to release coarse information to enhance the liquidity of their primary market, at the cost of reducing secondary market liquidity or even causing it to freeze. The degree of transparency is inefficiently low if the social value of secondary market liquidity exceeds its private value. We analyze various types of public intervention — mandatory transparency standards, provision of liquidity to distressed banks or secondary market price support — and find that they have quite different welfare implications. Finally, transparency is greater if issuers restrain the issue size, or tranche it so as to sell the more information-sensitive tranche to sophisticated investors only.securitization, transparency, liquidity, rating, subprime, crisis, default

Credit Ratings Failures and Policy Options

This paper examines the role of credit rating agencies in the subprime crisis that triggered the 2007-08 financial turmoil. We focus on two aspects of ratings that contributed to the boom and bust of the market for structured debt: rating inflation and coarse information disclosure. The paper discusses how regulation can be designed to mitigate these problems in the future. Our preferred policy is to require rating agencies to be paid by investors rather than by issuers and to grant open and free access to data about the loans or securities underlying structured debt products. A more modest (but less effective) approach would be to retain the “issuer pays” model but require issuers to pay an upfront fee irrespective of the rating, ban “rating shopping”, and prescribe a more complete format for the information that rating agencies must disseminate.credit rating agencies, securitization, default, liquidity, crisis, transparency

The Political Economy of Corporate Governance

We analyze the political determinants of investor and employment protection. Our model predicts that proportional electoral systems are conducive to weaker investor protection and stronger employment protection than majoritarian systems. This prediction is consistent with international panel data evidence. The proportionality of the voting system is significantly and negatively correlated with shareholder protection in a panel of 45 countries, and positively correlated with employment protection in a panel of 21 OECD countries. Also other political variables appear to affect regulatory outcomes, especially for the labor market. The origin of the legal system has some additional explanatory power only for employment protection.political economy, shareholder protection, corporate governance, employment legislation, takeovers, mergers and acquisitions.

Shareholder Protection, Stock Market Development, and Politics

This paper presents a political economy model where there is mutual feedback between investor protection and stock market development. Better investor protection induces companies to issue more equity and thereby leads to a broader stock market. In turn, equity issuance expands the shareholder base and increases support for shareholder protection. This feedback loop can generate multiple equilibria, with investor protection and stock market size being positively correlated across equilibria. The model’s predictions are tested on panel data for 47 countries over 1993-2002, controlling for country and year effects and endogeneity issues. We also document international convergence in shareholder protection to best-practice standards, and show that it is correlated with cross-border M&A activity, consistent with the model.political economy, shareholder protection, corporate governance, stock market

The Political Economy of Finance

If the private benefits of control are high and management owns a small equity stake, managers and workers are natural allies. There are two forces at play. First, managers effectively transform employees into a “poison pill’’ by signing generous long-term labor contracts and thereby reducing the firm’s attractiveness to a raider. Second, employees act as “white squires’’ for the incumbent managers, lobbying against hostile takeovers to protect the high wages enjoyed under incumbent management. Our model is consistent with available empirical findings, and yields new predictions as well.political economy, shareholder protection, corporate governance, bankruptcy law, credit market regulation, financial development, privatization

Credit ratings failures : causes and policy options

This paper examines the role of credit rating agencies in the subprime crisis, which was at the outset of the ongoing financial turmoil. The focus of the paper is on two aspects that contributed to the boom and bust of the market for asset-backed securities: rating inflation and coarse information disclosure. The paper discusses how regulation can be designed to mitigate these problems in the future. The suggestion is that regulators should require rating agencies to be paid by investors rather than by issuers (or at least constrain the way they are paid by issuers) and force greater disclosure of information about the underlying pool of securities

The Political Economy of Corporate Governance

We analyze the political determinants of investor and employment protection. Our model predicts that proportional electoral systems are conducive to weaker investor protection and stronger employment protection than majoritarian systems. This prediction is consistent with international panel data evidence. The proportionality of the voting system is significantly and negatively correlated with shareholder protection in a panel of 45 countries, and positively correlated with employment protection in a panel of 21 OECD countries. Also other political variables affect regulatory outcomes, especially for the labor market. The origin of the legal system has some additional explanatory power only for employment protection

Financial crises and right-wing populism: how do politics and finance shape each other?

COVID-19 offers an opportunity for research to inform decision-makers about past crisis experiences, write Thorsten Beck, Orkun Saka and Paolo Volpi