Decentralized International Risk Sharing and Governmental Moral Hazard

This paper studies the issue of moral hazard in the presence of decentralized international risk sharing.In the model presented, risk sharing is achieved through macro markets (markets in which claims to the GDP of a country can be traded).Moral hazard arises for the following reason: if foreigners hold claims to domestic GDP due to risk sharing motives, the country will not receive the full benefit from its production anymore.This can motivate for example a tax on investment (which reduces production) or simply result in reduced governmental effort to increase productivity.We show in a two-country general equilibrium framework that the moral hazard problem does not lead to a reduction in the risk sharing (households hold half of world output).This results ultimately in a 100% tax on investment and creates a huge distortion.We conclude that unregulated macro markets pose a serious threat to world welfare.The analysis also raises concern about the desirability of decentralized risk sharing in general, in particular risk sharing through international trade of equity.moral hazard;international risk sharing

Loan Market Competition and Bank Risk-Taking

Recent literature (Boyd and De Nicoló, 2005) has argued that competition in the loan market lowers bank risk by reducing the risk-taking incentives of borrowers. We show that the impact of loan market competition on banks is reversed if banks can adjust their loan portfolios. The reason is that when borrowers become safer, banks want to offset the effect on their balance sheet and switch to higher-risk lending. They even overcompensate the effect of safer borrowers because loan market competition erodes their franchise values and thus increases their risk-taking incentives.loan market competition;risk shifting;bank stability

A Market Based Measure of Credit Quality and Banks' Performance During the Subprime Crisis

We propose a new method for measuring the quality of banks credit portfolios. This method makes use of information impounded in bank share prices by exploiting differences in their sensitivity to credit default swap spreads of borrowers of varying quality. The method allows us to derive a credit risk indicator (CRI), which is the perceived share of high risk exposures in a bank's portfolio. We estimate CRIs for the 150 largest U.S. bank holding companies and find that they have strong predictive power for the BHCs' performance during the subprime crisis, even after controlling for a variety of traditional asset quality proxies. Interestingly, we also find that the BHCs' aggregate CRI did not deteriorate since the beginning of the subprime crisis. This suggests that the market was aware of their (average) exposure to high risk credit.credit risk;asset quality;banks;subprime crisis

Why is Price Discovery in Credit Default Swap Markets News-Specific?

Abstract: We analyse daily lead-lag patterns in US equity and credit default swap (CDS) returns. We first document that equity returns robustly lead CDS returns. However, we find that the CDSlag is due to common (and not firm-specific) news and arises predominantly in response to positive (instead of negative) equity market news. We provide an explanation for this newsspecific price discovery based on dealers in the CDS market exploiting their informational advantage vis-à-vis institutional investors with hedging demands. In support of this explanation we find that the CDS-lag and its newsspecificity are related to various firm-level proxies for hedging demand in the cross-section as well measures for economy-wide informational asymmetries over time.price discovery;CDS;hedging demand;informational asymmetries

The Inefficiency of the Stock Market Equilibrium under Moral Hazard

In this paper we study the constrained efficiency of a stock market equilibrium under moral hazard.We extend a standard general equilbrium framework (Magill and Quinzii (1999) and (2002)) to allow for a more general initial ownership distribution.We show that the market allocation is constrained efficient only if in each firm the entrepreneur who generates payoffs through unobservable effort has full initial property rights to his firm.This result holds even if the market can anticipate correctly the optimal effort choice of each entrepreneur from their observable financing decisions.stock markets;moral hazard;general equilibrium;efficiency;allocation

Credit Derivatives and Loan Pricing

This paper examines the relationship between the new markets for credit default swaps (CDS) and the pricing of syndicated loans to U.S. corporates. We find that changes in CDS spreads have a significantly positive coefficient and explain about 25% of subsequent monthly changes in aggregate loan spreads during 2000-2005. Moreover, when compared to traditional loan pricing factors, they turn out to be the dominant determinant of loan spreads. In particular, they explain loan rates much better than same rated bonds. This suggests that, even though CDS and bond markets may equally price market credit risk, a substantial part of CDS prices additionally contains loan-specific information. We also find that, over time, new information from CDS markets is incorporated into loans faster, but information from other markets is not. We argue that this indicates that the markets for CDS influence banks’ loan pricing behavior and thus have an impact on actual financing decisions in the economy.Syndicated Lending;Loan Rates;Credit Derivatives;Credit Markets;Credit Spreads

The Broadening of Activities in the Financial System:Implications for Financial Stability and Regulation

Conglomeration and consolidation in the financial system broaden the activities financial institutions are undertaking and cause them to become more homogenous.Although resulting diversification gains make each institution appear less risky, we argue that financial stability may not improve as total risk in the financial system remains the same.Stability may even fall as institution' incentives for providing liquidity and limiting their risk taking worsen.Optimal regulation may thus not provide a relief for diversification.However, we also identify important benefits of a broadening of activities.By reducing the differences among institutions, it lowers the need for inter-institutional risk sharing.This mitigates the impact of any imperfections such risk sharing may be subject to.The reduced importance of such risk sharing, moreover, lowers externalities across institutions.As a result, institutions' incentives are improved and there is less need for regulating them

Diversification at Financial Institutions and Systemic Crises

We show that the diversification of risks at financial institutions has unwelcome effects by increasing the likelihood of systems crises.As a result, complete diversification is not warranted adn the optimal degree of diversification is arbitrarily low.We also identify externalities that cause financial institutions to diversify beyond diversification may thus have reduced welfare.