Sovereign debt and the cost of migration: India 1990–1992

In this paper we look at the Indian financial crisis of 1990–1992 that included three credit rating downgrades of two notches each in the short space of 9 months. We measure to what extent India’s financial difficulties were the result of conditions prevailing on the international capital markets at the time, reflected in changes in the risk-free international term structure of interest rates, and to what extent they were linked to credit risk specific to the country’s political environment and its economic and financial management as reflected in the three ranking migrations. (In the credit risk literature, migrations refer to changes in credit rating in the sense that a country “migrates” from a rating of A2, for example, to a rating of Baa3.) We find that most of the changes in Indian Eurobond prices over the period were due to conditions on the international capital markets. Migration effects were surprisingly small. Interestingly, our results show that there are no maturity, currency or bond specific effects of migration on percentage changes in the bond prices. However, when we measure the cost of migration in terms of basis points on the yield to maturity, we find that migration is relatively more costly for shorter maturities. Averaging over all bonds, the first migration added about 106 basis points to the bonds’ yields to maturity while the third migration added about 42. The second migration was very small and not statistically significant, indicating that it was anticipated by the markets and priced in the first downgrade

Water Management in France: Delegation and Irreversibility

The problem that we address in this paper stems from the trend to delegation in the water management field. It refers to the municipality’s negotiating disadvantage in the face of cartelized water management firms that makes delegation, once undertaken, virtually irreversible. We show why the characteristics of the delegation auction render is useless as a tool for collective welfare maximization. We also show that the remaining tool for achieving collective welfare maximization, i.e. the municipality’s right to revoke delegation and return to direct management, is also ineffective due to a lack of credibility that is essentially financial in nature. Thus, if the credibility of revocation could be restored, the municipality’s bargaining power could also be restored. Using standard methods of stochastic calculus, we model the municipality’s right of revocation as a call option held by the municipality. We show that the key variable for the value of this option, and thus for the municipality’s position, is the exercise price, which is partly determined by objective economic criteria and partly by legal and institutional conventions. We show that community welfare maximisation occurs at the point where the exercise price is determined exclusively by objective economic criteria. Since the delegated firm as a simple agent has the right to abrogate the contract if delegation becomes unprofitable, we then model this right as a put option held by the firm. Its value also depends to a large extent on the exercise price, which is partly determined by objective economic criteria and partly by legal and institutional conventions. Combining the exercise points of the two options enables us to determine the price-profit interval over which delegation will be acceptable to both parties. We conclude that the optimal interval will be the one where the exercise prices are determined entirely by objective economic criteria.Water management; Delegation; Insurance mechanisms; Technological Changes; Real Options

Foreign currency derivative use and shareholder value

This paper investigates the effect of foreign currency (FC) derivative use on shareholder value. Exposures are broken down by currency, by whether the currency is appreciating or depreciating and by whether exposures are symmetric or asymmetric. We find that derivatives are effective in reducing overall FC exposure but there is no evidence of value creation through the application of a program that identifies and targets only loss causing exposures. We also find that FC derivative use has no significant effect on firm value in the overall sample and when the sample is broken down by eThis paper investigates the effect of foreign currency (FC) derivative use on shareholder value. Exposures are broken down by currency, by whether the currency is appreciating or depreciating and by whether exposures are symmetric or asymmetric. We find that derivatives are effective in reducing overall FC exposure but there is no evidence of value creation through the application of a program that identifies and targets only loss causing exposures. We also find that FC derivative use has no significant effect on firm value in the overall sample and when the sample is broken down by exposure type and derivative product

The role of regulatory credibility in effective bank regulation

This paper develops a model of regulated Brownian motion with an endogenous profit term to analyze the role of regulatory credibility on the stability and productivity of the banking system. We show that when regulatory intervention is perfect and costless, the volatility of the system can be substantially reduced with no loss of productivity. In fact, perfect credibility can actually reduce the volatility of intrinsically risky banking systems below the volatility of intrinsically less risky systems as banks anticipate intervention and mitigate their investment behaviour accordingly. However, when the credibility of the regime is weakened because of increased uncertainty stemming from regulation, such as random costs or imperfect timing of regulatory intervention, both the stability and productivity of the financial system are impaired. Importantly, we find that in the presence of regulatory costs and imperfect credibility, there is no universal optimal intervention policy rule. The optimal regulatory system depends on the regulator’s level of absolute risk aversion

Convexity, magnification, and translation: the effect of managerial option-based compensation on corporate cash holdings

Using the distinctions among the convexity, magnification, and translation effects, we identify the pertinent parameters and examine empirically the relation between cash holdings and option-based managerial compensation. We show that changes in delta reduce the effects of magnification and convexity on managerial risk aversion. We also provide evidence that there is a negative relation between the option-based incentives delta and vega and cash holdings. These results are robust when incentives are extended to include all executive board members and when the sample is broken down according to different risk characteristics

Macroeconomic effects on emerging-markets sovereign credit spreads

This paper investigates the explanatory and forecasting power of macroeconomic fundamentals on emerging market sovereign credit spreads. We pay special attention to a new set of macroeconomic factors related to market values that reflect investor expectations concerning future economic performance. The model we propose captures a significant part of the empirical variation in spreads. Importantly, it also includes a powerful forecasting component that extends up to 12 months outside the sample period. The forward-looking variables that we construct are significant and complement and enhance the explanatory content of the conventional variables found in the extant literature

Political connections and corporate performance: evidence from Pakistan

This study seeks to understand how political connections affect firm performance. Using a hand‐collected dataset of Pakistani firms from 2008–2014, our firm fixed effects and Heckman two‐stage regression results show that connected firms outperform those without political ties. Moreover, we show channels through which political benefits are realized in terms of greater access to debt, lower financing costs and lower tax rates. These benefits are found to be particularly large when firms are connected to politicians who held political positions most recently and firms connected through their owners. Finally, we do not find evidence for differences in political favours across regulated and unregulated industrie

A measure of total firm performance: new insights for the corporate objective

Because heterogenous and unknown shareholder utility functions make it difficult to define a corporate objective common to all shareholders based on utility, the traditional theory of the firm concentrates on wealth maximization as the main measure of performance. Using the concept of ranked marginal utility, we develop a multi-dimensional measure of firm performance (TPM) that reflects the preferences of all risk averse shareholders towards all aspects of risk. We verify empirically that this is, in fact, the case for the first four moments of a large sample of US stocks over the period 2002–2010. Then, using the manager/shareholder agency conflict as the analytical framework, we show that TPM is a reliable, multi-dimensional performance measure and that one dimensional performance measures, such as mean returns, volatility or Tobin’s Q can lead to erroneous inference. By including shareholder preferences towards risk in the measure of firm performance as the corporate objective, we bring together the corporate finance literature and the literature on portfolio investment theory and practice