Knowledge that Transforms

Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) is very popular in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) applications as it provides a decentralized governance solution through blockchain. We analyze the governance characteristics in the Maker protocol, its stablecoin DAI and its governance token Maker (MKR). To achieve that, we establish several measurements of centralized governance. Our empirical analysis investigates the effect of centralized governance over a series of factors related to MKR and DAI, such as financial, network and Twitter sentiment indicators. Our results show that governance centralization influences the Maker protocol and that the distribution of voting power matters. The main implication of this study is that centralized governance in MakerDAO very much exists, while DeFi investors face a trade-off between decentralization and performance of a DeFi protocol. This further contributes to the contemporary debate over whether DeFi can be truly decentralized.

The breakdown of the interbank market was a critical moment in the unfolding of the global financial crisis of 2007–2008. We argue that the adequate pricing of risks is critical for the functioning of a market of such vital importance as the interbank market. We use a unique panel data set that allows us to quantify counterparty risk and different types of systemic risks associated with interbank exposures. We use a simultaneous equation model for interbank lending and deposit rates to study whether counterparty risk and systemic risk are adequately priced. As expected, we find that riskier banks on average pay a higher deposit rate. However, on average, banks grant a discount in their lending rates to riskier banks. For systemic risk, we also find mixed results. The positive effect on the deposit rate declines, but the negative effect on the lending rate remains. We argue that the mixed results regarding the pricing of systemic risk might ex-post justify parts of the Basel III reform package that forces systemically important banks to hold higher capital buffers.

This empirical study investigates whether a strong bank culture may help strengthen, weaken, or have no effect on the relationship between regulatory capital and liquidity creation. Using a machine learning approach and banks’ 10-K reports, we first measure the corporate culture of selected bank holding companies (BHCs) in the United State (U.S.) over the period between 1995 and 2019. We find that bank culture does affect the link between regulatory capital and liquidity creation. In particular, while we find that regulatory capital has a negative impact on bank liquidity creation, a strong culture in a bank weakens this negative association. We also find that an increase in asset-side liquidity creation is the main channel through which bank culture exerts its moderating role. Finally, our results are largely driven by smaller banks, banks with a more traditional funding structure and more profitable banks. The results of this study suggest that regulators should consider bank culture as being a crucial element in the monitoring approach when designing bank regulation and supervision.

This paper shows that higher information technology (IT) adoption by banks was associated to a larger increase in corporate lending in the months following the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy. Examining banks with heterogeneous degrees of IT adoption, we investigate the dynamics of credit and its allocation across firms using a new database with detailed information on banks’ IT expenditures and use of innovative technologies matched with bank-firm level data on credit growth before and during the pandemic. Using a diff-in-diff approach, we find that banks with a higher share of IT spending increased their credit more than others during the pandemic. The increase was concentrated in term loans extended to smaller and financially sounder companies; the effect was stronger in the initial phase of tighter restrictions to firm activity and individual mobility, and more significant for undertakings active in the sectors most affected by the shock. We provide evidence that these results are driven by bank’s ability to offer credit entirely online and bank’s use of artificial intelligence for credit risk assessment. Physical proximity between borrowers and lenders was important for credit provision during the pandemic, but only when combined with high level of IT adoption.

I uncover heterogeneous effects of macroprudential policy on GDP growth distribution by bringing together the literature on the impact of macroprudential policy and recent developments on the use of quantile regressions. I identify important benefits of macroprudential policy on the left-tail of the GDP growth distribution which contrast with the negative effects found in previous studies using conditional mean models. These benefits may offset the deterioration on growth-at-risk produced by the build-up of cyclical vulnerabilities and the materialization of financial crises. I also find that the impact of macroprudential policy is dependent on the position in the financial cycle, the type of instrument, and the time elapsed since its implementation. In particular, tightening capital measures during expansions may take up to two years to show evidence of benefits on growth-at-risk, while the positive impact of borrower-based measures is rapidly observed. Conversely, in downturns the benefits of loosening capital measures are more immediate, while those of borrower-based measures are limited. This suggests the importance of timing in macroprudential policy. Overall, this study provides a useful framework to assess the impact of macroprudential policy in terms of GDP growth and to identify the term-structure of specific instruments.

This article examines how competition between banks and a digital PSP impacts the lending rate and the consumers’ use of payment instruments. The digital PSP offers a digital wallet and payment services, but does not offer credit. In contrast, banks invest their deposits in lending activities, which implies that they may incur some costs of adjusting their liquidity needs when consumers make payments. I show that the adoption of the digital wallet for payments may sometimes increase the volume of payments by bank deposit transfers and the lending rate. This results from banks’ trade-off between lowering their costs of liquidity when consumers pay from their digital wallet and reducing the revenues they receive from bank transfer fees.

Digitalization is a crucial strategy for firms to gain a competitive advantage. This study utilizes data from Chinese listed firms from 2011 to 2020 to examine how digitalization affects firms' stock price informativeness. Empirical results demonstrate that digitalization reduces stock price synchronicity and promotes firms' stock price informativeness. Moreover, digitalization improves stock price informativeness by enhancing investment efficiency and firm value, reducing information asymmetry, and alleviating agency costs. These findings suggest that effective digital strategies and capabilities constitute an important yet underappreciated resource that enables firms to generate value-relevant information and improve the information environment in emerging capital markets. Our study contributes new evidence on the financial market implications of digital transformation from a resource-based view perspective.

This study establishes a significant positive relation between high quality auditors and long-run post-IPO equity performance. IPOs associated with high-ranked auditors benefit from superior information quality irrespective of underwriter rank, manifesting in significantly better post-IPO equity performance. The auditor certification effect is robust and persists longer than the underwriter certification effect. IPOs, regardless of the underwriter rank, benefit significantly from the auditor reputation effect. Further, the auditor certification effect is more pronounced: (a) when underwriter certification is weak (‘substitution effect’), and (b) in the presence of greater information asymmetry. VC backed IPOs perform significantly better; however, VC reputation has no effect, after controlling for auditor rank and underwriter certification. Our conclusions are reinforced by a battery of robustness checks, including the use of alternative methodologies to address endogeneity, audit quality proxies, performance metrics, model specifications, and validity tests.