In this paper we examine whether regulation can be used to substitute for internal monitoring mechanisms (percentage of outside directors, officer and director common stock ownership, and CEO/Chair duality) to control for agency conflicts in a firm. We find that, in general, the percentage of outside directors is negatively related to insider stock ownership, but is not affected by CEO/Chair duality. CEO/Chair duality is, however, less likely when insider stock ownership increases. We find these internal monitoring mechanisms to be significantly less related with regulated firms (banks and utilities). We conclude that to the extent that regulations reduce the impact of managerial decisions on shareholder wealth, effective internal monitoring of managers becomes less important in controlling agency conflicts

This paper contrasts the conventional interpretation of prudential capital regulation as a system of ex ante enforcement (`hard wired') with an alternative interpretation as a system of sanctions for ex post violation (`incentive based'). Under the incentive based interpretation risk-weightings affect portfolio choice only when assets are illiquid. Under both interpretations, the medium term impact on portfolio allocation depends upon the relative costs of debt and equity finance. Viewing enforcement as incentive based suggests there is relatively less need to match risk weightings accurately to portfolio risk

Defects in the corporate governance of government-owned enterprises tempt opportunistic officials to breach duties of public stewardship. Corporate-governance theory suggests that incentive-based deferred compensation could intensify the force that common-law duties actually exert on regulatory managers. In principle, a forfeitable fund of deferred compensation could be combined with provisions for measuring, verifying, and rewarding multiperiod performance to make top regulators accountable for maximizing the long-run net social benefits their enterprise produces. Because government deposit-insurance enterprises are purveyors of credit enhancements for which private substitute and reinsurance markets exist, their performance could be measured accurately enough to make employment contracts for deposit-insurance CEOs a promising place to experiment with this kind of accountability reform

Between 1992 and 1997, Indian firms were the most frequent issuers of equity-backed Global Depositary Receipts (GDRs) governed by the SEC's Rule 144A and Regulation S. They also accounted for the highest dollar volume. Home-market stock price responses to these issues are consistent with the hypotheses that GDRs enable firms to resolve two forms of information asymmetry: (1) an asymmetry between issuing firms and international investors that results from market segmentation and (2) an asymmetry between Indian firms and home-market investors that resembles asymmetries that help explain abnormal returns in equity private placements by US firms. Our evidence suggests that GDR issuance can increase investors' recognition of underlying shares even if there are no liquidity enhancements and even if disclosure requirements are not as demanding as those imposed on foreign firms whose depositary receipts trade in public US markets

Under the new Capital Accord, banks choose between two different types of risk management systems, the standard or the internal rating based approach. The paper considers how a bank's preference for a risk management system is affected by the presence of supervision by bank regulators. The model uses a principal–agent setting between a bank's owner and its risk management. The main conclusion is that previously unregulated institutions can be expected to switch to the lower quality standard approach subsequent to becoming regulated, i.e., the presence of regulation may induce a bank to decrease the quality of its risk management system

Under the incomplete contract framework, we consider an optimal regulatory policy for motivating bank equity owners and bank managers to restructure the bad loans of their banks in the presence of managerial compensation contracts with stock options. The regulatory policy studied in this paper is mainly concerned with the design of repayment schedules in the scheme of injection of cash funds into insolvent banks by the regulator. We show that the regulator cannot necessarily attain the social optimal allocation by injecting cash funds into insolvent banks through the purchase of subordinated bonds with the risk-free interest rate. However, even in that case, we also suggest that, if the regulator injects cash funds into active restructuring banks through the purchase of subordinated bonds or preferred stocks with less stringent repayment conditions and nationalizes passive restructuring banks, the regulator can attain the social optimal allocation by performing such a non-linear injection scheme under certain conditions

We use a sample of failed thrift auctions to examine if regulators learn from early transactions and improve their performance in later transactions. Our findings suggest that experience at failure resolution does not by itself lead to improved regulatory performance. Evidence of regulatory learning is restricted to dealings with repeat acquirers; in cases where an acquiring firm makes abnormal gains, regulators are able to restructure the auction process and eliminate such gains in subsequent acquisitions made by the same acquirers

This paper explores the relation between capital and risk in the life insurance industry in the period after the adoption of life risk-based capital (RBC) regulation. To examine this issue, we use a simultaneous-equation partial-adjustment model. Three equations express the interrelations among capital and two measures of risk: product risk and asset risk. The asset-risk measure used in this paper reflects credit or solvency risk as in RBC. Product risk assessment for life insurance products is rationalized by transaction-cost economics – contractual uncertainty. A significant finding is that for life insurers the relation between capital and asset risk is positive. This agrees with prior studies for the property/casualty insurance industry and some banking studies. But the relation between capital and product risk is negative. This is consistent with the hypothesized impact of guarantee funds in other studies. The contrast between the positive relation of capital to asset risk and the negative relation of capital to product risk underscores the importance of distinguishing these two components of risk

One of the most important policy issues for financial authorities is to decide at what level average capital charges should be set. The decision may alternatively be expressed as the choice of an appropriate survival probability for representative banks over a horizon such as a year, often termed a “solvency standard”. This article sheds light on the solvency standards implied by current and possible future G10 bank regulation and on the “economic solvency standard” that banks choose themselves by their own capital setting decisions. In particular, we employ a credit risk model to show that the survival probability implied by the 1988 Basel Accord is between 99.0% and 99.9%. We then demonstrate that if a new Basel Accord were calibrated to such a standard, it would not represent a binding constraint on banks' current operations since most banks employ a solvency standard higher than 99.9%. To show this, we employ a statistical analysis of bank ratings adjusted for the impact of official or other support as well as credit risk model calculations. Lastly, we advance a possible explanation for the conservative capital choices made by banks by showing that swap volumes are highly correlated with credit quality for given bank size. This suggests that banks' access to important credit markets like the swaps markets may provide a significant discipline in the choice of solvency standard