Knowledge that Transforms

We study the transmission channels from central banks’ quantitative easing programs via the banking sector when central banks start purchasing corporate bonds. We find evidence consistent with a “capital structure channel” of monetary policy. The announcement of central bank purchases reduces the bond yields of firms whose bonds are eligible for central bank purchases. These firms substitute bank term loans with bond debt, thereby relaxing banks’ lending constraints: banks with low tier-1 ratios and high nonperforming loans increase lending to private (and profitable) firms, which experience a growth in investment. The credit reallocation increases banks’ risk-taking in corporate credit.

We empirically show the dynamics of information production and information sensitivity of bank debt around the Great Recession. As more precise information is produced at the onset of the crisis, bank debt becomes informationally sensitive, along two separate dimensions. First, precise information amplifies the effect of market expectations on default risk; second, for banks that are already expected to perform poorly, more precise information further increases default risk. Both effects are muted in good times. Overall, our findings are consistent with information-based models of financial crises.

This study investigates how firms are affected by the separation of commercial and investment banking, using unique data from the dissolution of Japan’s Daiwa Securities SMBC, a joint venture investment bank. This event prevented its client firms from receiving a combination of lending and underwriting services. After the dissolution, these firms experienced a sharper decline in market value, more frequent switching of seasoned equity offering (SEO) underwriters, and the disappearance of lower SEO discounts when they had close lending relationships with Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, the ex-parent commercial bank. Thus, separating the two banking businesses would impose costs on firms.

This study examines the effect of bank loan monitoring on public bond contract design. We find that bond yield spreads are lower and that bond issuance amounts are larger when a borrower has recently obtained a private loan, consistent with bond issuers benefiting from the screening and ongoing monitoring of banks. We find that these bonds include more covenants than bonds issued without the cross-monitoring of banks, consistent with bondholders wanting to protect themselves from private lenders. This effect is larger for firms with high information asymmetry and larger potential conflicts between different lender types. Our results are robust to a battery of sensitivity tests. Overall, our empirical results suggest that borrowers that precede their public bond issuances with private loan agreements receive more favorable bond terms. Meanwhile, these benefits are associated with the cost of increased monitoring by public bonds.

Using a sample of 3004 US firm-years with foreign sales, we provide the first evidence that a firm's employee treatment score is an important determinant of its fraction of foreign sales hedged with currency-based derivatives. The positive relation between employee treatment rating and currency hedging activity is driven by firms operating in competitive industries, businesses with relatively unique products or assets, and companies adopting aggressive business strategies. These results suggest that firms with foreign sales tend to factor employee benefits in their currency hedging policies when their acquisition, development, and retention of human capital are especially costly or highly valued.

The ratio of gold to platinum prices (GP) reveals persistent variation in risk and proxies for an important economic state variable. GP predicts future stock returns in the time series, explains stock return variation in the cross-section, and is significantly correlated with option-implied tail risk measures. Contrary to conventional wisdom, gold prices fall in recessions, albeit by less than platinum prices. A model featuring recursive preferences, time-varying tail risk, and preference shocks for gold and platinum can account for asset pricing dynamics of equity, gold, and platinum markets, rationalize the return predictability, and explain why gold prices fall in bad times.

A long-term investor who ignores variation in volatility gives up the equivalent of 2.4% of wealth per year. This result holds for a wide range of parameters that are consistent with US stock market data, and it is robust to estimation uncertainty. We propose and test a new channel, the volatility composition channel, for how investment horizon interacts with volatility timing. Investors respond substantially less to volatility variation if the amount of mean reversion in returns disproportionally increases with volatility and also if mean reversion happens quickly. We find that these conditions are unlikely to hold in the data.

We perform transaction-level analyses of entrusted loans, one of the largest components of shadow banking in China. Entrusted loans involve firms with privileged access to cheap capital channeling funds to less privileged firms, and the increase when credit is tight. Nonaffiliated loans have much higher interest rates than both affiliated loans and official bank loans, and they largely flow into real estate. The pricing of entrusted loans, especially of nonaffiliated loans, incorporates fundamental and informational risks. Stock market reactions suggest that both affiliated and nonaffiliated loans are fairly compensated investments.

We provide new evidence on the value of independent directors by exploiting exogenous events that seriously distract independent directors. Approximately 20% of independent directors are significantly distracted in a typical year. They attend fewer meetings, trade less frequently in the firm's stock, and resign from the board more frequently, indicating declining firm-specific knowledge and a reduced board commitment. Firms with more preoccupied independent directors have declining firm valuation and operating performance and exhibit weaker merger and acquisition (M&A) profitability and accounting quality. These effects are stronger when distracted independent directors play key board monitoring roles and when firms require greater director attention.