Knowledge that Transforms

We develop a model of liquidity shortages that incorporates a general equilibrium feature of liquidity: when banks hold more liquidity, other agents in the economy hold less of it and will supply less in times of crisis. We show that the private holdings of liquidity at banks are inefficient, with the direction of the bias being determined by the characteristics of the suppliers of liquidity to banks. Minimum liquidity requirements for banks may reduce welfare; in such cases interest rate policies that stimulate the ex-post supply of liquidity can restore efficiency. Overall, our results show that optimal liquidity policies critically depend on a financial institution’s (marginal) source of liquidity and will hence differ across institutions of different types.

We develop a conceptual framework that links the compensation incentives of bank executives to the risk and return externalities generated by banks but borne by society. Using 1994 to 2016 data from large U.S. commercial banks, we find that CEO pay-performance incentives reduce both negative systemic risk externalities and positive liquidity creation externalities, while pay-risk incentives increase both externalities. Our findings offer support for Federal Reserve guidelines that encourage greater reliance on long-term equity-based compensation, and they infer a regulatory tradeoff: Bank executive pay rules aimed at reducing systemic risk will result in reduced system-wide liquidity creation as well.

We conduct an extensive study of underpricing in the euro area bond market and find strong evidence of underpricing. In cross-sectional regressions we find patterns that are consistent with bookbuilding-based theories of underpricing and inconsistent with liquidity-based explanations. The underpricing has increased considerably during the financial crisis and has remained at an elevated level since. We also show that secondary market liquidity in the euro area bond market is significantly lower in the post-crisis period than pre-crisis. These results are consistent with recent US evidence and may represent unintended side effects of new regulation enacted in the wake of the financial crisis, such as Basel III and the Volcker Rule. Furthermore, our evidence suggests that the ECB’s corporate sector purchase programs has led to a decrease in underpricing.

Private investments in public equities (PIPEs) are an important source of finance for public corporations. PIPE investor returns decline with holding periods, while time to exit depends on the issue's registration status and underlying liquidity. We estimate PIPE investor returns adjusting for these factors. Our analysis, which is the first to estimate returns to investors rather than issuers, indicates that the average PIPE investor holds the stock for 384 days and earns an abnormal return of 19.7%. More constrained firms tend to issue PIPEs to hedge funds and private equity funds in offerings that have higher expected returns and higher volatility. PIPE investors’ abnormal returns appear to reflect compensation for providing capital to financially constrained firms.

As a result of the Basel II reforms, capital requirements on UK mortgages fell substantially in coincidence with the financial crisis. We exploit a novel, loan-level dataset on within-lender variation in risk-weighted capital requirements and a triple-difference identification strategy to estimate the pass through of capital requirements to mortgage rates. We find that a 1pp lower risk-weighted capital requirement leads to a reduction in rates by 10–16bp on average, with stronger effects for less-capitalized lenders. The competitive advantage induced by multi-tier regulation also affects the composition of banks mortgage portfolios, with larger lenders specializing in lower risk loans. Finally, our results support the use of countercyclical capital requirements to sustain lending in a crisis.

We examine how the threat of disclosure (stigma) changes the quality of banks that approach emergency lending facilities. We study a financial crisis where two confidential facilities were available to banks. Unexpectedly, a partial list of bank names from one facility was published, suddenly stigmatizing that facility. We find that the composition of banks that approached each facility changed, where the newly stigmatized facility attracted weaker banks that maintained smaller liquidity buffers, while the alternative confidential facility attracted both weaker and stronger banks. Our results shed light on how stigma prevents regulators from reaching many banks to inject critical liquidity into the banking sector during a crisis.

Using regulatory data on CDS holdings and corporate bond transactions, I provide evidence for a liquidity spillover effect from CDS to bond markets. Bond trading volumes are 70% larger for investors with CDS positions written on the debt issuer. Moreover, higher CDS trading activity substantially improves the liquidity of the underlying bonds, particularly around rating downgrades. Additional analyses reveal that the spillover effect is partly driven by naked CDS positions, highlighting one of the adverse consequences of naked CDS bans for bond markets. The results suggest that the presence of an accessible CDS market enhances the liquidity of the underlying bond market.

We examine the long-lasting effects of the 2007 real estate price collapse on small business credit supply. Banks affected by the decline in real estate prices systematically contracted their credit to small firms. At the same time, regional and local banks, many of which were unaffected by the initial shock, increased small business lending to nearby borrowers and opportunistically expanded their branch networks, making gains in market share that persisted for the following decade. Although the net effect of the contraction in credit was negative, we show that opportunistic expansion tied to permanent market changes is an important offsetting force that dampened the negative effect on small firms during the GFC and its aftermath.

Larger bonds offer greater liquidity, which should reduce their yields. A simple way for firms to reduce financing costs is to sell bonds with large face values. We find that mega-bonds are more liquid than smaller bonds. However, offering yield spreads on mega-bonds are not lower and are higher than spreads of bonds issued by similar companies. The discount applied to large new issues is consistent with price pressure effects that are also present in the secondary market prices of the issuing firm's existing bonds. Our results suggest a hidden cost to issuing very liquid bonds.

We find that chief executive officers and chief financial officers exert significant individual effects on bank risk. Manager transitions, including transitions generated by plausibly exogenous manager departures, lead to abnormally large changes in bank risk. We demonstrate that the effects of managers on bank risk are sizable and manager-specific. The effects are also partly anticipated by the board because they are reflected in managers’ pay. However, wide-ranging personal attributes, including biographical, experience, and compensation data, only explain a small share of managers’ impact on bank risk. This implies that attempts to rein in bank risk-taking by targeting manager characteristics will be challenging for investors and regulators.