Knowledge that Transforms

We study the relationship between the behavior of a CEO’s ancestors and firm performance. To do so, we collect detailed information on emigrants from Italian municipalities during the Age of Mass Migration (1892–1924) from Ellis Island ships lists. We adopt an epidemiological approach complemented with an instrumental variables strategy and find that Italian firms managed by a CEO who belongs to a family with past emigration experience tend to perform better and to be more productive. In line with an inter-generational transmission of attitudes hypothesis, we show a positive relationship between the emigration experience of a CEO’s ancestors and alternative measures of corporate risk-taking. In addition, we find a positive relationship between having an ancestor who emigrated during the Age of Mass Migration and FDI to the United States. We also provide evidence that these CEOs have better managerial practices.

We analyze the relationship between cross-listing and innovation using a sample of firms from 40 countries spanning 1980–2016. We measure innovation through both the number of patents granted and citations received. Our results reveal a positive association between cross-listing and innovation, with this effect being more pronounced for firms from countries with poor legal environments and less developed financial systems. Overall, our findings align with bonding theory, suggesting that managers of cross-listed firms seek to bind themselves by adhering to the high legal and regulatory standards demanded by U.S. markets.

We study the relationship between bank failure and dedicated institutional ownership (hereafter IO) employing a logit model. We focus on dedicated institutional investors (hereafter IIs) as defined by Bushee (2001) and Bushee and NOE (2000) because they are stable shareholders and have large investments in the investee companies. Four results are obtained. First, based on the instrumental variable approach, a greater proportion of dedicated IO is associated with reduced probability of bank failure. This result is robust to the propensity score matching technique. The rationale is that dedicated IIs collect information on the investee banks by holding stable and concentrated positions in these banks, monitor them, and reduce their ownership in cases of trouble earlier than other IIs do. This effect has a larger magnitude in banks with greater organizational complexity and larger size. Second, after controlling for the sell herding effect of other IIs, we find that the dedicated IO proportion still has a negative and significant coefficient, indicating that dedicated IIs trade on fundamental information rather than herding with other IIs. Third, three potential channels of collecting information, (i) placing representatives on the board as directors, (ii) greater capacity in analyzing financial statements through cross-ownership in other banks, and (iii) higher monitoring incentive due to more stable and concentrated ownership, are investigated. We find evidence in favor of the effect of cross-ownership in the banking industry, ownership stability and concentration. Fourth, the ownership of dedicated IIs is significantly larger in banks acquired by other banks than those filing for Chapter 7 liquidation, ascribing a constructive role for dedicated IIs.

This paper lays out a quantitative macroeconomic model with rational risk-adjusted asset bubbles and banks. The model features an imperfect financial market structure and allows bubble assets within banks. We shed light on the channels by which a sudden burst of asset bubbles leads to a recession through the banking system and evaluate “leaning against the wind” monetary policy associated with bubble volatility and welfare. Our main findings call for monetary policy rules to preemptively stabilize intermediate asset prices rather than the bubbles.

We evaluate the impact of contagion and common exposures on banks’ capital using a structural regression framework derived from the balance sheet identity and inspired by the structural VAR literature. Contagion arises through bilateral exposures, fire sales, rollover risk, and market-based sentiment, while common exposures reflect overlapping portfolio holdings. We estimate the model using granular regulatory balance sheet and interbank exposure data for the Canadian banking sector. Our results yield three key insights. First, contagion driven by bilateral contractual exposures remains relatively stable over time until the onset of quantitative easing. In contrast, non-contractual contagion channels are less stable and move with market conditions. Second, we observe an increase in common exposure risk along with a decrease in contagion risk, following unprecedented fiscal and monetary policy measures in the COVID-19 pandemic. Third, we demonstrate how our framework complements traditional bank stress-testing approaches that focus on individual institutions by analysing second-round effects. In a policy application, we simulate targeted bailouts and show that their effectiveness in stabilizing the system is related to the interconnectedness of the rescued institution.

Using the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) as a laboratory, this paper examines the impacts of bank bailouts on bank-dependent clients. We find that large TARP recipient banks reduce credit supply to dependent borrowers in the post-TARP period. A large fraction of credit supply reduction is due to regulatory uncertainty on account of an increased likelihood of fines. Liquidity hoarding by TARP banks also drives part of the reduction in credit supply. Relationship borrowers experience a valuation loss around the announcements of their main banks’ TARP approvals consistent with a credit supply reduction.

We develop a stress-testing network model calibrated to the largest banks and investment funds in over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives markets. We examine the impact of the mandatory collateralisation of bilateral OTC derivatives on liquidity, counterparty, and systemic risks, as well as the impact of market frictions on participants’ ability to withstand liquidity shocks. The collateralisation of bilateral trades reduces counterparty and systemic risks but increases the prominence of liquidity-driven defaults and the potential for the central counterparty to transmit losses. Frictions such as fire sales, delayed payments, and no partial payments by defaulted counterparties greatly increase liquidity risk and systemic losses.

This paper exploits changes in financial subsidy programs to investigate their effect on female employment and firm performance. The identification strategy uses a quasi-experiment from a government policy change that eliminated financial support for exporting plants in the Chilean manufacturing industry. The difference-in-differences methodology shows that the policy change increased the share of total female employment by 3.3%, driven mainly by an increase of female workers in blue-collar occupations. In comparison, male labor experienced a drop of 4.4% in white-collar occupations in the treated plants relative to those in the control group. Plant total factor productivity (TFP) decreased due to the policy change, but both total gross output and sales rose approximately 7% on average. The paper explores two possible mechanisms to explain these findings: the technology adoption channel and changes in the gender composition of labor in the presence of a gender pay gap. The findings are consistent with the international trade and corporate finance literature on firm behavior under high market fixed and sunk costs.

To rationalize the increased use of capital flows regulations in recent times, we study the capacity of capital flow management measures (CFMs) to insulate an economy from external shocks. We examine the extent to which CFMs mitigate the effects of US monetary shocks and whether measuring this mitigation at the net or gross level of flows matters. Our analysis is carried out for a panel of emerging market economies and for different disaggregations of the flows. Our results indicate that the level of aggregation matters for evaluating the effects of CFMs, and that analyses with excessively aggregated flows or with only net measures may lead to biases in assessing the insulation features of the CFMs. Furthermore, CFMs have insulation properties that mitigate capital repatriations; however, these are mostly related to risky portfolio and banking flows.

This paper measures China's financial resilience from the perspective of external risk shocks and analyzes its influencing factors for forecasting. First, we introduce an innovative financial resilience model comprising three submodels: the dynamic factor model, the TVP-VAR model, and a resilience characteristic measurement model that captures resistance and recoverability through absorption intensity and absorption duration. The results show a clear inverse relationship between absorption intensity and absorption duration, with resilience fluctuations exhibiting distinct phase characteristics. Notably, intervals of low resilience often correspond to specific risk events. Second, we apply the Lasso-logistic model for recursive estimation and forecasting financial resilience, while comparing its performance to that of the Logistic regression model. The results indicate that the Lasso-logistic model achieves, on average, a 10 % higher forecasting accuracy than the Logistic model does. Among the most important features identified by the model are macroeconomic and public expectation variables. The analysis shows that the stability of economic fundamentals and market participants' confidence in the future play pivotal roles in strengthening financial resilience and ensuring the stability of the financial system.