Knowledge that Transforms

We estimate the shadow cost of capital requirements using data on a costly loophole that allowed banks to relax these constraints. This loophole—liquidity guarantees to assetbacked commercial paper conduits—was exploited by the largest banks before the crisis of 2008. We show theoretically that a bank's use of the loophole reveals its private compliance cost, which takes into account both the costs of issuing equity and the effectiveness of capital regulation. We find that increasing capital requirements would impose a modest cost—220 million a year for all participating banks combined per one-percentage-point increase, and 14 million on average.

We study the causal effect of bank credit rating downgrades on the supply of bank lending. The identification strategy exploits the asymmetric impact of sovereign downgrades on the ratings of banks at the sovereign bound relative to banks that are not at the bound as a result of rating agencies' sovereign ceiling policies. This asymmetric effect leads to greater reductions in ratings-sensitive funding and lending of banks at the bound relative to other banks. Results for foreign borrowers and within lender-borrower relationships confirm that credit demand does not explain our findings.

The percentage of S&P 500 firms using multiyear accounting-based performance (MAP) incentives for CEOs increased from 16.5% in 1996 to 43.3% in 2008. The use and design of MAP incentives depend on the signal quality of accounting versus stock performance, shareholder horizons, strategic imperatives, and board independence. After the technology bubble, option expensing, and the publicity of option backdating, firms increasingly use stock-based MAP plans to replace options, resulting in changes in pay structure, but not in pay level. While firms respond to the evolving contracting environment, they consider firm characteristics and shareholder preferences and do not blindly follow the trend.

We track the employment history of over 9,000 managers to study the effects of professional experiences on corporate policies. Our identification strategy exploits exogenous CEO turnovers and employment in other firms and in non-CEO roles. Firms run by CEOs who experienced distress have less debt, save more cash, and invest less than other firms, with stronger effects in poorly governed firms. Experience has a stronger influence when it is more recent or occurs during salient periods in a manager's career. We find similar effects for CFOs. The results suggest that policies vary with managers' experiences and throughout managers' careers.