Abstract We use an experimental approach to study the effect of market structure on the incidence of misreporting by credit rating agencies. In the game, agencies receive a signal regarding the type of asset held by the seller and issue a report. The sellers then present the asset, with the report if one is solicited, to the buyer for purchase. We find that competition among rating agencies significantly reduces the likelihood of misreporting.

Abstract This study examines the effect of auditors’ collaboration in joint audit engagements on knowledge transfer, auditor expertise, and audit outcomes. I employ a unique sample of Italian private companies whose financial statements are jointly audited by three individual auditors and use measures from the network literature to capture the intensity of interactions between these auditors. I find a positive association between several audit quality proxies and auditors’ collaboration in multiple joint engagements. My results suggest that auditors develop knowledge and contacts through collaboration which potentially leads to higher audit quality. Overall, my findings suggest that joint engagements facilitate knowledge transfer and increase auditor expertise.

We conduct an experiment to determine whether market structure affects financial intermediary behavior. The intermediaries (Agents) are perfectly informed regarding project types and can recommend that their clients (Principals) either proceed or discontinue a project. Intermediaries earn revenues only when they recommend proceeding with the transaction. Thus, our design captures some of the incentives faced by financial advisers in commercial banks, where compensation depends on sales performance, and also by money-managers, whose income depends on the size of their portfolios. We find that a monopolist intermediary protects the interest of clients better than when intermediaries compete. Our results are robust to a significant fee increase and provide additional evidence on the impact of market structure on individual incentives and equilibrium outcomes.

The U.S. bank stress tests aim to improve financial system stability. However, they may also affect bank credit supply. We formulate and test opposing hypotheses about these effects. Our findings are consistent with the Risk Management Hypothesis, under which stress-tested banks reduce credit supply−particularly to relatively risky borrowers−to decrease their credit risk. The findings do not support the Moral Hazard Hypothesis, in which these banks expand credit supply−particularly to relatively risky borrowers that pay high spreads−increasing their risk. Results are generally stronger for safer banks, banks that passed the stress tests, and the earlier stress tests.

We study a firm’s manager’s voluntary disclosure decisions and those disclosure decisions’ asset pricing, cost of capital, and information transfer effects in a model where investors trade multiple securities. We: develop new asset pricing formulas when the manager makes no disclosure that impose testable cross-equation restrictions on firms’ market values; develop a wide array of comparative statics; obtain surprising findings about nondisclosure’s effects on investors’ perceptions of uncertainty about firms’ future cash flows; develop simple, interpretable expressions for firms’ cost of capital; and show how no disclosure by one firm generates informational externalities on other firms.

The Dodd–Frank Act created differential regulatory requirements for banks above specified asset size thresholds. Event study results imply greater expected net regulatory costs for above-threshold banks. Consistent with hypotheses that near-below-threshold banks alter their behavior to attempt to avoid or delay the regulatory costs and/or to ensure growth that they do experience is highly beneficial, we find that near-below-threshold banks grow assets, risk-weighted assets, and total loans more slowly, and charge higher rates on commercial loans. The results suggest that the Dodd–Frank Act created costs that near-below-threshold banks attempt to avoid by altering their behaviors in economically important ways.

This paper presents a reduced form credit risk model to study CMBS pricing and CMBS market efficiency during and after the credit crisis with a comprehensive loan, bond and deal level data set. Using a model determined fair value, an automated trading strategy based on a newly determined risk ratio buys undervalued and sells overvalued CMBS. These strategies result in substantial trading profits between November 2007 and June 2015. Controlling for CMBS sector risk factors, we reject CMBS market efficiency over the entire sample period. When we split the sample into the Crisis and Recovery periods, we observe persistent abnormal returns over both subperiods, which is consistent with an inefficient CMBS market. Because the CMBS market appears to be inefficient, our results suggest that the approach presented in this paper may facilitate the increased financial stability of the CRE sector through the better pricing and risk management of CMBS.

ABSTRACT This paper uses data on detected misstatements—earnings restatements—and a dynamic model to estimate the extent of undetected misstatements that violate GAAP. The model features a CEO who can manipulate his firm's stock price by misstating earnings. I find the CEO's expected cost of misleading investors is low. The probability of detection over a five‐year horizon is 13.91%, and the average misstatement, if detected, results in an 8.53% loss in the CEO's retirement wealth. The low expected cost implies a high fraction of CEOs who misstate earnings at least once at 60%, with 2%–22% of CEOs starting to misstate earnings in each year 2003–2010, inflation in stock prices across CEOs who misstate earnings at 2.02%, and inflation in stock prices across all CEOs at 0.77%. Wealthier CEOs manipulate less, and the average misstatement is larger in smaller firms.

I review The End of Alchemy by Mervyn King, published by W. W. Norton and Company in 2016. I discuss King’s proposed regulatory reform, the “pawnbroker for all seasons” (PFAS), and I compare it to an alternative solution developed in my own work. I argue that unregulated trade in the financial markets will not, in general, lead to Pareto-optimal allocations. As a consequence, solutions like the PFAS that correct problems with existing institutions are likely to be circumvented by the development of new ones. (JEL D81, D82, E44, G01, G18, G28, L51)

This study shows that corporate innovation efficiency (IE) as measured by patents filed or cited divided by R&D expenditures improves credit ratings, but this occurs gradually. This gradual response implies that credit rating agencies (CRAs) impose in the near term a higher borrowing cost on innovative firms than their performance and risk characteristics would justify. We predict and confirm that the gradual improvement of credit ratings in response to IE is amplified for firms with more downside risk, with more financial constraints, and with increased sales or cash flows in the years following the IE. These results suggest a predictable response of CRAs to contemporaneous IE information based on economic factors relevant to credit analysis rather than a response based on CRAs' inefficient or biased use of innovation information.