We distinguish between identification and establishing causality. Identification means forming a unique mapping from features of data to quantities that are of interest to economists. Establishing causality by finding sources of exogenous variation is often considered synonymous with identification, but these two concepts are distinct. Exogenous variation is only sometimes necessary and never sufficient to identify economically interesting parameters. Instead, even for causal questions, identification must rest on an underlying economic model. We illustrate these points by analyzing identification in three recent papers and by examining the estimation of a simple dynamic model. Received June 6, 2017; editorial decision September 26, 2017 by Editor Gregor Matvos. Authors have furnished supplementary code, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

The Credit Card Accountability and Disclosure Act (CARD Act) of 2009 restricted several risk management practices of credit card issuers. Using a quasi-experimental design with credit bureau data on consumer lending, we find evidence consistent with the hypothesis that the act's restrictions on risk management practices contributed to a large decline in bank card holding by higher risk, nonprime consumers but had little effect on prime consumers. Looking at consumer finance loans, historically a source of credit for higher risk consumers, we find greater reliance on such loans by nonprime consumers in states with high consumer finance rate ceilings following the CARD Act than by nonprime consumers in states with low rate ceilings or by prime consumers. That nonprime consumers in states with high consumer finance rate ceilings relied more heavily on consumer finance loans suggests that consumer finance loans were a substitute for subprime credit cards for risky consumers when rate ceilings permit such loans to be profitable. Consumer finance loans would not be available to many higher risk, nonprime consumers in low rate states because such loans would be unprofitable, and prime consumers would not need consumer finance loans because other less expensive types of credit would generally be available to them.

We construct novel measures of financial constraints using textual analysis of firms’ annual reports and investigate their impact on stock returns. Our three measures capture access to equity markets, debt markets, and external financial markets in general. In all cases, constrained firms earn higher returns, which move together and cannot be explained by the Fama and French (2015) factor model. A trading strategy based on financial constraints is most profitable for large, liquid stocks. Our results are strongest when we consider debt constraints. A portfolio based on this measure earns an annualized risk-adjusted excess return of 6.5%. Received April 4, 2016; editorial decision December 17, 2017 by Editor Andrew Karolyi. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

I demonstrate an important tension between acquiring information and incorporating it into asset prices. As a salient case, I analyze algorithmic trading (AT), which is typically associated with improved price efficiency. Using a new measure of the information content of prices and a comprehensive panel of 54, 879 stock-quarters of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) market data, I establish instead that the amount of information in prices decreases by 9% to 13% per standard deviation of AT activity and up to a month before scheduled disclosures. AT thus may reduce price informativeness despite its importance for translating available information into prices. Received May 21, 2016; editorial decision October 25, 2017 by Editor Itay Goldstein. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University PressWeb site next to the link to the final published paper online.

This article reviews empirical studies on Islamic banking and concentrates on their main findings while highlighting future research directions. The earlier literature on Islamic banking built a foundation using normative judgment, descriptive analysis, theoretical development, and appraisal of country experiences. The paper discusses scholars’ concerns that have led to a paradigm shift in the system and highlight practitioners’ disquiet about recent practices. Subsequent research focuses on empirical investigations without extensive analytical and theoretical exploration in the area. Recent studies focus on the financial crisis, solvency, maqasid, disclosure and financial inclusion, and regulations. Even with the spillover effect on the Islamic banks after the crisis, a few pieces of evidence show that the system performs below its conventional counterpart. The paper discusses issues that are relevant to Islamic banking and identifies other avenues for future research.

Retail banking is a complex industry in which depository institutions bundle various services and may have market power. We use a recent regulation as a natural experiment to provide broad evidence about competition and the importance of bundling in retail banking. That regulation, which resulted from the Durbin Amendment to the Dodd–Frank Act, capped debit card interchange fees for banks with over 10 billion in assets. Using a difference-in-differences identification strategy, we document and quantify the resulting decline in interchange income for treated banks. We further find that treated banks offset more than 90% of the lost interchange income through increases in deposit fees for account holders. We argue that the ability to adjust deposit fees indicates (i) that treated banks have market power with respect to their account holders and (ii) strong complementarity between debit card transactions and deposit accounts. These results are robust when limiting the sample to banks near the asset threshold or using control banks with low direct competition with treated banks. Treated banks neither reduced costs nor strategically avoided the 10 billion threshold.

U.S. sponsors of defined-benefit pension plans integrate their pension plans into their overall financial management. Plan contributions are smaller and funding levels lower for plan sponsors that have less cash, are less profitable and are financially distressed. Moreover, plan sponsors make more aggressive pension plan assumptions if they have lower cash holdings and profit margins. While there is no evidence that plan sponsors generally take more risk with their pension plan assets if they have high business or financial risk, there is some evidence of risk shifting during major economic downturns such as the global financial crisis. As a result, funding rules, pension plan assumptions and investment policies are areas to consider for pension policy to protect plan beneficiaries.

Many time series exhibit “long memory”: Their autocorrelation function decays slowly with lag. This behavior has traditionally been modeled via unit roots or fractional Brownian motion and explained via aggregation of heterogeneous processes, nonlinearity, learning dynamics, regime switching, or structural breaks. This paper identifies a different and complementary mechanism for long‐memory generation by showing that it can naturally arise when a large number of simple linear homogeneous economic subsystems with short memory are interconnected to form a network such that the outputs of the subsystems are fed into the inputs of others. This networking picture yields a type of aggregation that is not merely additive, resulting in a collective behavior that is richer than that of individual subsystems. Interestingly, the long‐memory behavior is found to be almost entirely determined by the geometry of the network, while being relatively insensitive to the specific behavior of individual agents.

At the settlement time of the VIX Volatility Index, volume spikes on S & P 500 Index (SPX) options, but only in out-of-the-money options used to calculate the VIX, and more so for options with a higher and discontinuous influence on VIX. We investigate alternative explanations of hedging and coordinated liquidity trading. Tests including those utilizing differences in put and call options, open interest around the settlement, and a similar volatility contract with an entirely different settlement procedure in Europe are inconsistent with these explanations but consistent with market manipulation. Large transient deviations in prices demonstrate the importance of settlement design.