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This paper is the outcome of a related broader project, exploring the explanatory power of the Legal Theory of Finance, which proposes a new institution-based analytical framework for the analysis of phenomena of financial markets. One of its most important theoretical assumptions, the legal construction of financial markets, is highlighted by the example of the private creation of money by structured finance products in this paper. Further implications can then be shown referring to pari passu clauses and collective action clauses, which are both exhibit a differential application of these legal rules according to the hierarchical status of the respective market participant, and can therefore endanger sovereign debt restructurings. Legal instruments to avoid this are briefly explored. An example of another key role of the law in crisis that is the task to resolve the tension between market discipline and financial stability is exemplified by the regulation of the OTC derivatives market and proposals of effective loss-sharing among CCPs. Related questions about the significance of legal rules to ensure financial stability are raised in the analysis of minimum capital requirements under Basel III.
Using two datasets containing demographically representative samples of the Dutch population, I study how lifetime experiences of aggregate labor market conditions affect personality. Three sets of findings are reported. First, experienced aggregate unemployment is negatively correlated with the levels of all Big Five personality traits, except for conscientiousness (no significant correlation). Second, in panel data models with individual fixed effects I find that changes in experienced aggregate unemployment cause changes in emotional stability and agreeableness for men, and conscientiousness for women. The correlation is positive, and effects are economically large. Thirdly, I report suggestive evidence that the main driver is experienced aggregate unemployment, instead of other macroeconomic variables as experienced GDP, stock market returns or inflation. Taken together, these findings suggest that changes in Big Five personality traits are systematically related to experienced aggregate labor market conditions.
The global financial crisis and the ensuing criticism of macroeconomics have inspired researchers to explore new modeling approaches. There are many new models that deliver improved estimates of the transmission of macroeconomic policies and aim to better integrate the financial sector in business cycle analysis. Policy making institutions need to compare available models of policy transmission and evaluate the impact and interaction of policy instruments in order to design effective policy strategies. This paper reviews the literature on model comparison and presents a new approach for comparative analysis. Its computational implementation enables individual researchers to conduct systematic model comparisons and policy evaluations easily and at low cost. This approach also contributes to improving reproducibility of computational research in macroeconomic modeling. Several applications serve to illustrate the usefulness of model comparison and the new tools in the area of monetary and fiscal policy. They include an analysis of the impact of parameter shifts on the effects of fiscal policy, a comparison of monetary policy transmission across model generations and a cross-country comparison of the impact of changes in central bank rates in the United States and the euro area. Furthermore, the paper includes a large-scale comparison of the dynamics and policy implications of different macro-financial models. The models considered account for financial accelerator effects in investment financing, credit and house price booms and a role for bank capital. A final exercise illustrates how these models can be used to assess the benefits of leaning against credit growth in monetary policy.
Directors have traditionally been elected by a plurality of the votes cast. This means that in uncontested elections, a candidate who receives even a single vote is elected. Proponents of “shareholder democracy” have advocated a shift to a majority voting rule in which a candidate must receive a majority of the votes cast to be elected. Over the past decade, they have been successful, and the shift to majority voting has been one of the most popular and successful governance reforms.
Yet critics are skeptical as to whether majority voting improves board accountability. Tellingly, directors of companies with majority voting rarely fail to receive majority approval – even more rarely than directors of companies with plurality voting. Even when such directors fail to receive majority approval, they are unlikely to be forced to leave the board. This poses a puzzle: why do firms switch to majority voting and what effect does the switch have, if any, on director behavior?
We empirically examine the adoption and impact of a majority voting rule using a sample of uncontested director elections from 2007 to 2013. We test and find partial support for four hypotheses that could explain why directors of majority voting firms so rarely fail to receive majority support: selection; deterrence/accountability; electioneering by firms; and restraint by shareholders.
Our results further suggest that the reasons for and effects of adopting majority voting may differ between early and later adopters. We find that early adopters of majority voting were more shareholder-responsive than other firms even before they adopted majority voting. These firms seem to have adopted majority voting voluntarily, and the adoption of majority voting has made little difference in their responsiveness to shareholders responsiveness going forward. By contrast, for late adopters, we find no evidence that they were more shareholder-responsive than other firms before they adopted majority voting, but strong evidence that they became more responsive after adopting majority voting.
Differences between early and late adopters can have important implications for understanding the spread of corporate governance reforms and evaluating their effects on firms. Reform advocates, rather than targeting the firms that, by their measures, are most in need of reform, instead seem to have targeted the firms that are already most responsive. They may then have used the widespread adoption of majority voting to create pressure on the nonadopting firms. Empirical studies of the effects of governance changes thus need to be sensitive to the possibility that early adopters and late adopters of reforms differ from each other and that the reforms may have different effects on these two groups of firms.
We examine the impact of house prices on labour supply decisions using UK micro data. We combine household survey data with local level house price measures and controls for local labour demand. Our micro data also allows us to control for individual level income expectations. We find significant house price effects on labour supply, consistent with leisure being a normal good. Labour supply responses to house prices are concentrated among young married female owners and older owners. This finding suggests house prices affect the decisions of marginal workers in the economy. Our estimates imply house prices are economically important for the participation decisions for these workers.
We reconsider the role for human capital in accounting for cross-country income differences. Our contribution is to bring to bear new data on the pre- and post- migration labor market experiences of immigrants to the U.S. Immigrants from poor countries experience wage gains that are only 40 percent of the GDP per worker gap, which implies that “country" accounts for 40 percent of income differences, while human capital accounts for 60 percent. Our approach handles selection by comparing the wage of the same individual in two different countries. We also provide evidence on and a correction for skill transfer.
Returns to experience for U.S. workers have changed over the post-war period. This paper argues that a simple model goes a long way towards replicating these changes. The model features three well-known ingredients: (i) an aggregate production function with constant skill-biased technical change; (ii) cohort qualities that vary with average years of schooling; and crucially (iii) time-invariant age-efficiency profiles. The model quantitatively accounts for changes in longitudinal and cross-sectional returns to experience, as well as the differential evolution of the college wage premium for young and old workers.
We examine the dynamics of assets under management (AUM) and management fees at the portfolio manager level in the closed-end fund industry. We find that managers capitalize on good past performance and favorable investor perception about future performance, as reflected in fund premiums, through AUM expansions and fee increases. However, the penalties for poor performance or unfavorable investor perception are either insignificant, or substantially mitigated by manager tenure. Long tenure is generally associated with poor performance and high discounts. Our findings suggest substantial managerial power in capturing CEF rents. We also document significant diseconomies of scale at the manager level.
We provide a comprehensive analysis of the determinants of trading in the sovereign credit default swaps (CDS) market, using weekly data for single-name sovereign CDS from October 2008 to September 2015. We describe the anatomy of the sovereign CDS market, derive a law of motion for gross positions and their components, and identify the key factors that drive the cross-sectional and time-series properties of trading volume and net notional amounts outstanding. While a single principal component accounts for 54 percent of the variation in sovereign CDS spreads, the largest common factor explains only 7 percent of the variation in sovereign CDS net notional amounts outstanding. Moreover, unlike for CDS spreads, common global factors explain very little of the variation in sovereign CDS trading and net notional amounts outstanding, suggesting that it is driven primarily by idiosyncratic country risk. We analyze several local and regional channels that may explain the trading in sovereign CDS: (a) country-specific credit risk shocks, including changes in a country's credit rating and related outlook changes, (b) the announcement and issuance of domestic and international debt, (c) macroeconomic sentiment derived from conventional and unconventional monetary policy, macro-economic news and shocks, and (d) regulatory channels, such as changes in bank capital adequacy requirements. All our findings suggest that sovereign CDS are more likely used for hedging than for speculative purposes.
“Institutional Overburdening” to a large extent was a consequence of the “Great Moderation”. This term indicates that it was a period in which inflation had come down from rather high levels. Growth and employment were at least satisfying and variability of output had substantially declined. It was almost unavoidable that as a consequence expectations on future actions of central banks and their ability to control the economy reached an unprecedented peak which was hardly sustainable. Institutional overburdening has two dimensions. One is coming from exaggerated expectations on what central banks can achieve (“expectational overburdening”). The other dimension is “operational overburdening” i.e. overloading the central bank with more and more responsibilities and competences.