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When markets are incomplete, social security can partially insure against idiosyncratic and aggregate risks. We incorporate both risks into an analytically tractable model with two overlapping generations. We derive the equilibrium dynamics in closed form and show that joint presence of both risks leads to over-proportional risk exposure for households. This implies that the whole benefit from insurance through social security is greater than the sum of the benefits from insurance against each of the two risks in isolation. We measure this through interaction effects which appear even though the two risks are orthogonal by construction. While the interactions unambiguously increase the welfare benefits from insurance, they can in- or decrease the welfare costs from crowding out of capital formation. The net effect depends on the relative strengths of the opposing forces.
We investigate the relationship between anchoring and the emergence of bubbles in experimental asset markets. We show that setting a visual anchor at the fundamental value (FV) in the first period only is sufficient to eliminate or to significantly reduce bubbles in laboratory asset markets. If no FV-anchor is set, bubble-crash patterns emerge. Our results indicate that bubbles in laboratory environments are primarily sparked in the first period. If prices are initiated around the FV, they stay close to the FV over the entire trading horizon. Our insights can be related to initial public offerings and the interaction between prices set on pre-opening markets and subsequent intra-day price dynamics.
The pressure on tax haven countries to engage in tax information exchange shows first effects on capital markets. Empirical research suggests that investors do react to information exchange and partially withdraw from previous secrecy jurisdictions that open up to information exchange. While some of the economic literature emphasizes possible positive effects of tax havens, the present paper argues that proponents of positive effects may have started from questionable premises, in particular when it comes to the effects that tax havens have for emerging markets like China and India.
n this paper we compute the optimal tax and education policy transition in an economy where progressive taxes provide social insurance against idiosyncratic wage risk, but distort the education decision of households. Optimally chosen tertiary education subsidies mitigate these distortions. We highlight the importance of two different channels through which academic talent is transmitted across generations (persistence of innate ability vs. the impact of parental education) for the optimal design of these policies and model different forms of labor as imperfect substitutes, thereby generating general equilibrium feedback effects from policies to relative wages of skilled and unskilled workers. We show that subsidizing higher education has important redistributive benefits, by shrinking the college wage premium in general equilibrium. We also argue that a full characterization of the transition path is crucial for policy evaluation. We find that optimal education policies are always characterized by generous tuition subsidies, but the optimal degree of income tax progressivity depends crucially on whether transitional costs of policies are explicitly taken into account and how strongly the college premium responds to policy changes in general equilibrium.
This paper looks into the specific influence that the European banking union will have on (future) bank client relationships. It shows that the intended regulatory influence on market conditions in principle serves as a powerful governance tool to achieve financial stability objectives.
From this vantage, it analyzes macro-prudential instruments with a particular view to mortgage lending markets – the latter have been critical in the emergence of many modern financial crises. In gauging the impact of the new European supervisory framework, it finds that the ECB will lack influence on key macro-prudential tools to push through more rigid supervisory policies vis-à-vis forbearing national authorities.
Furthermore, this paper points out that the current design of the European bail-in tool supplies resolution authorities with undue discretion. This feature which also afflicts the SRM imperils the key policy objective to re-instill market discipline on banks’ debt financing operations. The latter is also called into question because the nested regulatory technique that aims at preventing bail-outs unintendedly opens additional maneuvering space for political decision makers.
In an experimental setting in which investors can entrust their money to traders, we investigate how compensation schemes affect liquidity provision and asset prices. Investors face a trade-off between risk and return. At the benefit of a potentially higher return, they can entrust their money to a trader. However this investment is risky, as the trader might not be trustworthy. Alternatively, they can opt for a safe but low return. We study how subjects solve this trade-off when traders are either liable for losses or not, and when their bonuses are either capped or not. Limited liability introduces a conflict of interest because it makes traders value the asset more than investors. To limit losses, investors should thus restrict liquidity provision to force traders to trade at a lower price. By contrast, bonus caps make traders value the asset less than investors. This should encourage liquidity provision and decrease prices. In contrast to these predictions, we find that under limited liability investors contribute to asset price bubbles by increasing liquidity provision and that caps fail to tame bubbles. Overall, giving investors skin in the game fosters financial stability.
Since August 2009, German legislation allows for voluntary Say on Pay Votes (SoPV) during Annual General Meetings (AGMs). We examine 1,169 AGMs of all German listed firms with more than 10,000 agenda items over the period 2010-2013 to identify (1) determinants and approval rates of voluntary SoPVs, (2) the effect of voluntary SoPVs on AGM participation, and (3) the effect of SoP on executive compensation. Our data reveals that in the first four years of the voluntary say on pay regime every second firm in our sample has opted for having a SoPV. The propensity for a SoPV increases with firm size, abnormal executive compensation and free float of shares. Indeed, smaller firms with concentrated ownership do not only have a lower propensity for a SoPV, but also show a higher propensity to opt for only limited disclosure of executive compensation. Approval rates of SoPVs are lower than the approval rate for the average AGM agenda item and this effect is stronger in (i) widely held firms as well as in (ii) firms with abnormal executive compensation. Additionally, SoPVs actually can increase AGM participation; however, this result is particularly evident for widely held firms. Finally, we find stronger pay for performance elements within total executive compensation, particularly when the effect of executive compensation is lagged over the years following the vote. Overall, our results are consistent with the view that firms use voluntary SoPV to gain legitimation for executive remuneration policies in firms with low ownership concentration. This is enforced, where (small) shareholders consider executive compensation a part of the agency problem of listed firms, and where (small) shareholders consider SoPVs as a possibility to actively influence corporate decisions, with these decisions leading to a higher degree of alignment between executive management boards and shareholders.
The standard view suggests that removing barriers to entry and improving judicial enforcement reduces informality and boosts investment and growth. However, a general equilibrium approach shows that this conclusion may hold to a lesser extent in countries with a constrained supply of funds because of, for example, a more concentrated banking sector or lower financial openness. When the formal sector grows larger in those countries, more entrepreneurs become creditworthy, but the higher pressure on the credit market limits further capital accumulation. We show empirical evidence consistent with these predictions.
n the EU there are longstanding and ongoing pressures towards a tax that is levied on the EU level to substitute for national contributions. We discuss conditions under which such a transition can make sense, starting from what we call a "decentralization theorem of taxation" that is analogous to Oates (1972) famous result that in the absence of spill-over effects and economies of scale decentralized public good provision weakly dominates central provision. We then drop assumptions that turn out to be unnecessary for this results. While spill-over effects of taxation may call for central rules for taxation, as long as spill-over effects do not depend on the intra-regional distribution of the tax burden, decentralized taxation plus tax coordination is found superior to a union-wide tax.
Do markets correct individual behavioral biases? In an experimental asset market, we compare the outcomes of a standard market economy to those of a an island economy that removed market interactions. We observe asset price bubbles in the market economy while prices are stable in the island economy. We also find that subjects took more risk following larger losses, resulting in larger prices and consistent with a gambling for resurrection motive. This motive can translate into bubbles in the market economy because higher prices increase average losses and thus reinforce the desire to resurrect. By contrast, the absence of such a strategic complementarity in island economies can explain the more stable outcome. These results suggest that markets do not correct behavioral biases, rather the contrary.