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In 2000 Italy replaced its traditional system of severance pay for public employees with a new system. Under the old regime, severance pay was proportional to the final salary before retirement; under the new regime it is proportional to lifetime earnings. This reform entails substantial losses for future generations of public employees, in the range of €20,000-30,000, depending on seniority. Using a difference-in-difference framework, we estimate the impact of this unanticipated change in lifetime resources, on the current consumption and wealth accumulation of employees affected by the reform. In line with theoretical simulations, we find that each euro reduction in severance pay reduces the average propensity to consume by 3 cents and increases the wealth-income ratio by 0.32. The response is stronger for younger workers and for households where both spouses are public sector employees.
We investigate the effect of the tone of news on investor stock price expectations and beliefs. In an experimental study we ask subjects to estimate a future stock price for twelve real listed companies. As additional information we provide them with historical stock prices and extracts from real newspaper articles. We propose a way to manipulate the tone of news extracts without distorting its content. Subjects in different treatment groups read news items that are written either in positive or negative tone for each stock. We find that subjects tend to predict a significantly higher (lower) return for stocks after reading positive (negative) tone news. The effect is especially pronounced for stocks with poor past performance. Subjects are more likely to be optimistic (pessimistic) about the economy and to buy (sell) stocks after reading positive (negative) than negative (positive) tone news. Our results show that the news media might affect not only how investors perceive information, but also what they do in response to it.
In the mid-1990s, institutional investors entered the syndicated loan market and started to serve borrowers as lead arrangers. Why are non-banks able to compete for this role against banks? How do the composition of syndicates and loan pricing differ among lead arrangers? By using a dataset of 12,847 leveraged loans between 1997 and 2012, I aim to answer these questions. Non-banks benefit from looser regulatory requirements, have industry expertise which helps them in the screening and monitoring of borrowers and focus on firms that ask for loans only instead of additional cross-selling of other services. I can show that non-banks specialize on more opaque and less experienced borrowers, are more likely than banks to choose participants that help to reduce potentially higher information asymmetries and earn 105 basis points more than banks.
This paper examines the dynamic relationship between credit risk and liquidity in the sovereign bond market in the context of the European Central Bank (ECB) interventions. Using a comprehensive set of liquidity measures obtained from a detailed, quote-level dataset of the largest interdealer market for Italian government bonds, we show that changes in credit risk, as measured by the Italian sovereign credit default swap (CDS) spread, generally drive the liquidity of the market: a 10% change in the CDS spread leads a 11% change in the bid-ask spread. This relationship is stronger, and the transmission is faster, when the CDS spread is above the 500 basis point threshold, estimated endogenously, and can be ascribed to changes in margins and collateral, as well as clientele effects. Moreover, we show that the Long-Term Refinancing Operations (LTRO) intervention by the ECB weakened the sensitivity of the liquidity provision by the market makers to changes in the Italian government's credit risk. We also document the importance of market-wide and dealer-specific funding liquidity measures in determining the market liquidity for Italian government bonds.
Investors and insurance policyholders are often confronted with complex products and providers' opaque organisational structures. At the same time, the possibility that their claims will not be honoured often poses an existential risk. Financial regulation therefore aims at putting in place a financial services framework that will safeguard market processes whilst also protecting consumers. However, benefits of regulation are accompanied by certain risks, as can be exemplified with the case of insurance regulation.
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.
Signaling cooperation
(2015)
We examine what an applicant’s vita signals to potential employers about her willingness to cooperate in teams. Intensive social engagement may credibly reveal that an applicant cares about the well-being of others and therefore is less likely to free-ride in teamwork situations. We find that contributions in a public goods game strongly increase in a subject’s degree of social engagement as indicated on her résumé (and rated by an independent third party). Engagement in other domains, such as student or sports associations, is not positively correlated with contributions. In a prediction experiment with human resource managers from various industries, we find that managers use résumé content effectively to predict relative differences in subjects’ willingness to cooperate. Thus, young professionals signal important behavioral characteristics to potential employers through the choice of their extracurricular activities.
SAFE Newsletter : 2015, Q4
(2015)
SAFE Newsletter : 2015, Q3
(2015)
SAFE Newsletter : 2015, Q2
(2015)