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We establish that the labor market helps discipline asset managers via the impact of fund liquidations on their careers. Using hand-collected data on 1,948 professionals, we find that top managers working for funds liquidated after persistently poor relative performance suffer demotion coupled with a significant loss in imputed compensation. Scarring effects are absent when liquidations are preceded by normal relative performance or involve mid-level employees. Seen through the lens of a model with moral hazard and adverse selection, these results can be ascribed to reputation loss rather than bad luck. The findings suggest that performance-induced liquidations supplement compensation-based incentives.
We investigate the determinants of firms’ implicit insurance to employees, using a difference-in-difference approach: we rely on differences between family and non-family firms to identify the supply of insurance, and exploit variation in unemployment insurance across and within countries to gauge workers’ demand for insurance. Using a firm-level panel from 41 countries, we find that family firms feature more stable employment, greater wage flexibility and lower labor cost than non-family ones. Employment stability in family firms is greater, and the wage discount larger, in countries with more generous public unemployment insurance: private and public provision of employment insurance are substitutes.
We investigate whether government credit guarantee schemes, extensively used at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, led to substitution of non-guaranteed with guaranteed credit rather than fully adding to the supply of lending. We study this issue using a unique euro-area credit register data, matched with supervisory bank data, and establish two main findings. First, guaranteed loans were mostly extended to small but comparatively creditworthy firms in sectors severely affected by the pandemic, borrowing from large, liquid and well-capitalized banks. Second, guaranteed loans partially substitute pre-existing non-guaranteed debt. For firms borrowing from multiple banks, the substitution mainly arises from the lending behavior of the bank extending guaranteed loans. Substitution was highest for funding granted to riskier and smaller firms in sectors more affected by the pandemic, and borrowing from larger and stronger banks. Overall, the evidence indicates that government guarantees contributed to the continued extension of credit to relatively creditworthy firms hit by the pandemic, but also benefited banks’ balance sheets to some extent.
Careers in finance
(2021)
The finance wage premium since the 1990s has arguably lured talent away from other industries. However, the allocation of talent is likely to respond to differences in career paths, not in wages at a given date. We use resume data to reconstruct the careers of 11,255 professionals in finance, high-tech and services from 1980 to 2017, and find that careers mostly develop within sectors. Careers in asset management feature higher and steeper pay profiles than those of employees in banking, insurance and non-finance, yet this career premium cannot be explained by higher risk. Labor market entry responds positively to career premia in asset management and high-tech, and these sectors are regarded as substitutes by potential entrants, consistently with high-tech competing with asset management in attracting talent.