The Roles of Corporate Governance in Bank Failures during the Recent Financial Crisis

We analyze the roles of bank ownership, management, and compensation structures in bank failures during the recent financial crisis. Our results suggest that failures are strongly influenced by ownership structure: high shareholdings of lower‐level management and non‐chief executive officer (non‐CEO) higher‐level management increase failure risk significantly. In contrast, shareholdings of banks’ CEOs do not have a direct impact on bank failure. These findings suggest that high stakes in the bank induce non‐CEO managers to take high risks due to moral hazard incentives, which may result in bank failure. We identify tail risk in noninterest income as a primary risk‐taking channel of lower‐level managers.     

The dynamic macroeconomic effects of tax policy in an overlapping generations model

The paper studies the dynamic allocation effects of tax policywithin the context of an overlapping-generations model of theBlanchard-Yaari type. The model is extended to allow for endogenouslabour supply and three tax instruments, viz. a capital tax,labour income tax, and consumption tax. Both analytical expressionsand simple diagrams are used to analyze the impact, transition,and long-run effects of tax policy changes. It is shown thata part of the long-run incidence of capital and consumptiontaxes falls on capital when households' horizons are finitewhereas labour would fully bear the burden of these taxes inan infinite-horizon model.     

The investment tax credit under monopolistic competition

This paper develops a dynamic model of monopolistic competitionwith finite lives. It investigates the welfare properties ofan investment tax credit (ITC) for both finite and infinitelives. For infinite lives, it shows that, lacking lump-sum taxes,an ITC suffices to attain a second-best solution. For finitelives, the paper considers the intergenerational welfare distributioneffects of an ITC. In the absence of debt policy, the investmenttax credit benefits future generations but may harm most ofthe existing generations. Using debt financing, the policy makercan redistribute the gains in a completely egalitarian fashion.     

The significance of Penrose's theory for the development of economics

Adam Smith identified the division of labour as the prime sourceof growth, through the generation of differentiated knowledge;the co-ordination problem was a consequence of this causal sequence.But Jevons, Walras, and their successors isolated co-ordinationfrom the growth of knowledge, and replaced causal sequenceswith formal proofs, despite Marshall's efforts to preserve Smith'stheoretical system. Penrose reinvented the Smith-Marshall analysisof the growth of knowledge, centred on the firm, but explicitlyendorsed the separation. Nevertheless her theory may permita more convincing treatment of the co-ordination of differentiatedknowledge than current models of rational choice equilibrium.     

Time‐Varying Capital Requirements and Disclosure Rules: Effects on Capitalization and Lending Decisions

We investigate how banks’ capital and lending decisions respond to changes in bank‐specific capital and disclosure requirements. We find that an increase in the bank‐specific regulatory capital requirement results in a higher bank capital ratio, brought about via less asset risk. A decrease in the requirement implies more lending to firms but also less Tier 1 capital and higher bank leverage. We do not observe differences between confidential and public disclosure of capital requirements. Our results empirically illustrate a tradeoff between bank resilience and a fostering of the economy through more bank lending using banks’ capital requirement as policy instrument.     

Genetic Variation in Financial Decision‐Making

Individuals differ in how they construct their investment portfolios, yet empirical models of portfolio risk typically account only for a small portion of the cross‐sectional variance. This paper asks whether genetic variation can explain some of these individual differences. Following a major pension reform Swedish adults had to form a portfolio from a large menu of funds. We match data on these investment decisions with the Swedish Twin Registry and find that approximately 25% of individual variation in portfolio risk is due to genetic variation. We also find that these results extend to several other aspects of financial decision‐making.