Why Do Politicians Intervene in Accounting Regulation? The Role of Ideology and Special Interests

Politicians frequently intervene in the regulation of financial accounting. Evidence from the accounting literature shows that regulatory capture by special interests helps explain these interventions. However, many accounting rules have broad economic or social consequences, such as their effects on income distribution or private sector subsidies. The perception of these consequences varies with a politician's ideology. Therefore, if accounting rules produce those consequences, ideology plausibly spills over and explains a politician's stance on the technical accounting issue, beyond special interest pressure. We use two prominent U.S. political debates about fair value accounting and the expensing of employee stock options to disentangle the role of ideology from special interest pressure. In both debates, ideology explains politicians’ involvement at exactly those points when the debate focuses on the economic consequences of accounting regulation (i.e., bank bailouts and top management compensation). Once the debates focus on more technical issues, connections to special interests remain the dominant force.     

Financial Exposure and the International Transmission of Financial Shocks

This paper analyzes the transmission mechanism of banking sector shocks in an international real business cycle model with heterogeneous bank sizes. We examine to what extent the financial exposure of the banking sector affects the transmission of foreign banking sector shocks. In our model, the more exposed domestic banks are to the foreign economy via lending to foreign firms, the greater are the spillovers from foreign financial shocks to the home economy. The model highlights the role of openness to trade and the dynamics of the terms of trade in the international transmission mechanism of banking sector shocks: spillovers from foreign banking sector shocks are greater the more open the home economy is to trade and the less the terms of trade respond to foreign shocks.     

The Impact of Liquidity Risk: A Fresh Look*

This paper takes a fresh look at the importance of liquidity risk using a comprehensive liquidity measure, weighted spread, in a Value‐at‐Risk (VaR) framework. The weighted spread measure extracts liquidity costs by order size from the limit order book. Using a unique, representative data set of 160 German stocks over 5.5 years, we show that liquidity risk is an important risk component. Actually, liquidity risk is increasing the total price risk by over 25%, even at 10‐day horizons and for liquid blue chip stocks and especially in larger, yet realistic order sizes beyond €1 million. When correcting for liquidity risk, it is commonly assumed that liquidity risk can be simply added to price risk. Our empirical results show that this is not correct, as the correlation between liquidity and price is non‐perfect and total risk is thus overestimated.     

Do Markets Care about Central Bank Governor Changes? Evidence from Emerging Markets

Based on a new daily data set for 20 emerging markets over the period 1992–2006, we examine the reactions of foreign exchange markets, domestic stock markets, and sovereign bond spreads to central bank governor changes. We find that the replacement of a central bank governor negatively affects financial markets on the announcement day, which is in line with the hypothesis that newly appointed central bank governors suffer from a systematic credibility problem at the beginning of their tenure. We also find some evidence that changes in perceived central bank independence affect markets.     

YOU ARE ONE OF US NOW! HOW DO SHARE PRICES OF RIVALS REACT TO PRIVATIZATION?*

By using a unique data set from the Turkish cement industry, we analyze the impact of privatization on the market value of rival firms. Privatization increases efficiency, which is bad news for rivals. But if an incumbent buys a state owned firm, this leads to a higher market concentration which is good news for rivals. We show that privatization leads to overall positive abnormal returns for rivals because the concentration effect outweighs the efficiency effect. Consistent with our theory, this effect is reinforced when the initial market concentration is high.     

FISCAL REFORM IN SWEDEN: WHAT GENERATIONAL ACCOUNTING TELLS US

Generational accounts answer the simple question of how much future generations will have to pay in net taxes as compared to today's generations. This paper briefly reviews the concept of generational accounting and provides estimates for Sweden, where public finances deteriorated significantly after 1990. The results suggest that the measures adopted since 1994 should improve dramatically the relative position of future generations, who may nevertheless be expected to face large net tax bills.     

Conglomerate Investment,Skewness, and the CEO Long‐Shot Bias

Do behavioral biases of executives matter for corporate investment decisions? Using segment‐level capital allocation in multisegment firms (“conglomerates”) as a laboratory, we show that capital expenditure is increasing in the expected skewness of segment returns. Conglomerates invest more in high‐skewness segments than matched stand‐alone firms, and trade at a discount, which indicates overinvestment that is detrimental to shareholder wealth. Using geographical variation in gambling norms, we find that the skewness‐investment relation is particularly pronounced when CEOs are likely to find long shots attractive. Our findings suggest that CEOs allocate capital with a long‐shot bias.     

Saving and Portfolio Allocation Before and After Job Loss

We investigate the development of household labor income, financial wealth, and asset holdings over a 9‐year period around job loss, using unique administrative panel data from Norway. Consistent with predictions from theory, the data show additional saving and a shift toward safer assets in the years leading up to unemployment, and depletion of savings after job loss. In the years after job loss, the households' after‐tax labor income is reduced by about USD 12,500. Over the same time period, households deplete USD 3,000 of their financial assets, of which one third is accumulated prior to the job loss. This suggests that at least some households can foresee and prepare for the upcoming unemployment, which indicates that private savings can, to some extent, serve as a substitute for publicly provided unemployment insurance.