The Interest Rate Risk of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

This paper evaluates the interest rate risk of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (F&F) and develops related public policy proposals. F&F merit special attention due to (1) their potentially very large interest rate risk, and (2) their status as U.S. government sponsored enterprises. The analysis focuses on the dynamic hedging strategy and extensive use of interest rate derivatives employed by F&F to control their interest rate risk. While dynamic hedging is highly cost effective for F&F, it creates imperfect hedges and thus could impose significant costs on U.S. taxpayers in a potential future F&F bailout. The policy discussion includes proposals to modify the F&F interest rate disclosures and the OFHEO stress test, and to create rate interest risk standards for F&F.     

美国“两房”危机分析及启示

文章分析了“两房”危机的形成过程,以及美国政府应对“两房”危机的救助措施。虽然美国金融海啸对国内上市银行的投资影响不大,但国内银行业对海外投资与交易的风险管理有待加强。面对全球市场动荡,文章从加强监管、完善政策调控、稳定房地产市场发展,以及提高金融机构风险管理能力等方面提出应对之策。     

Focusing on Fannie and Freddie: The Dilemmas of Reforming Housing Finance

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are unique and controversial participants in the housing finance system of the United States. Because of these enterprises' federal government charters, the financial markets believe that the government would not allow Fannie and Freddie to fail to honor their debt obligations, and they are thereby able to borrow more cheaply in credit markets; in turn, they lower interest rates for residential mortgages. If the financial markets are right, however, Freddie and Fannie also create a contingent liability for the government. Though there are positive externalities from home ownership, the Fannie/Freddie route is far too broad and unfocused to address those externalities effectively. Privatization, accompanied by targeted federal assistance for potential first-time low- and moderate-income home buyers, would be a superior policy direction.     

美国次贷危机对中国资产证券化业务的影响及建议

美国次按危机爆发至今,已给美国以及全球金融市场带来了巨大的冲击。面对中国资产证券化发展方向的探讨,文章通过分析美国次贷危机的成因、中国证券化业务发展的现状,对比出美国次贷与中国已开展的证券化业务的本质区别,指出我们应从美国次贷危机中吸取教训,加强业务风险的防范,充分利用我国此项业务开展的后发优势,适当加快试点的步伐。     

The peer effect in adverse selection: Evidence from the micro health insurance market in Pakistan

The peer effect may amplify adverse selection in social networks, hampering the sustainable operation of microinsurance. This paper uses data from a micro health insurance program in Pakistan to test for the peer effect in renewal decisions and the role it plays in amplifying adverse selection within social networks. The paper finds evidence supporting that insurance renewal decisions are similar among peers in the same network, and the peer effect is stronger among households of the same risk type than households of different risk types, indicating that the heterogeneous peer effect acts as an amplifier for adverse selection. The paper provides policy implications for effective ways to mitigate the peer effect and adverse selection, based on the results of heterogeneity analyses. The policy recommendation is to enforce a minimum group enrollment rate requirement of at least 60% for large groups to mitigate the peer effect.     

Comovements between heavily shorted stocks during a market squeeze: Lessons from the GameStop trading frenzy

We examine the comovements between stock prices of different heavily shorted companies during a short-squeeze incident. Using the recent GameStop trading frenzy as a case study, we employ wavelet coherence analyses to determine its link with other frequently shorted stocks. We demonstrate a robust positive association between GameStop prices and the performance of high short interest indices. The bubble behavior driven by retail investor herding transmits between different stocks, even from unrelated sectors. Consequently, a single short-squeeze incident may build up into a potentially broader systemic risk, casting doubt on market integrity and stability.     

The impact of European Central Bank Governing Council announcements on the foreign exchange market: a microstructural analysis

We examine the evidence regarding systematic patterns in the euro-dollar foreign exchange market on days when the Governing Council (GC) of the European Central Bank announces its interest rate decisions versus other days. We examine 5-minute data in a non-linear framework allowing for switching between a high-volatility, informed-trading state and a low-volatility, liquidity-trading state. We find strong evidence that the GC policy announcements contain significant news content. Although there is some evidence of positioning in the hour prior to the announcement, this probably reflects dealers minimizing their exposure rather than evidence of information leakage.     

The interbank market after the financial turmoil: Squeezing liquidity in a “lemons market” or asking liquidity “on tap”

After August 2007 the plumbing system that supplied banks with wholesale funding, the interbank market, failed because toxic assets obstructed the pipes. Banks were forced to squeeze liquidity in a “lemons market” or to ask for liquidity “on tap” from central banks. This paper disentangles the two components of the 3-month Euribor–Eonia swap spread, credit and liquidity risk and then evaluates the decomposition. The main finding is that credit risk increased before the key events of the crisis, while liquidity risk was mainly responsible for the subsequent increases in the Euribor spread and then reacted to the systemic responses of the central banks, especially in October 2008. Moreover, the level of the spread between May 2009 and February 2010 was influenced mainly by credit risk, suggesting that European banks were still in a “lemons market” and relied on liquidity “on tap” even before sovereign debt crisis unfolded in Europe.     

Impact of interest rates on the life insurance market development: Cross-country evidence

Studies have found that interest rates create incentives for insurance firms to focus on financial markets through investments. Using a cross-country context, we conjecture that interest rates affect the life insurance market’s development. Using an initial sample comprising the time series of interest rates and insurance markets’ measures from 34 countries across 1998–2017, we found that the density and penetration of the life insurance market is low in countries with high interest rates. Using another sample of 6,451 observations from insurance firms operating in the same 34 countries, we verified that the financial and operational incomes are equally significant in predicting the net income for life insurance companies that operate in countries with high interest rates. Our study contributes to observations that the lack of governmental control over public expenses impacts interest rates and, thereby, the opportunities for insurers.     

民以食为天:关于农业保险研究的一个文献综述

本文对有关农业保险的中外历史文献进行了全面回顾,并在此基础上评估和回答了可能会影响中国农业保险试验的若干问题:第一,为什么会有农业保险?第二,农业保险市场为什么会失灵?为什么各国政府都对农业保险大加补贴?而农民对待农业保险又会有怎样的反应?第三,既然农业保险产品设计的核心问题是费率厘定,那么有关此项的研究有哪些进展?第四,中国政府在发展农业保险的过程中,尤其需要注意哪些事项?本文的目的在于,提醒各级政府部门要积极参与农业保险试点,认真解决试点过程中发现的各种问题,立足长远,真正建立起农业保险这个褔惠三农的风险保障机制。     

The impact of short-selling and margin-buying on liquidity: Evidence from the Chinese stock market

We propose a framework based on limit order book to analyze the impact of short-selling and margin-buying on liquidity. We show that when short-sellers are perceived as informed, adverse selection may lead to uninformed traders withdrawing their limit orders. Given that the Chinese stock market has strong information asymmetry and a high proportion of uninformed traders, we predict that the pilot program launched in March 2010, which lifts restrictions on short-selling and margin-buying for a designated list of stocks, may have a negative impact on liquidity. We perform difference-in-differences tests and show evidence that allowing for short-selling and margin-buying indeed has a significantly negative impact on liquidity for stocks on the designated list. In particular, the negative impact on liquidity is more pronounced for stocks with high information asymmetry. Nevertheless, when short-selling volume dries up due to regulation changes in August 2015, i.e., the “T+1” trading rule on short-selling, we show that consistent with model predictions, lifting restrictions on short-selling and margin-buying has a positive effect on liquidity.     

Efficient market hypothesis and fraud on the market theory a new perspective for class actions

Following recent judgment of the Supreme Court of US (June 2014), several commentators had declared that “Securities class actions are here to stay” (insidecounsel.com—September 2014, 11). This paper provides a critical perspective on this judgment, which “implicates substantive issues at the intersection of economic theory, financial markets, and securities regulation” (128Harv. L. Rev. 291 2014–2015, 291), and shows that we must be much more careful. This recent judgment is based on the Fraud on the Market Doctrine, which was introduced in 1973 in order to preserve the class action procedure in securities fraud litigation. The characteristic of the Fraud on the Market Doctrine is to have been structured from one of the most popular financial theory: Efficient Market Hypothesis. In this paper, by analysing the implementation of the Efficient Market Hypothesis in Fraud on the Market Theory, we argue that if the Supreme Court had to take position for a second time about the Fraud on the Market Doctrine it is due to the practical difficulties inherited from Efficient Market Hypothesis and that have raised several problems to the US courts, including the Supreme Court. This issue is illustrated by the definition of Efficient Market Hypothesis lawyers used (“most” vs “all”/“fully”). As this paper shows, if “Securities class actions are here to stay”, the opportunity to open such a class action is strongly reduced in the facts.     

The Impact of Firing Costs on Turnover and Unemployment: Evidence from the Colombian Labour Market Reform

Reductions in firing costs are often advocated as a way of increasing the dynamism of labour markets in both developed and less developed countries. Evidence from Europe and the U.S. on the impact of firing costs has, however, been mixed. Moreover, legislative changes both in Europe and the U.S. have been limited. This paper, instead, examines the impact of the Colombian Labour Market Reform of 1990, which substantially reduced dismissal costs. I estimate the incidence of a reduction in firing costs on worker turnover by exploiting the temporal change in the Colombian labour legislation as well as the variability in coverage between formal and informal sector workers. Using a grouping estimator to control for common aggregate shocks and selection, I find that the exit hazard rates into and out of unemployment increased after the reform by over 1\% for formal workers (covered by the legislation) relative to informal workers (uncovered). The increase of the hazards implies a net decrease in unemployment of a third of a percentage point, which accounts for about one quarter of the fall in unemployment during the period of study.     

The impact of unconventional monetary policy on the market for collateral: The case of the French bond market

We consider the channel consisting in transferring the credit risk associated with refinancing operations between financial institutions to market participants. In particular, we analyze liquidity and volatility premia on the French government debt securities market, since these assets are used as collateral both in the open market operations of the ECB and on the interbank market. In our time-varying transition probability Markov-switching (TVTP-MS) model, we highlight the existence of two regimes. In one of them, which we refer to as the conventional regime, monetary policy neutrality is verified; in the other, which we dub the unconventional regime, monetary policy operations lead to volatility and liquidity premia on the collateral market. The existence of these conventional and unconventional regimes highlights some asymmetries in the conduct of monetary policy.     

Evidences for a structural change in the oil market before a financial crisis: The flat horizon effect

There are growing evidences that the commodity bubble in the 2000s had a major impact in the 2007–08 financial crisis. A salient feature of this commodity bubble was the dramatic increasing in the correlation of indexed commodities with oil price following the financialisation of the oil market. In this paper we suggest that, besides the growing demand from emerging economies and the following inflow of money from speculative traders, the introduction of the electronic platform could have had an important and underestimated effect on the oil market. Our analysis of the spot and futures oil prices at the NYMEX based on the Generalized Hurst Exponent confirms that the period 2004–2007 is pivotal in the oil market and corroborates the hypothesis that a structural change occurred in both markets. The evident decrease in multifractality suggests a flattening of the time horizon in financial oil markets and the coexistence of long-termism and short-termism. This structural change could partially explain the observed increase of correlations between commodities and oil price.     

Cosmetic mergers: The effect of style investing on the market for corporate control

We study the impact of “style investing” on the market for corporate control. We argue that the choice of the bidder is influenced by the fact that the merge with a firm that belongs to an investment style more popular with the market may boost the bidder's value. By using data on the flows in mutual funds, we construct a measure of popularity, which relies directly on the identification of sentiment-induced investor demand, rather than being a direct transformation of stock market data. We show that differences in popularity between bidder and target help to explain their pairing. The merger with a more popular target generates a halo effect from the target to the bidder that induces the market to evaluate the assets of the less popular bidder at the (inflated) market value of the more popular target. Both bidder and target premiums are positively related to the difference in popularity between the target and the bidder. However, the target's ability to appropriate the gain is reduced by the fact that its bargaining position is weaker when the bidder's potential for asset appreciation is higher. We document a better short- and medium-term performance of less popular firms taking over more popular firms. The bidder managers engaging in these cosmetic mergers take advantage of the window of opportunity induced by the deal to reduce their stake in the firm under convenient conditions.     

Pre-holiday effects: International evidence on the decline and reversal of a stock market anomaly

The pre-holiday effect is one of the best known of the calendar effect anomalies. This paper extends prior work by examining whether the effect has declined for the U.S., U.K. and Hong Kong markets. For all three markets, the effect is shown to have declined, but only significantly in the U.S. The result is not surprising given the relative sophistication of the market. What is surprising, however, is the reversal of the pre-holiday effect during the period 1991–1997, with the mean return on pre-holiday days becoming negative, and the subsequent elimination of this effect during 1997–2003.     

Referral as a determining factor for changing auditors in the Belgian auditing market: An empirical study

Traditional research on auditor choice and auditor switching focuses on company and audit (or) characteristics such as size and reputation, level of fees, or audit opinion. These studies seek causal relationship between changes in these characteristics and changes in auditor. This article claims that the conclusions of existing research have limited application to smaller companies in a small open economy like Belgium. We see a need to supplement the research model to reflect the fact that the decision to choose or switch auditors in subsidiary companies often occurs at the parent level and is determined by group characteristics rather than local characteristics of the subsidiary. In this article, we show that “referral,” the situation whereby the subsidiary—encouraged by the parent company—appoints the same auditor as the parent company, must be considered as an explanatory variable to understand audit-switching behavior in Belgium.     

Testing for financial contagion based on a nonparametric measure of the cross‐market correlation

When contagion is defined as a significant increase in market comovement after a shock to one country, we propose a test for financial contagion based on a nonparametric measure of the cross-market correlation. Monte Carlo simulation studies show that our test has reasonable size and good power to detect financial contagion, and that Forbes and Rigobon's test (2002) is relatively conservative, indicating that their test tends not to find evidence of contagion when it does exist. Applying our test to investigate contagion from the 1997 East Asian crisis and the 2007 Subprime crisis, we find that there existed international financial contagion from the two financial crises.     

The effect of accounting firm mergers on the market for audit services: New Zealand evidence

This article examines the outcomes of accounting firm mergers using data about the frequency of audit switches, the numbers of partners in the respective firms, and perceptions revealed in interviews with partners. Evidence from client switches does not show any evidence that the mergers were followed by cost reductions, or of collusion to force prices up. The effects of the mergers appear to have been elsewhere—the merging firms reduced partner numbers substantially, increasing partner leverage so that individual remaining partners were better off. Data from interviews confirm these findings, and show that the culture of individual firms had a significant effect on determining which group of partners controlled the merged firm.