Statement of the Financial Economists Roundtable: Bank Capital as a Substitute for Prudential Regulation

The Financial CHOICE Act recently passed by the House proposes to create an “off‐ramp” that would allow banks to escape burdensome prudential regulation if the ratio of their equity capital to their total assets is 10% or more. The Financial Economists Roundtable supports this idea as a means of reducing regulatory costs, but believes some additional safeguards are needed. A capital ratio of 10% may not be high enough to discourage banks from excessive risk taking. A solution is to have two capital requirements for banks choosing the off‐ramp: one absolute (as proposed in the act) and one risk‐based. The FER believes that many banks will prefer this regime to the current burdensome prudential regulation, especially if regulators simplify the setting of risk weights and make them more rule‐based. Regulators setting minimum capital requirements should consider not only a bank’s stand‐alone risk, but also the systemic risk posed by banks, as well as the tendency of accounting measures of income and assets to overstate the economic value of banks’ equity capital. The Financial Choice Act would also eliminate useful elements of ongoing supervision and regulation, not all of which can be addressed by higher capital alone. Furthermore, to facilitate regulatory learning about risks, off‐ramped banks should continue to report the data that regulators use for stress tests, even if they are no longer subjected to the discipline of stress tests. Finally, the act is viewed as too permissive in its treatment of off‐ramped banks that get into trouble. To prevent gaming of regulation, FERC recommends that off‐ramped banks that subsequently fall below the minimum requirements should be required to raise new capital immediately.     

The impact of abusive supervision and co-worker support on hospitality and tourism student employees’ turnover intentions in Ecuador

Ram (2015. Hostility or hospitality? A review on violence, bullying and sexual harassment in the tourism and hospitality industry. Current Issues in Tourism. doi:10.1080/13683500.2015.1064364) posits that violence and harassment are areas of concern within the hospitality industry, and scholarly interest in abusive supervision in the workplace has grown since the last decade. This study extends Ram's (2015. Hostility or hospitality? A review on violence, bullying and sexual harassment in the tourism and hospitality industry. Current Issues in Tourism. doi:10.1080/13683500.2015.1064364) assertion by examining the effect of abusive supervision experiences on student employees’ turnover intentions in a hospitality and tourism context in a high power distance culture, Ecuador. The results showed that abusive supervision was positively related to turnover intentions, and its effect was stronger than co-worker support, with the abusive supervision–turnover intentions relationship being fully mediated by perceived organizational support (POS). In addition, co-worker emotional support was found to attenuate the negative effects of abusive supervision on POS. All in all, the findings highlight the roles of POS in explaining the relation between abusive supervision and turnover intentions and co-worker emotional support in buffering the negative effect of abusive supervision. The important role of culture is discussed.     

Eye-tracking evidence that happy faces impair verbal message comprehension: the case of health warnings in direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical television commercials

Risk warning or disclosure information in advertising is only effective in correcting consumers’ judgments if enough cognitive capacity is available to process that information. Hence, comprehension of verbal warnings in TV commercials may suffer if accompanied by positive visual elements. This research addresses this concern about cross-modality interference in the context of direct-to-consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical commercials in the United States by experimentally testing whether positive facial expressions reduce consumers’ understanding of the mandated health warning. A content analysis of a sample of DTC commercials reveals that positive facial expressions are more prevalent during the verbal warning act of the commercials than during the other acts. An eye-tracking experiment conducted with specially produced DTC commercials, which vary the valence of characters’ facial expressions during the health warning, provides evidence that happy faces reduce objective comprehension of the warning.     

Who invests more in advanced abatement technology? Theory and evidence

We study firm investment in abatement technology under a heterogeneous‐firm framework. We find that more‐productive firms make more (less) investment in abatement technology if investment and productivity are complements (substitutes). Under linear demand, firms’ abatement investments exhibit an inverted U‐shape with respect to productivity level. This finding is in contrast to results in existing studies. We also find that in response to tightened environmental regulations, more‐productive firms raise their respective investments in abatement technology, whereas less‐productive firms do the opposite. More‐productive firms have lower pollution emission intensity. The key theoretical predictions are confirmed by empirical tests using Chinese data.     

Regulatory competition and forbearance: Evidence from the life insurance industry

Regulatory separation theory indicates that a system with multiple regulators leads to less forbearance and limits producer gains while a model of banking regulation developed by Dell’Ariccia and Marquez (2006) predicts the opposite. Fragmented regulation of the US life insurance industry provides an especially rich environment for testing the effects of regulatory competition. We find positive relations between regulatory competition and profitability measures for this industry, which is consistent with the Dell’Ariccia and Marquez model. Our results have practical implications for the debate over federal versus state regulation of insurance and financial services in the US.     

What do investment banks charge to underwrite American Depositary Receipts?

We investigate how investment banks determine the gross spreads paid by American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) from 1980 to 2004. We begin by comparing the gross spreads of ADR IPOs and ADR SEOs to those of matching US IPOs and US SEOs. We document clustering at the 7% level for our ADR IPO sample (44% for the ADR IPO firms without a previous equity listing), whereas our ADR SEO sample exhibits no discernable clustering at any level. We then find that ADR IPO gross spreads can be explained by firm and offer characteristics (similar to our matched sample of US IPOs), and by whether the ADR IPO firm has a previous equity listing. ADR SEO gross spreads can be explained more by offer characteristics (more similar to our matched sample of US SEOs).     

Market reactions to announcements to expense options

The joint hypotheses of informationally efficient markets, transparent financial statements, and adequate accounting disclosure suggest that announcements of changes in the accounting treatment of employee stock options from footnote disclosure to expense recognition should not trigger stock price reactions because free-cash-flows will not change. Event study results from a sample of 241 firms that announce such changes reveal statistically significant negative price changes followed by positive price changes about equal in magnitude. We propose the learning, sophisticated investor, neglected firm, and firm size hypotheses to explain the observed announcement-period stock price reaction.

Cross-border mergers and strategic alliances

This paper develops a model with distribution costs to study firm cooperation in forming strategic alliances and mergers, under different types of foreign market entry modes, that is, export or foreign direct investment (FDI). Under both export and FDI, we find that cross-border alliances (mergers) dominate domestic alliances (mergers); and cross-border alliances and mergers are preferred to independence if and only if distribution cost is high. Under export, cross-border alliances are chosen in equilibrium if distribution cost is high. Under FDI and with high distribution cost, cross-border alliances (mergers) are chosen in equilibrium if plant setup cost is low (high).     

Technology Strategies For Economic Development In A Fast Changing Global Economy

East Asian development experience provides the basis for understanding which are the essential elements of effective technology strategy and policy, those that are required for the efficacious development of countries that have not yet embarked on a path of sustained modernization. Globalization has had a profound impact on development, enabling countries that could exploit its propelling forces to pursue a potent strategy of export-led economic and technological development. The policies needed to sustain this strategy are those required to foster institutions that permit effective commerce among economic agents, those necessary to generate the rapid accumulation of human and physical capital, and those essential to ensure that resources are allocated in accord with the economy's dynamic comparative advantage. Of crucial importance among the latter are effectively implemented policies of selective intervention designed to develop infant industries and to foster their fast-paced achievement of international competitiveness through rapid attainment of the requisite technological capabilities.     

Knowledge Transfer in Hotel Firms: Determinants of Success in International Expansion

This study analyzes the determinants of knowledge transfer success in the international expansion of hotel firms. First, international growth strategies, followed by hospitality firms and their relationship to knowledge transfer, are discussed. Next, we address the determinants of knowledge transfer success in international expansion by discussing the relevance of the topic and potential barriers that may lead to failures. This leads to the presentation of four research hypotheses. The hypotheses are then empirically tested from the international expansion of Spanish hotel chains. The results demonstrate the influence of the absorptive capacity, the cultural aspects, and the motivation of the knowledge sources.