ASSET BACKED COMMERCIAL PAPER: GET WITH THE PROGRAM

Asset backed commercial paper, or ABCP for short, is commercial paper that is issued by a special purpose corporation against undivided interests in corporate receivables, including retail, trade, or export receivables. Since the inception of the market in 1983, the volume of ABCP has grown to represent about 16% of the total commercial paper market.
ABCP is a valuable source of liquidity for companies that generate a steady flow of quality receivables. Many ABCP programs restrict purchases to companies with investment grade ratings. For such companies, ABCP may help diversify funding sources and allow the firms to lower their funding costs by arbitraging different markets. But ABCP programs can also prove a low-cost source of funding for companies that either do not have access to the CP market through their own balance sheets or have used up their prime CP and bank borrowing capacity. ABCP is also an important source of funds for smaller companies requiring liquidity to support rapid growth.
ABCP programs can be viewed as "synthetic" revolving bank credit facilities in the sense that they can provide the same flow of funds as revolving credits by using a vehicle constructed specifically to refinance pools of receivables. The benefits of ABCP relative to bank lines of credit may take the form of either lower interest rates, less restrictive financial covenants, or both. Although ABCP is at best a partial substitute for bank credit, the liquidity provided by an asset backed commercial paper program can be used to hold down the costs of bank borrowing.     

Insurance Derivatives: A New Asset Class for the Capital Markets and a New Hedging Tool for the Insurance Industry

The number and severity of natural catastrophes has increased dramatically over the last decade. As a result, there is now a shortage of capacity in the property catastrophe insurance industry in the U.S. This article discusses how insurance derivatives, particularly the Chicago Board of Trade's catastrophe options contracts, represent a possible solution to this problem. These new financial instruments enable the capital markets to provide the insurance industry with the reinsurance capacity it needs. The capital markets are willing to perform this role because of the new asset class characteristics of securitized insurance risk: positive excess returns and diversification benefits.
The article also demonstrates how insurance companies can use insurance derivatives such as catastrophe options and catastrophe-linked bonds as effective, low-cost risk management tools. In reviewing the performance of the catastrophe contracts to date, the authors report promising signs of growth and liquidity in these markets.     

Measuring the economic benefit from R&D: results from the mass, length and flow programmes of the UK national measurement system

This study sought to measure the economic consequences of reduced expenditure on specific sections of the UK National Measurement System (NMS), part of the state-funded technological infrastructure. A method was developed which can be adapted to any publicly or privately financed R&D of which the benefits and cost-effectiveness are unclear or contested.
The recent interactions between the NMS and industry were investigated empirically. Five mechanisms were found to account for the majority of instances of successful value creation. Several case studies of each mechanism were collected, illustrating their existence beyond reasonable doubt.
Each of the cut projects would have been expected to have encouraged growth and profitability in identified sectors of the economy through one or more of these five mechanisms. The effects of the cuts were modelled over 30 years. Compared to the costs of the cut projects projected over the same period, the benefits to the economy were predicted to exceed the costs.     

Capital mobility,wage bargaining,and social insurance policies in an economic union

In a two-country model with mobile capital we analyse decentralized social insurance policies. These policies are a compromise between the preferences of workers and capital owners. Due to wage bargaining, worker-based social insurance contributions are borne by capital owners. These contributions affect the profitability of investment, and consequently the direction and size of capital flows. Countries will take account of these effects in determining social insurance policy. Noncooperative decision making results in tax competition and an underprovision of social insurance. In addition, increasing economic integration, represented by increasing capital mobility, could imply a divergence of social insurance levels in the two countries.     

Risk taking and failure in de novo savings and loans in the 1980s

This article examines failure rates in de novo S&Ls that initiated operations during the 1980–1986 period. Overall failure rates are similar to those for existing institutions but are found to vary significantly by location, time of charter, and organizational form. Both univariate tests and results from a probability-of-failure model indicate that inadequate capital, economic stress, poor management of higher risk lending allowed by broader powers, and operating inefficiencies contributed significantly to the likelihood of failure. Use of brokered funds and rapid asset growth are also significantly related to failure likelihood. Interestingly, for those S&Ls which eventually failed, rapid asset growth and high proportions of nonperforming assets actually delayed the timing of their failure. We interpret this to be the result of regulatory forbearance. We also find significant differences between the financial characteristics of de novo and non-de novo S&Ls.     

Time diversification and security preferences: A stochastic dominance analysis

We use stochastic dominance to test whether investor should prefer riskier securities as the investment horizon lengthens. Return distributions for stocks, bonds, and U.S. Treasury bills are generated for holding periods of one to 25 years by simulation. For each holding period, stochastic dominance tests are run to establish preferences between the alternative security classes. Contrary to previous mean-variance based studies, we find no evidence that high-risk securities (stocks) dominate low-risk securities (bonds, Treasury bills) as the investment horizon lengthens. However, we do find that corporate bonds systematically dominate government bonds.     

Real estate return correlations: Real-world limitations on relationships inferred from NCREIF data

Correlation estimates for returns between individual properties are subject to large inherent uncertainties due to limits on the amount of data that is likely to be available for the foreseeable future. After allowance for correlation sampling error, it is impossible to distinguish on an ex ante basis between the risk-reduction capabilities of mean-variance portfolio selection models and naive diversification without regard to property type or geographical location. The naive portfolio diversification strategies of typical institutional real estate portfolio managers are rational responses to limitations on the informational content of statistical analyses of historical real estate data.     

Risk aversion, liquidity, and endogenous short horizons

We analyze a competitive model in which different informationsignals get reflected in value at different points in time.If investors are sufficiently risk averse, we obtain an equilibriumin which all investors focus exclusively on the short term.In addition, we show that increasing the variance of informationlesstrading increases market depth but causes a greater proportionof investors to focus on the short-term signal, which decreasesthe informativeness of prices about the long run. Finally, wealso explore parameter spaces under which long-term informedagents wish to voluntarily disclose their information.     

Does the Japanese governance system enhance shareholder wealth? Evidence from the stock-price effects of top management

This article examines the stock-price effects of top managementturnover announcements for 432 Japanese corporations from 1985to 1990. We find that these announcements are associated withsignificantly positive abnormal returns. The returns are greaterwhen turnover is forced than when turnover represents normalsuccession. The stock-price effects are also significantly positivewhen turnover is forced and the successor is appointed fromoutside the firm. We find that large shareholders play an importantrole during outside succession. This evidence suggests thatthe disciplinary decisions of Japanese governance mechanismsare consistent with shareholder wealth maximization.