A study on risk retention regulation in asset securitization process

We study the impacts of the recently proposed risk retention regulation for asset securitization, i.e. the issuer has to retain a certain proportion of securitized assets. We also consider the frequently discussed measure to require the issuer disclose certain information of the securitized assets. In a dynamic model with asymmetric information between a risk-averse originating bank and a continuum of risk-averse investors, we find that it is impossible for a flat-rate retention requirement to be optimal for all asset types. Although both risk retention and information disclosure regulations are effective in reducing investors’ informational loss, neither can unconditionally enhance social welfare upon the unregulated case. For both measures, there are associated regulatory cost: risk retention regulation aggravates adverse selection problem because it undermines the channel of informational revelation by the choice of securitization intensity, and information disclosure requirement incurs a signalling cost by distorting banks’ securitization intensity in sending signals. Under an appropriate set of conditions we find that information disclosure requirement complements risk retention regulation when investors are sufficiently risk averse.     

Financial Deregulation and the Role of Statecraft: Lessons from Britain’s 1971 Competition and Credit Control Measures

Within the financialisation literature, a number of approaches identify the coexistence of financial expansion and productive stagnation. Yet there is no consensus on which direction causality operates between these two phenomena. This impasse has been widened by the lack of attention paid to the role of statecraft strategies in mediating possible causal mechanisms. This article contributes to rectifying this shortcoming by focusing on the governance advantages granted to states through financial deregulation. By presenting archival evidence on Britain’s 1971 Competition and Credit Control deregulation, this article lends support to financialisation accounts that argue that weaknesses in the productive economy spurred financial expansion, yet it also indicates that the state’s desire for depoliticised forms of governance played a crucial role in mediating this relationship. This further suggests that International Political Economy should focus on the strategic manner in which states relate to markets.     

Credit market segmentation,essentiality of commodities,and supermodularity

We consider incomplete market economies where agents are subject to price-dependent trading constraints compatible with credit market segmentation. Equilibrium existence is guaranteed when either commodities are essential, i.e, indifference curves through individuals’ endowments do not intersect the boundary of the consumption set, or utility functions are concave and supermodular. The smoothness of mappings representing preferences, financial promises, or trading constraints is not required. Hence, we may include in our framework economies where ambiguity is allowed and agents maximize the minimum expected utility over a set of priors, or where markets include non-recourse collateralized loans.     

Political uncertainty and a firm's credit risk: Evidence from the international CDS market

Using a large sample of firms with single-name credit default swap (CDS) contracts in 30 countries, we document the evidence that political uncertainty, proxied by national election dummy, is positively related to firm-level credit risk. Specifically, this positive relation is more pronounced for the firms that have no political connection or poor international diversification, and in the countries with higher political uncertainty and lower investor protections. Further, by using a difference-in-differences approach, we find evidence to support idiosyncratic volatility and debt rollover channels through which political uncertainty affects the credit risk of individual firm.     

Is ex-post credit risk affected by the cycles? The case of Italian banks

The objective of this research is to empirically examine if both credit and business cycle affect the ex-post credit risk (i.e. non-performing loans) in the banking system of Italy for the period 1995Q1–2014Q1. The increase in NPLs post-2008 has put into question the robustness of many European banks and the stability of the whole sector. It still remains a serious challenge, especially in Italy which is one of the countries that hit by the financial crisis. By employing fixed and random effects and a dynamic GMM estimation as econometric methodologies I find results that underline common causes for NPLs. Higher NPLs in Italy are mostly due to worse macroeconomic conditions (i.e. bad phase of business cycle) and due to excess credit. Through a Granger causality test, my arguments found even more support. Such findings can be helpful when designing macro-prudential as well as NPL resolution policies.     

融资渠道与中国区域技术创新

运用2011-2016年中国内地31个省份面板数据，通过固定效应模型检验不同融资渠道对全国以及东中西部地区技术创新的影响。结果表明：①债权融资在整体上对技术创新影响不显著，分地区看，其在东部地区发挥了促进作用，而在中西部地区则起到抑制作用；②从整体及中西部地区看，股权融资对技术创新的影响不显著，且抑制了东部地区技术创新；③对股市板块进行细分后，整体上股权融资中只有创业板股权融资显著促进了技术创新水平提升，主板和中小板的作用均不显著。     

法制环境、管理者能力与企业债务契约

本文从管理者能力的视角出发,选取2010-2018年沪、深A股上市公司为样本,实证分析了管理者能力对债务契约的影响及其影响路径。研究证明:管理者能力越强,企业的债务期限结构越短、债务融资成本越低。进一步研究发现,在不同的法制环境中,二者的关系存在异质性,即管理者能力对债务期限结构、债务融资成本的影响在法制环境较高的地区较为显著。本文丰富了企业债务契约的影响因素,探寻了管理者能力影响债务期限结构、债务融资成本的路径。     

Reputation,risk-taking,and macroprudential policy

This paper examines the role of macroprudential capital requirements in preventing inefficient credit booms in a model with reputational externalities. In our model, unprofitable banks have strong incentives to invest in risky assets when macroeconomic fundamentals are good in order to avoid the stigma of being assessed as low ability by the market. We show that across-the-system countercyclical capital requirements that deter such gambling are constrained optimal when fundamentals are neither extremely weak nor extremely strong.     

Write-down bonds,credit risk and imperfect information

A structural model of pricing Write-Down (hereafter WD) bonds under imperfect information has been developed to investigate the effect of WD bonds issuance on credit risk. Information is not only delayed but also asymmetrically distributed between managers and outside investors. We derive analytical solutions for corporate securities prices and find the issuance of WD bonds could significantly improve firm value via reducing bankruptcy cost. Our numerical results further demonstrate that the WD bonds issuance increases corporate risk tolerance and reduces the risk of bankruptcy and credit spreads under imperfect information.     

Wall of cash: The investment-cash flow sensitivity when capital becomes abundant

In the mid 2000s the oil and gas industry was hit by what might be best described as a ‘wall of cash’ as oil prices successively reached new record levels and access to external financing improved greatly. In this article we investigate what this sudden abundance of liquidity implied for the investment-cash flow relationship, the interpretation of which continues to generate controversy in the literature. For financially constrained firms we find that the investment-cash flow sensitivity decreases in the abundance period (2005–2008), suggesting that the financing constraints became less binding in this period. For financially unconstrained firms the investment-cash flow sensitivity instead increases over time, suggesting that this relationship is driven by agency problems related to free cash flow. Our paper is the first in the investment-cash flow literature to bring evidence from a natural experiment in which there was an unexpected, exogenous, substantial, and persistent decrease in the cost of external financing.