An Examination of the Impact of the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982 on Commercial Banks and Savings and Loans

This paper evaluates the effects of events leading to the passage of the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982. The evidence suggests that the call for reform by President Reagan's Housing Commission and the Senate passage of the bill produced positive abnormal returns to stockholders of large savings and loans and commercial banks. Stockholders of small S&Ls and banks, on the other hand, generally experienced negative abnormal returns. Furthermore, when hopes of passage of the Act faded, significant negative (positive) abnormal returns were experienced by stockholders of large (small) S&Ls and banks.     

Bank Earnings Management and Tail Risk during the Financial Crisis

We show that a pattern of earnings management in bank financial statements has little bearing on downside risk during quiet periods, but seems to have a big impact during a financial crisis. Banks demonstrating more aggressive earnings management prior to 2007 exhibit substantially higher stock market risk once the financial crisis begins as measured by the incidence of large weekly stock price “crashes” as well as by the pattern of full‐year returns. Stock price crashes also predict future deterioration in operating performance. Bank regulators may therefore interpret them as early warning signs of impending problems.     

Moral Hazard and Information Sharing: A Model of Financial Information Gathering Agencies

We propose a theory of information gathering agencies in a world of informational asymmetries and moral hazard. In a setting in which true firm values are certified by screening agents whose payoffs depend on noisy ex post monitors of information quality, the formation of information gathering agencies (groups of screening agents) is justified on two grounds. First, it enables screening agents to diversify their risky payoffs. Second, it allows information sharing. The first effect itself is insufficient despite the risk aversion of screening agents and the stochastic independence of the monitors used to compensate them.     

Information Effects Associated with Debt-for-Equity and Equity-for-Debt Exchange Offers

This study investigates the information effect caused by a firm's change in capital structure via debt-for-equity and equity-for-debt exchange offers. The evidence suggests that the former transactions lead to abnormal stock price increases, while the latter lead to abnormal stock price decreases. In addition, findings based on analysis of bond returns and cross-sectional regressions do not lend support to the wealth-transfer- and tax-effect hypotheses, but they are consistent with the information-effect hypothesis.