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- Volume 10, 2018
Annual Review of Financial Economics - Volume 10, 2018
Volume 10, 2018
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Liquidity, Leverage, and Regulation 10 Years After the Global Financial Crisis
Vol. 10 (2018), pp. 1–24More LessThe financial system has undergone far-reaching changes since the global financial crisis of 2008. We cast those changes in terms of shifts in the manner in which financial intermediaries manage their balance sheets. We also discuss the regulatory reform agenda, and we review the impact of regulations on market liquidity and credit availability. Current evidence suggests that the financial system has become safer, at limited unintended cost.
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The Role of Housing and Mortgage Markets in the Financial Crisis
Vol. 10 (2018), pp. 25–41More LessTen years after the financial crisis of 2008, there is widespread agreement that the boom in mortgage lending and its subsequent reversal were at the core of the Great Recession. We survey the existing evidence, which suggests that inflated house-price expectations across the economy played a central role in driving both the demand for and the supply of mortgage credit before the crisis. The great misnomer of the 2008 crisis is that it was not a subprime crisis but rather a middle-class crisis. Inflated house-price expectations led households across all income groups, especially the middle class, to increase their demand for housing and mortgage leverage. Similarly, banks lent against increasing collateral values and underestimated the risk of defaults. We highlight how these emerging facts have essential implications for policy.
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Financial Crises
Vol. 10 (2018), pp. 43–58More LessFinancial crises are runs on short-term debt. Whatever its form, short-term debt is an inherent feature of a market economy. A run is an information event in which holders of short-term debt no longer want to lend to banks because they receive information leading them to suspect the value of the backing for the debt, so they run. When runs are system-wide they threaten the solvency of the entire financial system, which then requires either public or private intervention to remedy. Runs, which most likely follow credit booms, are integral parts of movements in the macroeconomy.
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Mortgage-Default Research and the Recent Foreclosure Crisis
Vol. 10 (2018), pp. 59–100More LessThis article reviews the surge in research on mortgage default inspired by the recent foreclosure crisis. Economists already understood a great deal about default, both theoretically and empirically, when the crisis began, but new research has moved the frontier further by improving data sources, building dynamic optimizing models of default, and explicitly addressing reverse causality between rising foreclosures and falling house prices. Mortgage defaults also featured prominently in early papers that pointed to subprime and other privately securitized mortgages as fundamental drivers of the housing boom, although this research has been criticized recently. Going forward, improvements to data and models will allow researchers to make progress on the two central questions in this literature. First, what are the relative contributions of adverse life events and negative equity to mortgage default? Second, why is default so rare, even among people with deep negative equity or acute financial distress?
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Recent Research on Banks’ Financial Reporting and Financial Stability
Vol. 10 (2018), pp. 101–123More LessBanks’ financial reporting requirements and discretionary choices may affect financial stability by altering one or more of the likelihood that banks violate regulatory capital requirements, banks’ internal discipline over risk management and financial reporting, and external market and regulatory discipline over banks. In this article, I discuss five recent empirical papers that examine these channels linking banks’ financial reporting to financial stability. I explain how these papers identify economic contexts and associated financial reporting constructs that enable powerful examinations of these channels, and how they employ research designs that meaningfully address the issues regarding valid causal inference raised by Acharya & Ryan (2016). I conclude that, while each study examines a specific channel or two in a specific setting, collectively the literature is making steady progress in enhancing our understanding of the causal forces at play in the channels linking banks’ financial reporting and financial stability, the goal set forth by Acharya & Ryan (2016). I also identify open questions that these papers suggest for future research on the effects of banks’ financial reporting on financial stability.
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Systemic Risk 10 Years Later
Vol. 10 (2018), pp. 125–152More LessTen years ago, the financial crisis spurred research focused on systemic risk. This article examines the history and application of the SRISK measure, which was developed at that time and is now widely used in monitoring systemic risk around the globe. The concept is explained and a variety of ways to measure SRISK are developed. In this article, new results are presented on the uncertainty associated with the SRISK measure and on how it compares with other related measures from both academics and regulators. By focusing on the mechanism by which undercapitalization of the financial sector initiates a financial crisis, new research examines how the probability of a financial crisis is affected by the level of SRISK and, consequently, how much SRISK a country can stand without having a high probability of crisis. The model used to evaluate this probability recognizes the externalities between financial institutions that make an undercapitalized firm or country more fragile if other firms and countries are also undercapitalized.
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Regulatory Reform
Andrew Metrick, and June RheeVol. 10 (2018), pp. 153–172More LessIn the wake of the global financial crisis (GFC), many nations embarked on reform to the financial regulatory system. This reform, unprecedented in its scope, touched virtually every part of the financial system in the United States and Western Europe. This article summarizes the key reforms, explains how these reforms fit together, assesses the relevant scholarly literature, and suggests six significant areas of open questions for researchers. These six areas are (a) liquidity rules, (b) central clearing of swaps, (c) shadow banking, (d) lenders of last resort, (e) extended guarantees, and (f) resolution and restructuring.
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Intermediary Asset Pricing and the Financial Crisis
Vol. 10 (2018), pp. 173–197More LessIntermediary asset pricing understands asset prices and risk premia through the lens of frictions in financial intermediation. Perhaps motivated by phenomena in the financial crisis, intermediary asset pricing has been one of the fastest-growing areas of research in finance. This article explains the theory behind intermediary asset pricing and, in particular, how it is different from other approaches to asset pricing. This article also covers selective empirical evidence in favor of intermediary asset pricing.
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Deregulating Wall Street
Vol. 10 (2018), pp. 199–217More LessWe argue that implementation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act has contributed significantly to the reduction of systemic risk in the United States. However, Dodd-Frank also introduced burdensome rules that have little to do with systemic risk. This article evaluates the trade-off between capital regulation and regulation of scope in the context of Dodd-Frank, with a particular emphasis on the Volcker Rule. Recent regulatory reforms aimed at rolling back Dodd-Frank are evaluated and discussed.
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Deglobalization: The Rise of Disembedded Unilateralism
Vol. 10 (2018), pp. 219–237More LessThere is some evidence of deglobalization in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. The economic data are mixed and indicate a stall, but not a collapse, of globalization. Cross-border financial flows have been reduced, but the overall outcome mostly reflects changes in European banking. Trade is not growing as quickly as before the crisis, but that may be the consequence of technology shortening supply chains. There are more protectionist measures, but they have not radically cut trade. But political deglobalization has advanced much further, and consequently, there is the prospect of more intense conflicts over trade and financial regulation in the future, as well as one of an increasing backlash against migration. Globalization depends on a complex system of regulating cross-border flows and on embedding domestic rules in an international order. The political momentum is directed against the existing methods or regulation and against the complex rules that had been established to manage globalization. The promise given by populist myth builders is that eliminating international entanglements can make life simpler, less regulated, and above all, less subject to the dictates of an administrative class. Modern economic nationalism or unilateralism can be understood as a reversal of the process of embedding and may thus be termed “disembedded unilateralism.”
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Measuring Investor Sentiment
Vol. 10 (2018), pp. 239–259More LessInvestor sentiment indicates how far an asset value deviates from its economic fundamentals. In this article, we review various measures of investor sentiment based on market, survey, and text and media data. There is ample evidence that sentiment can explain returns on stocks that are difficult to value and costly to arbitrage, such as unprofitable stocks, non-dividend-paying stocks, extreme growth stocks, and distressed stocks. However, much remains to be done. We discuss three issues for future research: aggregating measures over various sources and various time horizons, linking investor sentiment to technical analysis, and statistically modeling the evolution of investor sentiment.
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Risks in China's Financial System
Vol. 10 (2018), pp. 261–286More LessMotivated by growing concerns about the risks and instability of China's financial system, this article reviews several commonly perceived financial risks and discusses their roots in China's politico-economic institutions. We emphasize the need to evaluate these risks within China's unique economic and financial systems, in which the state and nonstate sectors coexist and the financial system serves as a key tool of the government to fund its economic policies. Overall, we argue that (a) a financial crisis is unlikely to happen in the near future and (b) the ultimate risk lies with China's economic growth, as a vicious circle of distortions in the financial system lowers the efficiency of capital allocation and economic growth and will eventually exacerbate financial risks in the long run.
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Shadow Banking in China
Vol. 10 (2018), pp. 287–308More LessShadow banking and the Chinese economy are two subjects that have independently garnered much attention. A new but actively growing literature is now emerging at their intersection. I review this literature and argue that shadow banking in China is not fundamentally different from the textbook definition of shadow banking, namely credit intermediation with maturity mismatch that is structured to avoid regulation. I emphasize maturity mismatch because that is what creates run risk and makes any shadow banking system inherently fragile. I explain how the rise of shadow banking in China can be traced back to stricter liquidity regulation, how shadow banking has changed the financial landscape in China, and what the current state of the industry is. Interactions between shadow banking and the rest of the economy have some characteristics that reflect China's unique politico-economic structure, but this is because the rest of the economy has these characteristics, not because there is something fundamentally different about the forces behind shadow banking in China.
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Liquidity, Risk Premia, and the Financial Transmission of Monetary Policy
Vol. 10 (2018), pp. 309–328More LessIn recent years, there has been a resurgence of research on the transmission of monetary policy through the financial system, fueled in part by empirical findings showing that monetary policy affects asset prices and the financial system in ways not explained by the New Keynesian paradigm. In particular, monetary policy appears to impact risk premia in stock and bond prices and to effectively control the liquidity premium in the economy (the cost of holding liquid assets). We review these findings and recent theories proposed to explain them, and we outline a conceptual framework that unifies them. The framework revolves around the central role of liquidity in risk sharing and explains how monetary policy governs its production and use within the financial sector.
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Risk-Neutral Densities: A Review
Vol. 10 (2018), pp. 329–359More LessTrading in options with a wide range of exercise prices and a single maturity allows a researcher to extract the market's risk-neutral density (RND) over the underlying price at expiration. The RND contains investors’ beliefs about the true probabilities blended with their risk preferences, both of which are of great interest to academics and practitioners alike. With a particular focus on US equity options, I review the historical development of this powerful concept, practical details of fitting an RND to options market prices, and the many ways in which investigators have tried to distill true expectations and risk premia from observed RNDs. I briefly discuss areas of active current research including the pricing kernel puzzle and the volatility surface, and offer thoughts on what has been learned about RNDs so far and fruitful directions for future research.
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Capital Reallocation
Andrea L. Eisfeldt, and Yu ShiVol. 10 (2018), pp. 361–386More LessCapital reallocation is procyclical, despite measured productive reallocative opportunities being acyclical or even countercyclical. This article reviews the advances in the literature studying the causes and consequences of capital reallocation (or lack thereof). We provide a comprehensive set of stylized facts about capital reallocation for the United States and an illustrative model of capital reallocation in equilibrium. We relate capital reallocation to the broader literatures on business cycles with financial frictions and on resource misallocation and aggregate productivity. Throughout, we provide directions for future research.
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Capital Structure and a Firm's Workforce
Vol. 10 (2018), pp. 387–412More LessWhile businesses require funding to start and grow, they also rely on human capital, which affects how they raise funds. Labor market frictions make financing labor different than financing capital. Unlike capital, labor cannot be owned and can act strategically. Workers face unemployment costs, can negotiate for higher wages, are protected by employment regulations, and face retirement risk. I propose using these frictions as a framework for understanding the unique impact of a firm's workforce on its capital structure. For instance, high leverage often makes managing labor more difficult by undermining employees’ job security and increasing the need for costly workforce reductions. But firms can also use leverage to their advantage, such as in labor negotiations and defined benefit pensions. This research can help firms account for the needs and management of their workforce when making financing decisions.
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Common-Ownership Concentration and Corporate Conduct
Vol. 10 (2018), pp. 413–448More LessThe question of whether and how partial common-ownership links between strategically interacting firms affect firm objectives and behavior has been the subject of theoretical inquiry for decades. Since then, the growth of intermediated asset management and consolidation in the asset management sector has led to more pronounced common-ownership links at the level at which corporate control is exercised. Recent empirical research has provided evidence consistent with the literature's prediction that common-ownership concentration (CoOCo) can affect product market outcomes. The resulting antitrust concerns have received worldwide attention. However, because CoOCo can change the objective function of a firm, the potential implications span all fields of economics that involve corporate conduct, including corporate governance, strategy, industrial organization, and financial economics. This article connects the papers establishing the theoretical foundations, reviews the empirical and legal literatures, and discusses challenges and opportunities for future research.
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Forecasting Methods in Finance
Vol. 10 (2018), pp. 449–479More LessOur review highlights some of the key challenges in financial forecasting problems and opportunities arising from the unique features of financial data. We analyze the difficulty of establishing predictability in an environment with a low signal-to-noise ratio, persistent predictors, and instability in predictive relations arising from competitive pressures and investors’ learning. We discuss approaches for forecasting the mean, variance, and probability distribution of asset returns. Finally, we discuss how to evaluate financial forecasts while accounting for the possibility that numerous forecasting models may have been considered, leading to concerns of data mining.
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Variance Risk Premia, Asset Predictability Puzzles, and Macroeconomic Uncertainty
Vol. 10 (2018), pp. 481–497More LessThis article reviews the predictability evidence on the variance risk premium: (a) It predicts significant positive risk premia across equity, bond, currency, and credit markets; (b) the predictability peaks at few-month horizons and dies out afterward; (c) such a short-run predictability is complementary to the long-run predictability offered by the price-to-earnings ratio, forward rate, interest differential, and leverage ratio. Several structural approaches based on the notion of economic uncertainty are discussed for generating these stylized facts about the variance risk premium, which has broad implications for various empirical asset pricing puzzles.
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