Annual Review of Financial Economics - Volume 8, 2016

I review the recent high-frequency trader (HFT) literature to single out the economic channels by which HFTs affect market quality. I first group the various theoretical studies according to common denominators and discuss the economic costs and benefits they identify. For each group, I then review the empirical literature that speaks to either the models’ assumptions or their predictions. This enables me to come to a data-weighted judgement on the economic value of HFTs.

This article examines money market funds and the regulation that was promulgated in the wake of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy during the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008. Various explanations for the ensuing run-like behavior are discussed, including a first-mover advantage related to potential fire sales, the ability to redeem shares at a stable $1.00 when funds are valued below $1.00, and flights to quality and transparency. We then discuss regulatory reform, beginning with the SEC's 2010 amendments and concluding with its 2014 Money Market Fund Reform rules, which require (a) all funds to implement liquidity fees and redemption gates and (b) institutional prime funds to price at their floating net asset value. The economic underpinnings of the SEC's final policy choices are discussed and compared to alternatives, such as capital buffers, that were considered but not adopted.

We describe a framework for analyzing the dynamics of investment, borrowing, and payout decisions by public corporations. We assume that managers act entirely in their own long-run interests, subject to a governance constraint that limits their rents. Risk-neutral managers invest to maximize value but wait too long to disinvest. Efficient disinvestment can be forced by the right level of debt or by takeovers. Risk-averse managers underinvest; they do not waste free cash flow, because the governance constraint is binding. They smooth rents and consequently payout, so that changes in borrowing become a shock absorber for volatility of operating income. We obtain the Lintner model of payout if risk-averse managers have a utility function with habit formation. We show how to adapt the dynamic framework to analyze several other issues, including the effects of asymmetric information. We show that Lintner-style payout smoothing can also arise when risk-neutral managers are better informed than outsiders.

It is useful to reflect on how the financial environment changed between the credit crunch episode of the early 1990s and the recent financial crisis. What did we learn from the earlier crisis, and how did the credit crunch literature help guide policy in the more recent crisis? Two important changes were the consolidation of the banking sector and the dramatic growth in nonbank financial intermediaries, which are much more susceptible than banks to liquidity risks because of a lack of deposit insurance. This article highlights that, although security broker-dealers, money market mutual funds, and issuers of asset-backed securities were not particularly important in the early 1990s, when the bank credit crunch occurred, they grew dramatically to become both major sources of financing and key elements in exacerbating the problems experienced during the recent financial crisis.

Economic theories posit that bank liability insurance is designed to serve the public interest by mitigating systemic risk in the banking system through the reduction of liquidity risk. Political theories, however, see liability insurance as serving the private interests of banks, bank borrowers, and depositors, potentially at the expense of the public interest. Empirical evidence—both historical and contemporary—supports the private-interest approach, as liability insurance has been associated with increases, rather than decreases, in systemic risk. Exceptions to this rule are rare and reflect design features that prevent moral hazard and adverse selection. Prudential regulation of insured banks has generally not been a very effective tool in limiting the systemic risk increases associated with liability insurance. This likely reflects purposeful failures in regulation; if liability insurance is motivated by private interests, then there would be little point to removing the subsidies it creates through strict regulation. The same logic explains why more effective policies for addressing systemic risk are not employed in place of liability insurance. The politics of liability insurance thus should not be narrowly construed to encompass only the vested interests of bankers. Indeed, in many countries, liability insurance has been installed as a pass-through subsidy targeted to particular classes of bank borrowers.

This article reviews the most pertinent literature on the sources and uses of equity capital in the US property-casualty (P-C) insurance industry. P-C insurers serve risk management and risk-bearing functions in the economy. Insurers create diversified risk pools consisting of large numbers of exposures. However, even in the most highly diversified risk pools, uncertainty is not reduced to zero, and insurers must hold equity capital to credibly promise that claims will be paid even if losses are higher than expected. We begin with a financial overview of the industry. Insurers are well capitalized and financially stable, withstanding large catastrophic events and economic crises. Analysis of capital regulation further shows that regulation is not binding for the vast majority of insurers. We then review the theoretical and empirical evidence on the most important economic phenomena impinging on capital in P-C insurance: underwriting cycles, internal capital markets (ICMs), and optimal capital structure. P-C insurers are heavy users of ICMs, and insurer ICM transactions are efficient. According to available evidence, P-C insurers have optimal capital structures and behave according to the trade-off theory of capital structure.

The 2008 financial crisis brought a focus on the potential for a large insurance firm to contribute to systemic risk. Among the concerns raised was that a negative shock to insurers could lead to a fire sale of corporate bonds, a market where insurers are among the largest participants. This manuscript discusses the existing evidence on life insurance firms and systemic risk, with a focus on the investment-grade corporate bond market. We provide some tentative evidence that life insurers tend to absorb liquidity risk by purchasing bonds when the bonds are less liquid than average. However, we do not find evidence that insurers increased bond purchases specifically during the financial crisis, leaving open the question of whether insurers would play a stabilizing role in a future crisis.

Credit default swaps (CDS) have grown to be a multi-trillion-dollar, globally important market. The academic literature on CDS has developed in parallel with the market practices, public debates, and regulatory initiatives in this market. We selectively review the extant literature, identify remaining gaps, and suggest directions for future research. We present a narrative including the following four aspects. First, we discuss the benefits and costs of CDS, emphasizing the need for more research in order to better understand the welfare implications. Second, we provide an overview of the postcrisis market structure and the new regulatory framework for CDS. Third, we place CDS in the intersection of law and finance, focusing on agency conflicts and financial intermediation. Last, we examine the role of CDS in international finance, especially during and after the recent sovereign credit crises.

This survey reviews the literature on sell-side analysts’ forecasts and their implications for asset pricing. We review the literature on the supply and demand forces shaping analysts’ forecasting decisions as well as on the implications of the information they produce for both the cash flow and the discount rate components of security returns. Analysts’ forecasts bring prices in line with the expectations they embody, consistent with the notion that they contain information about future cash flows. However, analysts’ forecasts exhibit predictable biases, and the market appears to underreact to the information in forecasts and to not fully filter the biases in forecasts. Analysts’ forecasts are also helpful in estimating expected returns on securities, but evidence on the relation between analysts’ forecasts and expected returns is still scarce. We conclude by identifying unanswered questions and offering suggestions for future research.

We provide a comprehensive analysis of the impact of economic and financial globalization on asset return comovements over the past 35 years. Our globalization indicators draw a distinction between de jure openness that results from changes in the regulatory environment and de facto or realized openness, as well as between capital market restrictions across different asset classes. Although globalization has trended positively for most of our sample, the global financial crisis and its aftermath have provided new headwinds. Equity, bond, and foreign exchange returns often have different responses to globalization. We generally find weak evidence of comovement measures reacting to globalization and often find other economic factors to be equally or more important determinants.

As the cost of education rises and student debt reaches new highs, more research has focused on financing the acquisition of human capital. Most research has had a positive focus, examining the effect of debt on student choices and outcomes. However, because education financing involves many public policy choices, normative questions have become more prominent. We discuss the trade-offs involved in these choices and propose simple models to help shape these questions. We first develop an overlapping generations framework of student debt to examine the macroeconomic impact of shifting from a parent-funded to a student debt–based financing system. We then consider a framework that includes the supply-side response to different funding regimes; that is, how do enrollment and tuition decisions of schools respond to changes in education financing?

We show that shifting from parent-based funding to a student loan program can lower aggregate savings, although welfare still improves if education has a higher return than physical capital investment. A public student loan program also tends to promote enrollment at the cost of higher tuition at for-profit schools and deteriorating loan performance, paid for by taxpayers. Alternative contract designs, with school participation in the lending program, tend to ameliorate these issues.

Bankruptcy is the legal process by which financially distressed firms and individuals resolve their debts. It is an important part of the legal environment for small business owners and their lenders because small businesses are very risky and often fail and because bankruptcy law affects how business owners and their lenders are treated in the event of failure. Both personal and corporate bankruptcy law are relevant for most small businesses, as even when businesses are incorporated, lenders often require that business owners personally guarantee loans to the business. This article discusses theoretical models and empirical tests of how bankruptcy law affects small business, including the effects of bankruptcy law on incentives to start and remain in business, how bankruptcy law affects small business credit, and whether bankruptcy law leads to efficient decisions concerning whether failing businesses reorganize or liquidate. Research using small business data from both the United States and other countries is covered in this survey.