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This paper uses risk-shifting models to analyze some potential policy responses to asset price booms and bubbles. We argue that the presence of risk shifting can generate many of the features of such booms and so is a reasonable framework to explore these issues. Our analysis offers several insights. First, we find that determining whether there is indeed a bubble in asset markets is unimportant, since risk-shifting leads to the same inefficiencies regardless of whether it gives rise to a bubble or not. Second, while risk shifting offers a reason for intervention, we find the leading proposals for interventions against booms have ambiguous welfare implications in our model. Specifically, we show tighter monetary policy may exacerbate some inefficiencies due to risk shifting even as it mitigates others, and that leverage restrictions may fan asset prices and exacerbate excessive leverage rather than curb it.

Following the recent and on-going tightenings of capital requirements in response to the financial crisis many experts have predicted a decline in the importance of the banking sector as banks struggle to compete with other providers of financial intermediation. The purpose of our research is to investigate this hypothesis in a model where the need for bank regulation is explained from first principles.Our analysis suggests that, in a monopolistic competition setting, with higher capital requirements the bank sector may see bank competition reduced as the sector becomes dominated by fewer banks. Parallel with this development depositors may stop using banks in favor of an outside option that can be interpreted as banks which are either unregulated or subject to other, possibly less stringent, types of regulation. It is noteworthy that the first effect goes against an objective often stated by regulators, namely to reduce the number of large banks in the market, banks which may be "too big to fail".We explain tightened capital requirements as the regulator's response to financial innovation. In our model such innovation increases the riskiness of certain asset classes without improving on their expected return. The only way to prevent banks from using these new assets is by increasing the capital requirements for all asset classes. The costs of these requirements are ultimately born by depositors and may lead them to look for better returns elsewhere.Our model builds on the Salop (1979) model and in doing so also sheds some light on its properties. In particular we show that so-called monopoly equilibria only exist when the number of banks is constrained to be an integer.

We provide evidence regarding mutual funds’ motivation to hold lottery stocks. Funds with higher managerial ownership invest less in lottery stocks, suggesting that managers themselves do not prefer such stocks. The evidence instead supports that managers cater to fund investors’ preference for such stocks. In particular, funds with more lottery holdings attract larger flows after portfolio disclosure compared with their peers, and poorly performing funds tend to engage in risk shifting by increasing their lottery holdings toward year-ends. Funds’ aggregate holdings of lottery stocks contribute to their overpricing.

In this paper, we assess the relationship between risk-shifting of mutual funds, measured as benchmark-adjusted factor-based investment style change following a structural break, and their risk-adjusted performance. We isolate only the breaks in style risk beyond those embedded in the funds’ benchmark index to eliminate any natural style risk changes resulting from varying company fundamentals over time. We group style risk changes into extreme (style rotation), moderate (style drifting), and weak (style-strengthening/weakening) and assess which investment style category is most profitable to shift in to and out of. Our findings show that funds that exhibit breaks generate overall better risk-adjusted performance than those that do not. Funds that are most successful in risk-shifting have both statistically and economically distinct risk-adjusted performance, make shifts towards small/large/value/growth style combinations rather than mid-cap and blend style, exhibit breaks less frequently and has more moderate risk-shifts than funds that are unsuccessful.

Η παρούσα διδακτορική διατριβή επικεντρώνεται στη διερεύνηση του ρόλου της επαναδιαπραγμάτευσης του χρέους ως μέσο άμβλυνσης ή επίλυσης του προβλήματος μετακύλισης κινδύνου, το οποίο εισήχθη στη διεθνή βιβλιογραφία από τους Jensen and Meckling (1976). Το εν λόγω πρόβλημα ανακύπτει από την ύπαρξη κινήτρου των μετόχων μιας επιχείρησης να επωφεληθούν από επενδύσεις υψηλού κινδύνου σε βάρος των πιστωτών, και αποτελεί μια από τις κύριες πηγές σύγκρουσης συμφερόντων μεταξύ μετόχων και πιστωτών. Η μετακύλιση κινδύνου ανήκει σε μια ευρύτερη κατηγορία ενεργειών με ονομασία ‘κρυφές ενέργειες’, επειδή ο δανειολήπτης, εν προκειμένω ο μέτοχος, προχωρεί σε μια επενδυτική ενέργεια εν αγνοία του δανειστή (Ziegler, 1998). Σε γενικό πλαίσιο, η παρούσα διδακτορική διατριβή συμβάλλει σε ποικίλους τομείς της βιβλιογραφίας. Πρώτον, συνεισφέρουμε στη σχετική βιβλιογραφία δείχνοντας ότι η επαναδιαπραγμάτευση του χρέους μπορεί να θεωρηθεί μία εναλλακτική λύση σε σχέση με τους έως τώρα καλά μελετημένους τρόπους (π.χ. χρήση των warrants, μετατρέψιμο χρέος, βραχυπρόθεσμο χρέος) για την άμβλυνση του προβλήματος μετακύλισης κινδύνου. Δεύτερον, η μελέτη μας συμπληρώνει και επεκτείνει προηγούμενες μελέτες σχετικές με την τιμολόγηση του χρέους. Η υπάρχουσα θεωρητική βιβλιογραφία εξετάζει είτε το πρόβλημα μετακύλισης κινδύνου (Leland, 1998; Ericsson, 2000; D´ecamps and Djembissi, 2007; Djembissi, 2011), είτε την επαναδιαπραγμάτευση του χρέους (Andeson and Sundaresan, 1996; Mella Barral and Perraudin, 1997; Fan and Sundaresan, 2000). Εξ’ όσων γνωρίζουμε, αυτή είναι η πρώτη μελέτη που αναπτύσσει ένα αναλυτικό μοντέλο συνεχούς χρόνου, το οποίο συνδυάζει τις δυο περιοχές. Τρίτον, συμβάλλουμε στις εμπειρικές μελέτες που αφορούν στη μετακύλιση κινδύνου, δείχνοντας ότι οι εταιρείες που αντιμετωπίζουν οικονομική δυσπραγία αλλά επαναδιαπραγματεύονται τις δανειακές τους υποχρεώσεις αντιστρέφουν την τάση για ανάληψη υπερβολικού κινδύνου. Τέλος, η μελέτη αυτή είναι η πρώτη που συνδέει το είδος επαναδιαπραγμάτευσης του χρέους με τα κίνητρα των μετόχων για μετακύλιση κινδύνου, εξετάζοντας ένα μεγάλο δείγμα 30.108 επαναδιαπραγματεύσεων δανειακών συμβάσεων.

We document the effects of higher borrowing cost on private firms by exploiting a novel quasi-experiment and a unique and comprehensive dataset from Sweden. In June 2010, the central bank of Sweden increased the repo rate unexpectedly and exposed firms with long term loans maturing right before or after the hike to different cost of borrowing. Consistent with the debt overhang theory, we find that higher cost of borrowing has a significant negative effect on investment, and more for highly levered firms. Contrary to the risk shifting theory, we find no evidence that distressed firms engage in activities that are riskier ex-post.

Including contingent convertible bonds (coco) in the capital structure of a bank affects the sensitivity to risk of its equity-based compensation. Such risk-shifting incentives can be reduced if the coco bonds are well-designed. Similarly, we show that compensating executives with well-designed coco bonds can also reduce risk-shifting incentives. In practice, however, most coco bonds have characteristics that result in both stock and coco compensation having large sensitivities to changes in asset risk — equity-based compensation encourages executives to increase risk, coco compensation to reduce risk. We show that a pay package combining both stock and coco can practically eliminate risk-shifting incentives and that it can be implemented with a bank’s preexisting coco bonds.

This paper reexamines whether investors value payout and why. I study abnormal stock returns around regulatory enforcement actions that restrict bank dividends and repurchases. Market reactions are significantly worse for enforced banks that pay out than for those that do not. Withstanding alternative explanations and parallel trend concerns, these results present rare, causal evidence of a value to corporate distribution. The cross-section of abnormal returns suggests that risk-shifting, not agency cost-reduction, drives payout. In my sample of distressed banks, especially around financial crises, the ability to shift risk through payout has value.

We find that following options listings, U.S. firms enjoy an average 17 bps interest reduction in new bank loans. These savings are greater among more opaque borrowers, which provides support for the information production channel. This effect is, however, absent when the options market is illiquid or highly active. Consistent with risk-shifting, borrowers with more active options markets pay higher spreads. Post-options loans carry higher spreads than pre-options loans when managers exhibit stronger risk-shifting incentives. Options listings lead to shorter (longer) loan maturities for unrated (investment-grade) borrowers, while the influence on collateral and covenant restrictions is consistent with both channels.

Using a natural experiment to identify the causal effect of an increase in default risk on firm actions, I find little evidence managers shift risk to corporate pension plans following an exogenous shock to the firm’s long-term liabilities. The finding is robust to focusing on firms where the incentive to engage in risk shifting is arguably the greatest, such as financially vulnerable firms and firms with fewer agency conflicts. This study casts doubt on the risk-shifting hypothesis and shows managers do not take risk-shifting actions that would increase shareholder value even when those actions pose little threat to managerial utility.

How does the interaction of uncertainty and R&D impact corporate investment? We provide evidence that R&D significantly increases corporate investment responsiveness to PVGO news and uncertainty shocks. These results are consistent with predictions from the R&D-based real options model of corporate investment. To establish credible causal results we combine new measures of systematic and firm-specific PVGO shocks, for which we utilize stock price and option data, with exogenous measures of R&D capital stocks derived from panel variation in state R&D tax credits. We also rule out a number of potentially competing explanations for our results, including firm-level differences in lumpiness of investments, financial frictions, lifecycle growth opportunities or moral hazard-implied asset substitution or risk shifting.

We survey institutional investors on the convertible bond issuance decision. Investors believe that convertibles are preferred over equity in order to avoid equity dilution. We also find support for traditional convertible bond issuing theories, such as the backdoor equity, sequential financing, risk shifting, and risk disagreement models. Investors attribute little importance to factors that make convertible bonds more attractive for hedge funds such as volatility and dividend payments on the underlying stocks. This latter result is likely related to the smaller role that convertible arbitrage activity started to play in this market.

The question of whether convertible bonds are issued to combat the risk-shifting problem is a subject of debate in the literature, primarily because of the unavailability of clear measures regarding managerial risk-shifting incentives. Taking advantage of recently developed inside debt-holding measures for CEOs, we find strong evidence in support of the risk-shifting hypothesis. When a CEO holds a large amount of inside debt, three distinct patterns emerge: (i) the firm exhibits a lower ratio of outstanding convertibles to total debt; (ii) the firm is less likely to issue convertibles than straight debt; and (iii) the firm devises contract terms to decrease the chance of conversion when it issues convertibles. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

Equity option markets can have a dual effect on firms' cost of debt. On the one hand, options attract more informed investors, which increases price informativeness and reduces information asymmetries in the market, facilitating firm financing. On the other, by attracting more informed investors who provide reassurance regarding managerial career concerns, options can increase the potential for risk shifting in firms. We explore these two channels via different tests on corporate bond yields and use different econometric specifications including quasi-natural experiments to mitigate endogeneity concerns. We find evidence consistent with the preeminence of the risk-shifting channel when private managerial risk-taking incentives are sufficiently high and debtholders are more exposed to expropriation.

This article analyzes the effect of valuations-based capital requirements and concentration risk provisions on the risk-shifting response of the banking sector to monetary easing. It provides a closed economy DSGE model for the Euro zone with costly bank capital and two heterogeneous borrowers. Banks maximize their profits by choosing the optimal allocation of their loan portfolio. A procyclical movement of capital requirements is observed, which amplifies the expansionary effect of monetary easing. Capital requirements decline asymmetrically, which creates a risk-shifting impulse. Sticky bank capital rents can strengthen this risk-shift.

Banks’ ratio of the market value to book value of their equity was close to 1 until the 1990s, then more than doubled during the 1996–2007 period, and fell again to values close to 1 after the 2008...

We provide evidence regarding mutual funds' motivation to hold lottery stocks. Funds with higher managerial ownership invest less in lottery stocks, suggesting that managers themselves do not prefer such stocks. The evidence instead supports that managers cater to fund investors' preference for such stocks. In particular, funds with more lottery holdings attract larger flows after portfolio disclosure compared to their peers, and poorly performing funds tend to engage in risk shifting by increasing their lottery holdings towards year-ends. Funds' aggregate holdings of lottery stocks contribute to their overpricing.

Using a large proprietary database of institutional trades, we investigate whether institutional investors drive the turn-of-the-year (TOY) effect. Institutions that engage in window dressing, tax-loss selling, or risk shifting will contribute to the TOY effect by selling small, poorly performing stocks at the end of December and/or buying those same stocks at the beginning of January. We find abnormal pension fund selling in small stocks with poor past performance during the final trading days in December, providing some support for the window dressing hypothesis. However, we find little evidence that institutional tax-loss selling or risk-shifting trading strategies contribute to TOY returns. Furthermore, stocks with no institutional trading around the year-end exhibit considerably stronger TOY return patterns than stocks in which institutions trade. Taken together, our results suggest that institutions play a limited role in driving the TOY effect.

This paper contributes to the empirical literature on risk shifting. It proposes a method to find out whether risk shifting is present in the banking industry and, if so, what type. The type of risk shifting depends on the group of debt holders to whom risk is shifted. We apply this method to the US banking sector in 1998–2011. To study the relationship between risk shifting and the 2008 crisis, the sample is also split into pre-crisis, crisis, and post-crisis periods. Our results suggest that the same type of risk shifting is present in the entire sample and in the pre-crisis and crisis subsamples. We find no evidence of risk shifting after the crisis. Furthermore, holding capital buffers seems to disincentivize risk shifting. This finding appears to provide support for the conservative buffer included in Basel III.

This paper examines the effectiveness of monitoring function from institutional investors on corporate hedging strategy in Taiwan over the period from 2005 to 2012. The empirical results show that institutional investors are effective monitors of corporate risk management to enhance the probability and extent of hedging. In addition, the monitoring function from institutional investors is effective for mitigating the risk-shifting problem of high leveraged firms. Moreover, local institutional investors play more important role in monitoring distressed firm's magnitude of hedging than foreign institutional investors. These results are robust to the consideration of endogeneity, selection bias, and industrial difference. This is the first empirical evidence in the literature regarding the monitoring effect of institutional investors on risk management strategy from the angle of monitoring costs.

This paper shows that bonus contracts may arise endogenously as a response to agency problems within banks, and analyzes how compensation schemes change in reaction to anticipated bailouts. If there is a risk-shifting problem, bailout expectations lead to steeper bonus schemes and even more risk taking. If there is an effort problem, the compensation scheme becomes flatter and effort decreases. If both types of agency problems are present, a sufficiently large increase in bailout perceptions makes it optimal for a welfare-maximizing regulator to impose caps on bank bonuses. In contrast, raising managers' liability can be counterproductive.

Most regulators grant contingent convertible bonds (CoCos) the status of equity. The theory, however, suggests that these securities can distort incentives via inducing debt overhang and risk shifting. In this paper, we therefore theoretically model how the degree of this distortion varies with bank risk. Our model predicts that riskier banks face higher debt overhang from CoCos. Next, analyzing a comprehensive database of CoCo issuance in Europe, we empirically test the predictions of our model. We find that banks with lower risk are more likely to issue CoCos than their riskier counterparts. Since in the current regulatory framework of Basel III banks are expected to raise equity prior to CoCo conversion, future debt overhang makes CoCos an expensive source of capital. Thus, riskier banks will opt for equity issuance over CoCos.

Secondary market trading in loans elicits a significant positive stock price response by a borrowing firm's equity investors. We find the major reason for this response is the alleviation of borrowing firms’ financial constraints. We also find that new loan announcements are associated with a positive stock price effect even when prior loans made to the same borrower already trade on the secondary market. We conclude that the special role of banks has changed due to their ability to create an active secondary loan market while simultaneously maintaining their traditional role as information producers.

This paper uses a novel, quasi-natural experiment to revisit an important corporate finance topic: do investors prefer corporate payout over equivalent capital gains? I study abnormal stock returns around regulatory enforcement actions that restrict bank payout. Market reactions appear significantly worse for cash-distributing banks than for near-identical, non-distributing enforcement action recipients. After addressing alternative explanations, I interpret this as causal evidence that shareholders in my sample value payout. Further, inside ownership negatively explains abnormal returns – but only for cash-distributing banks. This result contradicts agency cost and signaling theories of payout in favor of a risk-shifting story reemerging in recent literature.

I empirically test whether firms engage in risk-shifting. Contrary to what risk-shifting theory predicts, I find that firms reduce investment risk when they approach financial distress. To identify the effect of distress on risk-taking, I use a natural experiment with exogenous changes to leverage. Risk reduction is most prevalent among firms that have shorter maturity debt, bank debt, and tighter bank loan financial covenants. These findings suggest that debt composition and financial covenants serve as important mechanisms to mitigate debt-equity agency conflicts, such as risk-shifting, that are not explicitly contracted on.Received January 8, 2015; accepted May 27, 2016 by Editor David Denis.

This paper analyzes the impact of shareholder-creditor conflicts on corporate risk-taking. In particular, I examine the role played by institutional dual-holders (i.e., those simultaneously holding a same firm's debt and equity) in corporate innovation. Baseline results show that firms held by dual-holders generate fewer but more valuable patents. To establish causality, I use a difference-in-differences approach based on the quasi-natural experiment of financial institution mergers. The evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that institutional dual-holders can mitigate shareholder-creditor conflicts and thus curb excessive risk-taking. I further find that the decreased sensitivity of managerial compensation to firm risk might be one possible channel through which dual-holders affect risk shifting. Overall, the paper offers new evidence that shareholder-creditor conflicts indeed exist and lead to risk shifting (asset substitution), and that institutional dual ownership can partially mitigate this problem.

This study provides evidence that links institutional trading behavior directly to anomalous turn-of-the-year return patterns of small stocks. We find that turn-of-the-year trading patterns of institutions reflect strategies generally consistent with window-dressing and risk-shifting behaviors. Institutions sell more loser small stocks in the last quarter of the year, but buy more small stocks, winners and losers, in the first quarter. Institutional buying (selling) of loser stocks at year-end weakens (strengthens) the turn-of-the-year effect. Buying of winner stocks after year-end causes a statistically significant, though weaker, effect.

This paper describes the effects of dividend regulation on payout incentives. In the model, risk-shifting, excess cash flow, and signaling incentives affect a firm’s decision to issue dividends. The regulator aims to prevent risk shifting through dividend restrictions on undercapitalized firms. However, this action increases the firms’ incentives to pay dividends for signaling, potentially inducing capital outflows in some firms that would otherwise use funds for the real sector. Thus, welfare benefits of prudential dividend restrictions at risk-shifting firms are partially offset through less capital and investment at moderately capitalized firms. We discuss environments in which the signaling effect is stronger and suggest policies to mitigate inefficient capital outflows through dividends.

This paper shows that bonus contracts may arise endogenously as a response to agency problems within banks, and analyzes how compensation schemes change in reaction to anticipated bail-outs. If there is a risk-shifting problem, bail-out expectations lead to steeper bonus schemes and even more risk-taking. If there is an effort problem, the compensation scheme becomes flatter and effort decreases. If both types of agency problems are present, a sufficiently large increase in bailout perceptions makes it optimal for a welfare-maximizing regulator to impose caps on bank bonuses. In contrast, raising managers’ liability can be counterproductive.

This study seeks to understand the interplay between banks, bank regulation, sovereign default risk and central bank guarantees in a monetary union. I assume that banks can use sovereign bonds for repurchase agreements with a common central bank, and that their sovereign partially backs up any losses should the banks not be able to repurchase the bonds. I argue that regulators in risky countries have an incentive to allow their banks to hold home risky bonds and risk defaults, whereas regulators in other ‘safe’ countries will impose tighter regulation. As a result, governments in risky countries get to borrow more cheaply, effectively shifting the risk of some of the potential sovereign default losses on the common central bank.

This paper argues that the European banking crisis can in part be explained by a “carry trade” behavior of banks. Factor loading estimates from multifactor models relating equity returns to GIPSI (Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy) and German government bond returns suggest that banks have been long peripheral sovereign bonds funded in short-term wholesale markets, a position that generated “carry” until the GIPSI bond returns deteriorated significantly inflicting significant losses on banks. We show that the positive GIPSI factor loadings reflect actual portfolio holdings of GIPSI bonds in the cross-section of banks; and, the negative German loading reflects funding risk (flight away from bank funding to German government bonds), a risk that is increasing in the US money market mutual fund exposures of European banks as well as various proxies for bank short-term debt. Large banks and banks with low Tier 1 ratios and high risk-weighted assets had particularly large exposures and even increased their exposures between the two European stress tests of March and December 2010 taking advantage of a widening of yield spreads in the sovereign bond market. Over time, there is an increase in “home bias” – greater exposure of domestic banks to its sovereign’s bonds – which is partly explained by the European Central Bank funding of these positions. On balance, our results are supportive of moral hazard in the form of risk-taking by under-capitalized banks to exploit low risk weights and central-bank funding of risky government bond positions.

This paper examines whether theoretical models of bubbles based on the notion that the price of an asset can deviate from its fundamental value are useful for understanding phenomena that are often described as bubbles, and which are distinguished by other features such as large and rapid booms and busts in asset prices together with high turnover in asset ownership. In particular, I focus on riskshifting models similar to those developed in Allen and Gorton (1993) and Allen and Gale (2000). I show that such models could explain these phenomena, and discuss under what conditions booms and speculative trading would emerge. In addition, I show that these models imply that speculative bubbles can be associated with low rather than high premia on loans, in accordance with observations on credit conditions during episodes in which asset prices boomed and crashed.

This paper analyzes a reputational equilibrium in a model in which nominal sovereign debt serves to shift risk associated with the unpredictability of tax revenues from the sovereign to its lenders. The analysis answers the following set of related questions: Why would a sovereign refrain from inflating when faced with servicing a large quantity of nominal debt? If a sovereign does not plan to use inflation to repudiate its nominal debt, why would it want to issue such debt in the first place. What are the distinguishing features of those sovereigns who are willing and able to issue nominal debts.

This paper empirically investigates the effect of government bail-out policies on banks outside the safety net. We construct a measure of bail-out perceptions by using rating information. From there, we construct the market shares of insured competitor banks for any given bank, and analyze the impact of this variable on banks' margins and risk-taking behavior, using a large sample of banks from OECD countries. Our results suggest that government guarantees to some banks strongly increase the risk-taking of the competitor banks not protected by such guarantees. In contrast, there is no evidence that public guarantees increase the protected banks' risk-taking.

Banks are important for mobilizing savings and then channeling those funds to productive investment projects. While providing these and other services that contribute to economic growth and development, banks take on various types of risks with the expectation that the return they receive will compensate for the risks. This paper theoretically models and empirically tests the extent to which information asymmetry between bank owners and depositors induces risk-shifting behavior that allows for higher bank net interest margins. The empirical results support the theoretical hypothesis that the greater the degree of information asymmetry the higher net interest margins base upon a sample of 3,115 banks in 98 countries.