Andrew Ellul

Stronger Risk Controls, Lower Risk: Evidence from U.S. Bank Holding Companies

We construct a Risk Management Index (RMI) to measure the strength and independence of the risk management function at bank holding companies (BHCs). U.S. BHCs with higher RMI before the onset of the financial crisis have lower tail risk, lower non-performing loans, and better operating and stock return performance during the financial crisis years. Over the period 1995 to 2010, BHCs with a higher lagged RMI have lower tail risk and higher return on assets, all else equal. Overall, these results suggest that a strong and independent risk management function can curtail tail risk exposures at banks. JEL Classification: G21; G32

Regulatory Pressure and Fire Sales in the Corporate Bond Market

This paper investigates fire sales of downgraded corporate bonds induced by regulatory constraints imposed on insurance companies. Regulations either prohibit or impose large capital requirements on the holdings of speculative-grade bonds. As insurance companies hold over one third of all outstanding investment-grade corporate bonds, the collective need to divest downgraded issues may be limited by a scarcity of counterparties and associated bargaining power. Using insurance company transaction data from 2001-2005, we find insurance companies that are relatively more constrained by regulation are, on average, more likely to sell downgraded bonds. This forced selling generates elevated selling pressure around the downgrade which causes price pressures and subsequent price reversals that are indicative of significant periods during which transaction prices deviate from fundamental values. Most importantly, bonds widely held by constrained insurance companies experience significantly larger price reversals. Investors providing liquidity to this market appear to earn abnormal returns. JEL classifications: G11; G12; G14; G18; G22

Mark-to-Market Accounting and Systemic Risk: Evidence from the Insurance Industry

One of the most contentious issues raised during the recent crisis has been the potentially exacerbating role played by mark-to-market accounting. Many have proposed the use of historical cost accounting, promoting its ability to avoid the amplification of systemic risk. We caution against focusing on the accounting rule in isolation, and instead emphasize the interaction between accounting and the regulatory framework. First, historical cost accounting, through incentives that arise via interactions with complex capital adequacy regulation, does generate market distortions of its own. Second, while mark-to-market accounting may indeed generate fire sales during a crisis, forward-looking institutions that rationally internalize the probability of fire sales are incentivized to adopt a more prudent investment strategy during normal times which leads to a safer portfolio entering the crisis. Using detailed, position- and transaction-level data from the U.S. insurance industry, we show that (a) market prices do serve as ‘early warning signals’, (b) insurers that employed historical cost accounting engaged in greater degrees of regulatory arbitrage before the crisis and limited loss recognition during the crisis, and (c) insurers facing mark-to-market accounting tend to be more prudent in their portfolio allocations. Our identification relies on the sharp difference in statutory accounting rules between life and P&C companies as well as the heterogeneity in implementation of these rules within each insurance type across U.S. states. Rather than promoting a shift away from market-based information, our results indicate that regulatory simplicity may be preferred to the complexity of risk-weighted capital ratios that gives rise, through interactions with accounting rules, to distorted risk-taking incentives and potential build-up of systemic risk.

Employment and Wage Insurance within Firms: Worldwide Evidence

Using a firm-level international panel dataset, we study if unemployment insurance offered by the government and by firms are substitutes. We exploit cross-country and time-series variation in public unemployment insurance as a shifter of workers’ demand for insurance within firms, and family vs. non-family ownership as a shifter of firms’ supply of insurance. Our evidence supports the substitutability hypothesis: employment stability in family firms is greater, and the wage discount larger, in countries and periods with less generous public unemployment insurance, while no such substitutability emerges for non-family firms.

Ripples Through Markets: Inter-Market Impacts Generated by Large Trades

This paper investigates the impacts of very large trades for cross-listed companies where parallel markets suffer from information frictions. We use a sample of large trades executed on London Stock Exchanges SEAQ-I market for European cross-quoted firms and investigate their impact on home market prices when transparency is opaque. We find that (a) London large trades produce price impacts in home markets even though no timely information is published, (b) market makers appear to pre- and postposition their inventories by splitting orders across markets, and (c) the price discovery process across markets changes significantly around large trades with the foreign market making a significantly bigger contribution to price discovery, even though information opaqueness exists.

Blockholders, Debt Agency Costs and Legal Protection

We investigate how investor protection influences the blockholder-bondholder conflict. We focus on family blockholders, the typical blockholders with high control motivations and the most common type of concentrated ownership, because blockholder-bondholders agency conflicts are clearest in this case. On one hand, family blockholders can mitigate debt costs through their undiversified investments, inter-generation presence, and firm survival concerns. On the other hand, they can exacerbate debt costs because of their unique power position to extract private benefits, leading to higher bankruptcy risk. The ultimate impact depends on how family blockholders are disciplined, specifically by the investor protection laws. Using international bond issues for 1,072 international firms from 23 countries we find that the presence of a family blockholder increases debt costs but the ultimate impact depends on investor protection: family firms in low investor protection countries suffer from higher debt costs compared to non-family firms, while family firms in high investor protection countries benefit from lower debt costs. Familys presence in management further increases debt costs but we find no effect from superior voting rights. We find no impact from institutional blockholdings and there is no evidence that they discipline family blockholders. The results show the importance of investor protection for debt agency conflicts.

Corporate Leverage and Employees' Rights in Bankruptcy

Corporate leverage responds differently to employees’ rights in bankruptcy depending on whether it is driven by strategic concerns in wage bargaining or by credit constraints. Using novel data on employees’ rights in bankruptcy, we estimate their impact on leverage, exploiting time-series, cross-country and firm-level variation in the data. For financially unconstrained firms, results accord with the strategic debt model: leverage increases more in response to rises in corporate property values or profitability if employees have strong seniority in liquidation and weak rights in restructuring. Instead, in financially constrained firms leverage responds less to these shocks if employees have stronger seniority.

Career Risk and Market Discipline in Asset Management

We establish that the labor market helps discipline asset managers via the impact of fund liquidations on their careers. Using hand-collected data on 1,948 professionals, we find that top managers working for funds liquidated after persistently poor relative performance suffer demotion coupled with a significant loss in imputed compensation. Scarring effects are absent when liquidations are preceded by normal relative performance or involve mid-level employees. Seen through the lens of a model with moral hazard and adverse selection, these scarring effects can be ascribed to a drop in asset managers’ reputation. The findings suggest that performance-induced liquidations supplement compensation-based incentives.

Access to Public Capital Markets and Employment Growth

This paper investigates the importance of accessing public capital markets through an initial public offering (IPO), and the consequent relaxation of firms’ financial constraints, for firm-level long term employment decisions. We find that firms significantly increase post-IPO investment in human capital compared to the pre-IPO stage. To address endogeneity concerns, we use a novel dataset of private firms and compare employment growth of IPO firms with two different control groups: First, private firms that file for an IPO but eventually withdraw their offering due to exogenous market conditions, and second, a propensity score matched sample of private firms that never file for an IPO. Firms that complete the IPO process experience higher employment growth in the post-IPO period relative to each control group. Importantly, our results show that the most likely channel for the realization of higher employment growth is the relaxation of financial constraints, allowing the newly public firms to access both equity and debt markets for funding investment in human capital, and not only capital expansion. Overall, our results highlight the importance of public capital markets for job creation over long term horizons. JEL Classification: G32, G34.This paper studies the relation between the going public decision and employment growth experienced by IPO firms. We find that a typical IPO firm in our sample hires twice more employees around its IPO than during its life as a private firm. The number of employees increases by 31% during the two-year period around the IPO. Evidence shows that the most likely channel through which IPO firms increase their employment levels is the relaxation of their financial constraints, allowing firms to access both equity and debt markets resulting in better funding of their growth opportunities and an increase of the firm’s human capital. We also examine the relation between employment growth and firm performance: IPO firms with greater employment growth exhibit better performance and lower delisting probability. Overall, these results highlight the importance of the IPO event and access to public capital markets for job creation by US firms. JEL classification: G32, G34