Mariassunta Giannetti

Do Better Institutions Mitigate Agency Problems? Evidence From Corporate Finance Choices

This paper examines how firm characteristics, legal rules, and financial development affect corporate finance decisions. In contrast to the existing literature, I use data on unlisted companies to show that institutions play an important role in determining the extent of agency problems. In particular, I find that in countries with good creditor protection, it is easier for firms investing in intangible assets to obtain loans. The protection of creditor rights is also important for ensuring access to long-term debt for firms operating in sectors with highly volatile returns. Ceteris paribus, firms are more leveraged in countries where the stock market is less developed. Unlisted firms appear more indebted than listed companies even after controlling for firm characteristics such as profitability, size, and the ability to provide collateral. Finally, institutions that favor creditor rights and ensure stricter enforcement not only are associated with higher leverage, but also with greater availability of long-term debt.

Do Cultural Differences Between Contracting Parties Matter? Evidence from Syndicated Bank Loans

We investigate whether cultural differences between professional decision makers affect financial contracts in a large data set of international syndicated bank loans. We find that more culturally distant lead banks offer borrowers smaller loans at a higher interest rate and are more likely to require third-party guarantees. These effects do not disappear following repeated interaction between borrower and lender and are economically sizable: A one-standard-deviation increase in cultural distance, approximately the distance between Canada and the United States or between Japan and South Korea, is associated with a 6.5 basis point higher loan spread; the loan spread increases by about 23 basis points if the bank-firm match involves culturally more distant parties, for example, from Japan and the United States. We also find that cultural differences not only affect the relation between borrower and lender, but also hamper risk sharing between participant banks and culturally distant lead banks. This paper was accepted by Brad Barber, Teck Ho, and Terrance Odean, special issue editors.

'Lending by Example': Direct and Indirect Effects of Foreign Banks in Emerging Markets

Using a novel dataset that allows us to trace the bank relationships of a sample of mostly unlisted firms, we explore which borrowers are able to benefit from foreign bank presence in emerging markets. Our results suggest that the limits to financial integration are less tight than the static picture of firm-bank relationships implies. Even though foreign banks are more likely to engage large and foreign-owned firms, after an acquisition, a bank is 20 percent less likely to terminate a relationship with a firm if the acquirer is foreign rather than domestic. Most importantly, within a credit market, firms appear to have the same access to financial loans and ability to invest whether they borrow from a foreign bank or not, while foreign banks benefit all firms by indirectly enhancing credit access.

Pension Reform, Ownership Structure, and Corporate Governance: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Sweden offers a unique natural experiment to analyze the microeconomic effects of institutionalized saving on ownership structure, corporate governance and performance of listed companies. First, the Swedish pension reform increased the participation of pension funds in the domestic stock market and caused a significant reshuffling in the ownership of the existing pension funds. Second, the availability of detailed data on firm ownership allows us to document the effects of the pension reform. We show that the effects of institutional investment on firm performance depend on the industry structure of pension funds. In particular, we find that firm performance improves if large independent private pension funds and public pension funds increase their equity stakes in the firm, but not if smaller pension funds and pension funds related to financial institutions and industrial groups increase their shareholdings. Additionally, controlling shareholders appear reluctant to relinquish control and the control premium increases if public pension funds acquire shares.

Flight Home, Flight Abroad and International Credit Cycles

This paper shows that banks exhibit a weaker (stronger) home bias in the extension of new loans when funding conditions in their home country improve (deteriorate). We refer to these changes in home bias as flight abroad and flight home effects, respectively, and show that they are unrelated to the better known flight to quality effect that arises during periods of market turmoil. Our results also indicate that global banks amplify the effect of homegrown shocks on foreign countries while they are a stabilizing factor for the supply of credit in their home countries.

Serial CEO Incentives and the Structure of Managerial Contracts

This paper analyzes the optimal contracting consequences of a recent phenomenon in the managerial labour market, CEO job hopping. I show that if the managerial labour market is thin and firm growth opportunities are weak, the optimal contract rewards the CEO for past performance through a bonus. Nevertheless, the CEO takes a long horizon in selecting corporate strategies. If firm growth opportunities improve, but prospects of job-hopping remain limited, the optimal contract includes restricted-equity-like claims, but overall compensation does not increase. However, if the managerial labour market provides more opportunities for job-hopping, large differences in the structure and the level of managerial compensation emerge. If firm growth opportunities are weak, it is optimal to offer a bonus contract, even though the CEO selects an inefficient short-term strategy. If firm growth opportunities are strong, a large amount of long-term equity compensation mitigates short-termist incentives. This drives a surge in CEO compensation. I show that, under these conditions, the optimal contract may include non-restricted equity even though the main problem is managerial retention. Finally, I argue that the model can explain both the surge in U.S. CEO compensation and the differences in managerial compensation across countries and across firms within a country.

On the Mechanics of Migration Decisions: Skill Complementarities and Endogenous Price Differentials

Why are highly skilled workers more responsive than other workers to productivity differentials when taking migration decisions? Why do low-skilled workers abandon rich regions? This paper aims to answer these questions using skill complementarities and endogenous price differentials between rich and poor regions. If the skill premium is increasing in the average level of human capital of a location, the more skilled the workers are, the stronger the economic incentives to migrate to the rich regions become. In contrast, the low-skilled workers have an incentive to migrate to the poor regions to minimize their living costs.

Investor Protection and the Demand for Equity

Anecdotal evidence suggests that investor protection affects the demand for equity, but existing theories emphasize only the effect of investor protection on the supply of equity. We build a model showing that the demand for equity is important in explaining financial development. If the level of investor protection is low, wealthy investors have an incentive to become controlling shareholders and pay a high price for their stocks, because they can earn additional benefits by expropriating outside shareholders. As a consequence of lower expected returns both domestic and foreign portfolio investors have a disincentive to hold stocks. The model implies that differences in stock market participation rates across countries and the pervasiveness of home equity bias depend on the degree of investor protection. Additionally, we uncover a good country bias in investment decisions as portfolio investors from countries with low level of investor protection hold relatively more foreign equity. We provide novel international evidence on stock market participation rates, and on holdings of domestic and foreign stocks consistent with the predictions of the model.

Skill Complementarities and Migration Decisions

This paper offers an explanation of the high mobility of skilled workers based on human capital complementarities. If the skill premium is increasing in the average level of human capital of a location, and there exist fixed migration costs, in equilibrium the more skilled the workers are, the stronger the economic incentives to migrate towards the richest regions will be. Moreover, endogenously generated differences in productivity due to migration affect occupational choices and regional specialization. Empirical evidence consistent with the proposed explanation is provided using data on Italian regions. It emerges that, even after controlling for economic conditions, a high population share of individuals who completed college or high-school in a region seems to be a relevant pull factor for the most educated migrants. In contrast, the importance of this variable, which measures the average level of human capital of a location, drops when unskilled migrants are considered. Finally, the effects of migration on the evolution of regional disparities are taken into account.

On the Determinants of Entrepreneurial Activity: Individual Characteristics, Economic Environment, and Social Norms

This paper reviews the literature on the determinants of entrepreneurial activity and investigates to what extent differences in population, business environment and cultural values contribute to explaining differences in entrepreneurial activity across Swedish municipalities. Individual characteristics and business environment are the most important factors in explaining entrepreneurial choice. However, we find that cultural values and, most likely, social norms also matter. The data suggest that individuals are more likely to become entrepreneurs where there are more entrepreneurs, even if entrepreneurial income is lower. We explain why and to what extent this may be interpreted as evidence of social norms.