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Départements : Finance

Consistent with salience theories of choice, we find that managers overreact to salient risks. We study how managers respond to the occurrence of a hurricane event when their firms are located in the neighborhood of the disaster area. We find that the sudden shock to the perceived liquidity risk leads managers to increase the amount of corporate cash holdings, even though the real liquidity risk remains unchanged. Such an increase in cash holdings is only temporary. Over time, the perceived risk decreases, and the bias disappears. This bias is costly for shareholders because it leads to higher retained earnings and negatively impacts firm value by reducing the value of cash. We examine alternative explanations for our findings. In particular, we find only weak evidence that the possibility of risk learning or regional spillover effects may influence our results.


Départements : Finance, GREGHEC (CNRS)

Decades of accumulated knowledge empowers our quest to de-bias human cognition. However, I propose that improvement methods aimed at certain biases may introduce new biases due to cognitive and situational limitations: Such limitations give rise to simplifying and protecting processes (SPPs), the unthorough nature of which results in biases. De-biasing may target these processes but ultimately cannot always resolve the underlying cognitive and situational limitations. Consequently, de-biasing runs the risk of forcing either a switch in SPPs or an introduction of new SPPs, thereby exposing us to the threats of new biases. In this paper, I analyse the model of simplifying and protecting processes and discuss promising directions of de-biasing. The model of SPPs stands in line with extant literature on the underlying causes of cognitive bias as well as on the methods of de-biasing, but extends them by synthesizing a coherent theory. It contributes to the judgement and decision making literature that seeks to answer four questions: (a) What mechanism underlies biases? (b) How to de-bias? (c) Why does de-biasing have limitations? (d) Where to channel de-biasing efforts so as to reduce the unbeneficial effects of biases?

Mots clés : cognitive bias, de-bias, simplifying and protecting processes


Départements : Finance, GREGHEC (CNRS)

The correlation across US states in house price growth increased steadily between 1976 and 2000. This paper shows that the contemporaneous geographic integration of the US banking market, via the emergence of large banks, was a primary driver of this phenomenon. To this end, we first theoretically derive an appropriate measure of banking integration across state pairs and document that house price growth correlation is strongly related to this measure of financial integration. Our IV estimates suggest that banking integration can explain up to one third of the rise in house price correlation over the period.

Mots clés : Banks; House price comovement; Financial Integration


Départements : Finance, GREGHEC (CNRS)

We investigate how a large-scale French reform to reduce the risk from small business creation for unemployed workers, affects the composition of people who are drawn into entrepreneurship. New firms started in response to the reform are, on average, smaller, but have similar growth expectations and education levels compared to start-ups before the reform. They are also as likely to survive or to hire. However, there are large crowd-out effects: Employment in incumbent firms decreases by a similar magnitude as the number of new jobs created in start-ups. These results point to the importance of Schumpeterian dynamics when facilitating entry

Mots clés : Entrepreneurship; Unemployment insurance; Crowding out


Départements : Finance, GREGHEC (CNRS)

We examine the impact of aging on wine prices and the performance of wine as a long-term investment, using a unique historical database for five long-established Bordeaux wines that we construct from auction and dealer prices. We estimate the life-cycle price patterns with a regression model that avoids multicollinearity between age, vintage year, and time by replacing the vintage effects with annual data on production yields and weather quality. In line with the predictions of an illustrative model, we observe the highest rates of appreciation for young high-quality wines that are still maturing. The findings suggest that the non-financial “psychic return” to holding wines that are substantially beyond maturity is at least 1%. Using an arithmetic repeat-sales regression, we estimate an annualized return to wine investments (net of insurance and storage costs) of 4.1%, in real GBP terms, between 1900 and 2012. Wine underperforms equities over this period, but outperforms government bonds, art, and stamps. Wine and equity returns are positively correlated.

Mots clés : alternative investments, luxury goods, price indexes, psychic return, consumption, storage


Départements : Finance, GREGHEC (CNRS)

How does underlying knowledge support market development? Our research shows how a knowledge community may be necessary to support the emergence of new categories in markets where products are evaluated before purchase. Using epistemic cultures to frame field growth, we review the development of artwork as a recognizable financial investment category, highlighting institutionalized expectations about evaluation and monitoring of financial assets. We provide a longitudinal study of art investment lexicon (i.e. language) using Google Books data, showing an increasing interest in art investment and the art market. Despite sustained interest, art investments often failed. To explain this we provide a grounded process study of historical data. We find the growth of an epistemic culture around art investing, facilitated by new market actors who met the needs of professional investors for transparency and accountability. Technical knowledge about art investment flowed from economists, art price services, art market analysts, and others, developing alongside practical knowledge about how to structure ventures and profit from art investment. Because empirical investment properties underlie financial market categories, we argue that growth of art investment knowledge — despite venture failures — was just as important for the market development as entrepreneurs and investors willing to enter the area.

Mots clés : new field creation; legitimacy; epistemic cultures; institutionalized expectations; investment management; art market


Départements : Finance, GREGHEC (CNRS)

We examine the toxic loans sold by investment banks to local governments. Using proprietary data, we show that politicians strategically use these products to increase chances of being re-elected. Consistent with greater incentives to hide debt, toxic loans are utilized significantly more frequently within highly indebted local governments. Incumbent politicians from politically contested areas are also more likely to turn to toxic loans. Using a difference-in-differences methodology, we show that politicians time the election cycle by implementing more transactions immediately before an election than after. Politicians also exhibit herding behavior. Our findings demonstrate how financial innovation can foster strategic behaviors.

Mots clés : Financial innovation, Political cycle, Herding, Structured debt


Départements : Finance

This paper studies market reaction and economic performance following the first episode of banks triggering contingent capital options. During the financial crisis, European banks massively used embedded options in their hybrid bonds to reduce their debt burden. These triggers are positively received by debtors, while stockholders discriminate according to the type of resulting debt relief and the financial institution leverage. Moreover, banks that trigger permanent debt reliefs exhibit higher economic performance than the ones that do not. These findings point towards innovative debt instruments offering an effective solution to the dilemma of bank capital regulation.

Mots clés : Contingent Capital, Financial Distress, Debt Overhang, Financial Institutions


Départements : Finance

By focusing on the highly innovative retail market for structured products, we investigate the drivers of financial complexity. We perform a lexicographic analysis of the term sheets of 55,000 retail structured products issued in Europe since 2002. We observe that financial complexity has been steadily increasing, even after the recent financial crisis, and that financial complexity is more prevalent among distributors with a less sophisticated investor base. Complex products exhibit higher markups and lower ex post performance than simpler products. Using issuance level data spanning 15 countries over the period 2002-2010, we find that financial complexity increases when competition intensifies. These findings are consistent with financial institutions strategically using complexity to mitigate competition.

Mots clés : Household Finance, Financial Literacy, Complexity


Départements : Finance, GREGHEC (CNRS)

We show how to reverse engineer banks' risk disclosures, such as Value-at-Risk, to obtain an implied measure of their exposures to equity, interest rate, foreign exchange, and commodity risks. Factor Implied Risk Exposures (FIRE) are obtained by breaking down a change in risk disclosure into an exogenous volatility component and an endogenous risk-exposure component. In a study of large US and international banks, we show that (1) changes in risk exposures are negatively correlated with market volatility and (2) changes in risk exposures are positively correlated across banks, which is consistent with banks exhibiting herding behavior in trading.

Mots clés : Herding, Risk Disclosure, (Stressed) Value-at-Risk, Regulatory Capital

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