{"title":"Analoging the digital: Designing better binary option contracts","authors":"Yisong S. Tian Ph.D.","doi":"10.1111/fmii.12151","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/fmii.12151","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Binary option pays a fixed dollar amount if it matures in the money and nothing otherwise. While this cash-or-nothing payoff structure is very attractive to speculators, it also creates incentives to manipulate the underlying asset price in order to gain extra payoff. In this paper, we propose better designs for binary options that disincentivize market manipulation and highlight two key features of such designs. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the new contract designs using numerical examples.</p>","PeriodicalId":39670,"journal":{"name":"Financial Markets, Institutions and Instruments","volume":"30 4","pages":"113-128"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"109172341","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The impact of legal advisor-issuer cooperation on securitization pricing","authors":"Nodirbek Karimov, Alper Kara, Gareth Downing","doi":"10.1111/fmii.12153","DOIUrl":"10.1111/fmii.12153","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We examine the impact of cooperation between legal advisors and issuers on bank securitization pricing using 6,624 European ABS tranches issued in the European market over the period of 1998 to 2018. We find that previous cooperation is negatively related to initial yield spreads of ABS. Investors seem to attach value to previous cooperation between issuers and legal advisors and consider such transactions less risky by asking for lower yields. We observe that the magnitude of the past relationships is also of importance. Moreover, previous cooperation becomes more important as the risk of the transaction increases. This is especially noticeable when prime (AAA rated) tranches are compared to non-prime (non-AAA rated) tranches. Our results also show that the number of legal advisors in a deal does not matter for investors.</p>","PeriodicalId":39670,"journal":{"name":"Financial Markets, Institutions and Instruments","volume":"30 5","pages":"167-199"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/fmii.12153","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42815172","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Law Firm expertise and shareholder wealth","authors":"Denis Schweizer, Ge Wu","doi":"10.1111/fmii.12152","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/fmii.12152","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper examines the impact of law firm expertise on bidder and target shareholder wealth gains during mergers and acquisitions. After controlling for endogeneity in the matching between the mandating firm (bidder or target firm) and the law firm, we find that top-tier law firms increase the wealth of bidder shareholders by an average of 2.00% ($30.80 million) to 3.07% ($47.28 million). This does not hold for target firm shareholders. Interestingly, we find no evidence that the reputation of the investment bank is related to bidder or target shareholder wealth gains. Our findings suggest that top-tier lawyers are effective “transaction cost engineers.” They create value for their clients by structuring deals to minimize transaction and regulatory costs.</p>","PeriodicalId":39670,"journal":{"name":"Financial Markets, Institutions and Instruments","volume":"30 4","pages":"129-163"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/fmii.12152","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91833050","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Lender of last resort, buyer of last resort, and a fear of fire sales in the sovereign bond market*","authors":"Viral Acharya, Diane Pierret, Sascha Steffen","doi":"10.1111/fmii.12143","DOIUrl":"10.1111/fmii.12143","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We document the mechanism through which the risk of fire sales in the sovereign bond market contributed to the effectiveness of two major central bank interventions designed to restore financial stability during the European sovereign debt crisis. As a <i>lender of last resort</i> via the long-term refinancing operations (LTROs), the European Central Bank (ECB) improved the collateral value of sovereign bonds of peripheral countries. This resulted in an elevated concentration of these bonds in the portfolios of domestic banks, increasing fire-sale risk and making both banks and sovereign bonds riskier. In contrast, the ECB's announcement of being a potential <i>buyer of last resort</i> via the Outright Monetary Transaction (OMT) program attracted new investors and reduced fire-sale risk in the sovereign bond market.</p>","PeriodicalId":39670,"journal":{"name":"Financial Markets, Institutions and Instruments","volume":"30 4","pages":"87-112"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/fmii.12143","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73530919","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Changes in trading behavior of analyst-affiliated institutions: the impact of the global analyst research settlement","authors":"Hyoseok (David) Hwang","doi":"10.1111/fmii.12142","DOIUrl":"10.1111/fmii.12142","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper examines the impact of the Global Analyst Research Settlement (GS) on the trading behavior of analyst-affiliated institutions. Using firms with securities class actions, I find that analyst-affiliated institutions reduce their stockholdings of sued firms prior to their own analyst downgrades, which supports a front-running hypothesis. This front-running trading behavior of analyst-affiliated institutions diminishes for sanctioned institutions after the GS. However, the informed trading behavior of the analyst-affiliated institutions remains strong for non-sanctioned institutions, implying that the Global Settlement could not impede non-sanctioned institutions from front-running trading activities. This study suggests more regulatory actions are needed to prevent analyst-affiliated institutions’ misconduct.</p>","PeriodicalId":39670,"journal":{"name":"Financial Markets, Institutions and Instruments","volume":"30 3","pages":"65-83"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/fmii.12142","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86923005","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Has the Crisis Introduced a New Paradigm in Banks' Credit Allocation? The Non-financial Corporations' Perspective","authors":"Andresa Lopes, Vítor Oliveira, Ângelo Ramos, Fátima Silva","doi":"10.1111/fmii.12141","DOIUrl":"10.1111/fmii.12141","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In the years prior to the onset of the global financial crisis, the sharp credit growth, in a context of optimistic income expectations, boosted by an increase in competition in the banking system, less restrictive lending criteria and favorable financing conditions in international wholesale debt market, led to a marked rise in the debt levels of non-financial corporations. In this paper, we use a panel data regression, with fixed effect estimators, to study how the relationship between bank credit granted to each firm and a set of firm-specific indicators, that measure overall balance sheet performance and riskiness, changed over the 2006–2017 period. The results suggest that, during and after the Portuguese sovereign debt crisis, the sensitivity of the bank credit granted to firms to overall balance sheet strength and riskiness of firms increased, except in the case of leverage, where the sensitivity decreased slightly. Nonetheless, banks on average lent more to lower leveraged firms than to higher leveraged firms throughout the period considered. The results also show that statistical significance slightly reduces with the size of the firm and, when compared with the pre-crisis sub-period, banks did not increase lending to higher leveraged large firms in the crisis and post-crisis sub-periods. Finally, we find that the most capitalized banks were the ones more willing and/or able to support firms, during the crisis, even firms that experienced a deterioration in their indicators.</p>","PeriodicalId":39670,"journal":{"name":"Financial Markets, Institutions and Instruments","volume":"30 2","pages":"31-62"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/fmii.12141","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49611728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lee Baker, Richard Haynes, John Roberts, Rajiv Sharma, Bruce Tuckman
{"title":"Risk Transfer with Interest Rate Swaps","authors":"Lee Baker, Richard Haynes, John Roberts, Rajiv Sharma, Bruce Tuckman","doi":"10.1111/fmii.12135","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/fmii.12135","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper proposes Entity-Netted Notionals (ENNs) as a metric of interest rate risk transfer in the interest rate swap (IRS) market. Unlike the ubiquitous metric of notional amount, ENNs normalize for risk and account for the netting of longs and shorts within counterparty relationships. Using regulatory data for U.S.-reporting entities, the size of the market measured by notional amount is $231 trillion, but, measured by ENNs, is only $13.9 trillion 5-year swap equivalents, which is the same order of magnitude as other large U.S. fixed income markets. This paper also quantifies the size and direction of IRS positions across and within various business sectors. Among the empirical findings are that 92% of entities using IRS are exclusively long or exclusively short. Hence, the vast majority of market participants are prototypical end users, and the extensive amount of netting in the market is attributable to the activity of relatively few, larger entities. Finally, some sector-specific empirical findings are inconsistent with widespread, prior beliefs. For example, pension funds and insurance companies are typically thought to be long IRS to hedge their long-term liabilities, and these sectors are indeed net long, but approximately 50% of individual entities in these sectors are actually net short.</p>","PeriodicalId":39670,"journal":{"name":"Financial Markets, Institutions and Instruments","volume":"30 1","pages":"3-28"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/fmii.12135","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"109172536","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Diversification benefits of cat bonds: An in-depth examination","authors":"Karl Demers-Bélanger, Van Son Lai","doi":"10.1111/fmii.12134","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/fmii.12134","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We investigate whether the inclusion of Cat Bonds in portfolios composed of traditional assets and common factors is beneficial to investors. Various mean-variance spanning tests performed for the period of 2002 to 2017 show that under different market conditions, the addition of Cat Bonds gives rise to previously unattainable portfolios. Using the Engle (2002) Dynamic Conditional Correlation (DCC) model, we find that including Cat bonds increases significantly the time-varying Sharpe ratio and the Choueifaty and Coignard (2008) maximum diversification ratio. Cat Bonds provide needed diversification during critical times particularly during episodes of crisis and of high volatility. Under the second-order stochastic dominance efficiency (SDE) tests, the null hypothesis that portfolios without Cat Bonds are efficient cannot be rejected. Out-of-sample analyses indicate that the performance of portfolios with Cat Bonds included varies depending on the performance measures employed, the portfolio construction techniques used and the assets or factors considered.</p>","PeriodicalId":39670,"journal":{"name":"Financial Markets, Institutions and Instruments","volume":"29 5","pages":"165-228"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/fmii.12134","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91832519","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Public pension reform and the 49th parallel: Lessons from Canada for the U.S.","authors":"Clive Lipshitz, Ingo Walter","doi":"10.1111/fmii.12133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/fmii.12133","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Public employee pension systems around the world show remarkable diversity in design and execution. Among these, the U.S. defined benefit public pension system has drawn increased attention because of questions about the long-term sustainability of many of the underlying pension funds – as well as concerns of equity between pension plan members, retirees, taxpayers, bondholders, and users of public services. The Covid-19 pandemic introduced new fissures in state and local government finances, heightening the need to bolster long-term public pension fund robustness. As an alternative model, the Canadian public pension system is widely respected. This was not foreordained. The authors trace difficult decisions undertaken in Canada in the 1980s and 1990s along with essential descriptive features of the Canadian Model. Using a novel primary dataset, the authors benchmark the 25 largest U.S. plans against their ten largest Canadian peers, exploring key issues in a paired analysis. The authors extract fundamental lessons from the Canadian experience, proposing a roadmap for reform of the U.S. public pension system. They argue that long-term pension sustainability, once politically prioritized, must be built on equity and discipline in plan design, funding, and amortization of existing deficits. They emphasize the importance of legal framework, particularly joint sponsorship, alongside enhanced governance and unified legislation. They also draw lessons from the Canadian experience with respect to enhanced investment organizations and investment strategies.</p>","PeriodicalId":39670,"journal":{"name":"Financial Markets, Institutions and Instruments","volume":"29 4","pages":"121-162"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/fmii.12133","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91869763","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Environmental, social and governance reporting in annual reports: A textual analysis","authors":"Philipp Baier, Marc Berninger, Florian Kiesel","doi":"10.1111/fmii.12132","DOIUrl":"10.1111/fmii.12132","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Considering environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors becomes increasingly important for companies and investors. However, “ESG” is not clearly defined so far and, therefore, it is difficult to measure the ESG activity of companies. We analyze the extent and changes in 10-K reports and proxy statements on ESG, using a textual analysis and creating an ESG dictionary. The results show an average of 4.0 % ESG words on total words in the reports. The ESG word list with 482 items can be used to quantitatively examine the extent of ESG reporting, which will be helpful especially for SRI investors. Our classification of 40 subcategories allows a highly granular analysis of different ESG related aspects. Moreover, indications for a relation between changes in reporting and real events, especially negative media presence, are detected. Regulatory bodies have to be aware of the use of such words and how they are used.</p>","PeriodicalId":39670,"journal":{"name":"Financial Markets, Institutions and Instruments","volume":"29 3","pages":"93-118"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/fmii.12132","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49463057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}