Search Results
Report
Financial visibility and the decision to go private
A large fraction of the companies that went private between 1990 and 2007 were fairly young public firms, often with the same management team making the crucial restructuring decisions both at the time of the initial public offering (IPO) and the buyout. Why did these public firms decide to revert to private ownership? To answer this question, we investigate the determinants of the decision to go private over a firm's entire public life cycle. Our evidence reveals that firms with declining growth in analyst coverage, falling institutional ownership, and low stock turnover were more likely to ...
Working Paper
What was behind the M2 breakdown?
A deterioration in the link between the M2 monetary aggregate and GDP, along with large errors in predicting M2 growth, led the Board of Governors to downgrade the M2 aggregate as a reliable indicator of monetary policy in 1993. In this paper, we argue that the financial condition of depository institutions was a major factor behind the unusual pattern of M2 growth in the early 1990s. By constructing alternative measures of M2 based on banks and thrifts capital positions, we show that the anomalous behavior of M2 in the early 1990s disappears. Specifically, after accounting for the effect of ...
Journal Article
Credit, equity, and mortgage refinancings
Using a unique loan level data set that links individual household credit ratings with property and loan characteristics, the authors test the extent to which homeowners' credit ratings and equity affect the likelihood that mortgage loans will be refinanced as interest rates fall. Their logit model estimates strongly support the importance of both the credit and equity variables. Furthermore, the authors' results suggest that a change in the overall lending environment over the past decade has increased the probability that a homeowner will refinance.
Journal Article
A disaggregate analysis of discount window borrowing
Discount window borrowing is an important source of liquidity for depository institutions. This article estimates the demand for adjustment credit of 240 commercial banks during 1981-90. By focusing on the borrowing behavior of individual banks, the authors are able to clarify some anomalies exhibited by borrowed reserves at the aggregate level.
Report
Do mergers improve the x-efficiency and scale efficiency of U.S. banks?: Evidence from the 1980s
A central issue currently debated among bank analysts and economists is whether mergers enhance the efficiency of surviving banks. This paper investigates the postmerger performance of acquiring banks that participated in a merger during 1980-90. The evidence suggests that acquiring banks failed to improve postmerger X-efficiency. However, we find that acquiring banks experienced moderate gains in profitability and scale efficiency relative to a control sample. The second part of the paper uses regression analysis to identify factors influencing the performance of bank merger survivors. The ...
Report
Prestigious stock exchanges: a network analysis of international financial centers
In this paper, we use methods from social network analysis to assess the relative importance of financial centers around the world. Using data from virtually the entire universe of global equity activity, we present two sets of complete rankings for up to forty-five separate locations for the 1990-2006 period. The first phase of our analysis evaluates international stock exchanges based on their ability to attract global initial public offerings (IPOs). The second phase compares the capacity of these exchanges to provide an efficient trading platform for cross-listed companies. U.S. exchanges ...
Report
Evaluating the riskiness of initial public offerings: 1980-2000
In the wake of the dot.com collapse, investor sentiment toward initial public offerings (IPOs) has turned negative. To many investors, IPOs have come to symbolize the insider abuses and stock market excesses of the Internet bubble period; to others, investing in IPOs is inherently fraught with danger. This paper asks the question, Have IPOs indeed become more perilous to the investing public over time? ; I employ two approaches to investigate the post-issue riskiness of IPOs for the 1980-2000 period. First, I compare the stock price volatility for issuing and nonissuing firms. Second, I use a ...
Journal Article
Trends in financial market concentration and their implications for market stability
The link between financial market concentration and stability is a topic of great interest to policymakers and other market participants. Are concentrated markets - those where a relatively small number of firms hold large market shares - inherently more prone to disruption? This article considers that question by drawing on academic studies as well as introducing new analysis. Like other researchers, the authors find an ambiguous relationship between concentration and instability when a large firm in a concentrated market fails. In a complementary review of concentration trends across a ...
Report
Implied mortgage refinancing thresholds
The optimal prepayment model asserts that rational homeowners would refinance if they can reduce the current value of their liabilities by an amount greater than the refinancing threshold, defined as the cost of carrying the transaction plus the time value of the embedded call option. To compute the notional value of the refinancing threshold, researchs have traditionally relied on a discrete option-pricing model. Using a unique loan level dataset that links homeowner attributes with property and loan characteristics, this study proposes an alternative approach of estimating the implied value ...