Search Results
Working Paper
Measuring the Liquidity Profile of Mutual Funds
We measure the liquidity profile of open-end mutual funds using the sensitivity of their daily returns to aggregate liquidity. We study how this sensitivity changes around real-activity macroeconomic announcements that reveal large surprises about the state of the economy and after three relevant market events: Bill Gross's departure from PIMCO, Third Avenue Focused Credit Fund's suspension of redemptions, and the effect of Lehman Brothers' collapse on Neuberger Berman. Results show that, following negative news, the sensitivity to aggregate liquidity increases for less-liquid mutual funds, ...
Working Paper
Climate-related Financial Stability Risks for the United States: Methods and Applications
This report has two objectives: 1. Review the available literature on Climate-Related Financial Stability Risks (CRFSRs) as it pertains to the United States. Specifically, the literature review considers several modeling approaches and aims to 1.1 Identify financial market vulnerabilities (e.g., bank leverage), 1.2 Provide an assessment of those vulnerabilities (high/medium/low) as identified by the current literature, and 1.3 Evaluate the uncertainty surrounding these assessments based on interpretation of the findings and coverage of existing literature (high/low). 2. Identify methodologies ...
Working Paper
Learning from History : Volatility and Financial Crises
We study the effects of volatility on financial crises by constructing a cross-country database spanning over 200 years. Volatility is not a significant predictor of crises whereas unusually high and low volatilities are. Low volatility is followed by credit build-ups, indicating that agents take more risk in periods of low financial risk consistent with Minsky hypothesis, and increasing the likelihood of a banking crisis. The impact is stronger when financial markets are more prominent and less regulated. Finally, both high and low volatilities make stock market crises more likely, while ...
Working Paper
Model Risk of Risk Models
This paper evaluates the model risk of models used for forecasting systemic and market risk. Model risk, which is the potential for different models to provide inconsistent outcomes, is shown to be increasing with and caused by market uncertainty. During calm periods, the underlying risk forecast models produce similar risk readings, hence, model risk is typically negligible. However, the disagreement between the various candidate models increases significantly during market distress, with a no obvious way to identify which method is the best. Finally, we discuss the main problems in risk ...
Working Paper
The impact of risk cycles on business cycles: a historical view
We investigate the effects of financial risk cycles on business cycles, using a panel spanning 73 countries since 1900. Agents use a Bayesian learning model to form their beliefs on risk. We construct a proxy of these beliefs and show that perceived low risk encourages risk-taking, augmenting growth at the cost of accumulating financial vulnerabilities, and therefore, a reversal in growth follows. The reversal is particularly pronounced when the low-risk environment persists and credit growth is excessive. Global-risk cycles have a stronger effect on growth than local-risk cycles via their ...
Working Paper
Information Disclosures, Default Risk, and Bank Value
This paper investigates the causal effects of voluntary information disclosures on a bank's expected default probability, enterprise risk, and value. I measure disclosure via a self-constructed index for the largest 80 U.S. bank holding companies for the period 1998-2011. I provide evidence that a bank's management responds to a plausibly exogenous deterioration in the supply of public information by increasing its voluntary disclosure, which in turn improves investors' assessment of the bank risk and value. This evidence suggests that disclosure may alleviate informational frictions and lead ...
Discussion Paper
How much lockdown policies contribute to local unemployment? Evidence from the first and second waves of COVID-19
Did people reduce their social interactions as a result of the pandemic, restrictive lockdown policies, or both? What was the impact of reduced social interactions on local employment? Importantly, why did unemployment spike during the first wave of the pandemic, but gradually decline thereafter, even though the outbreak was much more severe during the second wave? In this note, we attempt to answer these questions by exploiting newly available data on hours worked among small firms at the industry-county-state-week level.