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Working Paper
The Shift from Active to Passive Investing: Potential Risks to Financial Stability?
The past couple of decades have seen a significant shift in assets from active to passive investment strategies. We examine the potential effects of this shift on financial stability through four different channels: (1) effects on investment funds? liquidity transformation and redemption risks; (2) passive strategies that amplify market volatility; (3) increases in asset-management industry concentration; and (4) the effects on valuations, volatility, and comovement of assets that are included in indexes. Overall, the shift from active to passive investment strategies appears to be increasing some types of risk while diminishing others: The shift has probably reduced liquidity transformation risks, although some passive strategies amplify market volatility, and passive-fund growth is increasing asset-management industry concentration. We find mixed evidence that passive investing is contributing to the comovement of assets. Finally, we use our framework to assess how financial stability risks are likely to evolve if the shift to passive investing continues, noting that some of the repercussions of passive investing ultimately may slow its growth.
AUTHORS: McCabe, Patrick E.; Shin, Chae Hee; Osambela, Emilio; Anadu, Kenechukwu E.; Kruttli, Mathias S.
DATE: 2018-08-27
Working Paper
Firm Entry and Macroeconomic Dynamics: A State-level Analysis
Using an annual panel of U.S. states over the period 1982-2014, we estimate the response of macroeconomic variables to a shock to the number of new firms (startups). We find that these shocks have significant effects that persist for many years on real gross domestic product, productivity and population. This is consistent with simple models of firm dynamics where a ?missing generation? of firms affects productivity persistently.
AUTHORS: Gourio, Francois; Messer, Todd; Siemer, Michael
DATE: 2016-01-31
Working Paper
Project modifications and bidding in highway procurement auctions
This paper examines bidding behavior in a setting where post-bid-letting project modifications occur. These modifications change both the costs and payouts to the winning contractor, making the contract incomplete. Recent empirical research shows that bidders incorporate the likelihood of such changes in contracts into their bidding strategies. In particular, contractors may adjust bids to compensate for renegotiation, resequencing of tasks, and other costs associated with project modifications. This paper extends this literature by examining bidding behavior and project modifications in Texas, where there has been a significant shift in change order policy. Specifically, Texas sharply reduced its spending on change orders starting in the mid-2000s. In the period before the change in policy, we estimate that project modifications raised bidder costs by 4 percent to 6 percent. In the period after the change in policy, the impact of project modifications on bidder costs is estimated to be closer to 1 percent.
AUTHORS: De Silva, Dakshina G.; Dunne, Timothy; Kosmopoulou, Georgia; Lamarche, Carlos
DATE: 2015-12-01
Working Paper
Faster Payments : Market Structure and Policy Considerations
The U.S. payments industry is in the process of developing ubiquitous, safe, faster electronic solutions for making a broad variety of business and personal payments. How this market for faster payments will evolve will be shaped by a range of economic forces, such as economies of scale and scope, network effects, switching costs, and product differentiation. Emerging technologies could alter these forces and lead to new organizational arrangements or market structures that are different from those in legacy payment markets to date. In light of this uncertainty, this paper examines three hypothetical market structures that may emerge: a dominant-operator environment, a multi-operator environment, and a decentralized environment. Each of these market structures has different implications for the public policy objectives of efficiency, safety, and ubiquity. The paper also considers tools to promote positive outcomes in each market structure.
AUTHORS: Rosenbaum, Aaron; Baughman, Garth; Manuszak, Mark D.; Stewart, Kylie; Hayashi, Fumiko; Stavins, Joanna
DATE: 2017-09-25
Working Paper
The Shift from Active to Passive Investing : Potential Risks to Financial Stability?
The past couple of decades have seen a significant shift in assets from active to passive investment strategies. We examine the potential effects of this shift for financial stability through four different channels: (1) effects on investment funds? liquidity transformation and redemption risks; (2) passive strategies that amplify market volatility; (3) increases in asset-management industry concentration; and (4) the effects on valuations, volatility, and comovement of assets that are included in indexes. Overall, the shift from active to passive investment strategies appears to be increasing some types of risk while diminishing others: The shift has probably reduced liquidity transformation risks, although some passive strategies amplify market volatility, and passive-fund growth is increasing asset-management industry concentration. We find mixed evidence that passive investing is contributing to the comovement of assets. Finally, we use our framework to assess how financial stability risks are likely to evolve if the shift to passive investing continues, noting that some of the repercussions of passive investing ultimately may slow its growth.
AUTHORS: McCabe, Patrick E.; Kruttli, Mathias S.; Osambela, Emilio; Shin, Chae Hee; Anadu, Kenechukwu E.
DATE: 2018-08-28
Working Paper
Bank Fees, Aftermarkets, and Consumer Behavior
Fees for banking services have been a policy concern for over 20 years and the subject of several government agencies studies, which focused on the magnitude, incidence, or disclosure of such fees. Using a sample of single market banks, I study the relationship between market-level consumer characteristics and bank fee revenue, fees, and bank return on assets (ROA) to infer consumer and firm behavior. Of particular interest, I use county-level IRS tax records as a measure of the consumer income distribution, but my analysis also includes measures of age and education distributions. I find very little evidence that banks are systematically charging higher aftermarket fees in counties with greater proportions of younger, less educated, or poorer households. Standard measures of competition such as the Herfindahl-Hirschmann Index of deposit concentration are correlated with fees for base checking accounts, but not correlated with aftermarket product fees. Finally, st ate-wide restrictions on payday lending are correlated with higher bank fees, but not with increased bank revenue or ROA.
AUTHORS: Adams, Robert M.
DATE: 2017-05
Working Paper
Dotcom Price Spiral
We show that during the bubble implied growth rates coming from the underpricing of IPO market explains short term returns on the NASDAQ index. This result remains even if we replace actual underprice for others different instruments for underpricing that are based on predetermined variables and not correlated to market returns. We also do placebo tests to assess the relation between underpricing and NASDAQ returns over other periods. We show that growth proxies that are not contaminated by the booms and busts of the stock market are uncorrelated with the returns on the NASDAQ index in periods outside the bubble.
AUTHORS: Pinheiro, Roberto; de Carvalho, Antonio Gledson; Sampaio, Joelson Oliveira
DATE: 2017-07-25
Working Paper
Dotcom Extreme Underpricing
We conjecture that the Dotcom abnormal underpricing resulted from the emergence a large cohort of firms racing for market leadership/survivorship. Fundamentals pricing at the IPO was part of their strategy. Consistent with our conjecture, firms? strategic goals and characteristics fully explain the abnormal underpricing. Contrary to alternatives explanations, underpricing was not associated with top underwriting; there was no deterioration of issuers? quality; and top underwriters and analysts became more selective.
AUTHORS: Sampaio, Joelson Oliveira; de Carvalho, Antonio Gledson; Pinheiro, Roberto
DATE: 2017-07-25
Working Paper
The Dotcom Bubble and Underpricing: Conjectures and Evidence
We provide conjectures for what caused the price spiral and the high underpricing of the dotcom bubble of 1999?2000. We raise two conjectures for the price spiral. First, given the uncertainty about the growth opportunities generated by the new technologies and their spillover effects across technology industries, investors saw the inflow of a large number of high-growth firms as a sign of high growth rates for the market as a whole. Second, investors interpreted the wave of highly underpriced IPOs as an opportunity to obtain gains by investing in newly public companies. The underpricing resulted from the emergence a large cohort of firms racing for market leadership. Fundamentals pricing at the IPO was part of their strategy. We provide evidence for our conjectures. We show that returns on NASDAQ composite index are explained by the flow of high-growth (or highly underpriced) IPOs; the high underpricing can be fully explained by firms? characteristics and strategic goals. We also show that, contrary to alternatives explanations, underpricing was not associated with top underwriting, there was no deterioration of issuers? quality, and top underwriters and analysts became more selective.
AUTHORS: Sampaio, Joelson Oliveira; de Carvalho, Antonio Gledson; Pinheiro, Roberto
DATE: 2016-12-21
Working Paper
Agglomeration and innovation
Draft chapter for the forthcoming Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, Vols. 5A and 5B This paper reviews academic research on the connections between agglomeration and innovation. The authors first describe the conceptual distinctions between invention and innovation. They then discuss how these factors are frequently measured in the data and note some resulting empirical regularities. Innovative activity tends to be more concentrated than industrial activity, and the authors discuss important findings from the literature about why this is so. The authors highlight the traits of cities (e.g., size, industrial diversity) that theoretical and empirical work link to innovation, and they discuss factors that help sustain these features (e.g., the localization of entrepreneurial finance).
AUTHORS: Kerr, William R.; Carlino, Gerald A.
DATE: 2014-08-01