Search Results
Working Paper
Adverse Selection, Risk Sharing and Business Cycles
I consider a real business cycle model in which agents have private information about an idiosyncratic shock to their value of leisure. I consider the mechanism design problem for this economy and describe a computational method to solve it. This is an important contribution of the paper since the method could be used to solve a wide class of models with heterogeneous agents and aggregate uncertainty. Calibrating the model to U.S. data I find a striking result: That the information frictions that plague the economy have no effects on business cycle fluctuations.
Speech
Why focus on culture?
Remarks at Towards a New Age of Responsibility in Banking and Finance: Getting the Culture and the Ethics Right, Goethe-Universitt Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt, Germany.
Report
Getting ahead by spending more? Local community response to state merit aid programs
In more than half of U.S. states over the past two decades, the implementation of merit aid programs has dramatically reduced net tuition expenses for college-bound students who attend in-state colleges. Although the intention of these programs was to improve access to enrollment for high-achieving students, it is possible that they had unanticipated effects. We analyze whether state funding for higher education and K-12 education changed as a result of program implementation, and whether local school districts attempt to counter any such changes. We employ two methodologies to study whether ...
Journal Article
Are CEOs Overpaid?
Feature article on: Are CEOs Overpaid? Incentives for chief executives have important economic implications
Report
Effect of constraints on Tiebout competition: evidence from a school finance reform in the United States
In 1994, Michigan enacted a comprehensive school finance reform that not only significantly increased state aid to low-spending districts, but also placed restraints on the growth of spending in high-spending districts. While a rich literature studies the impact of school finance reforms on resource equalization, test scores, and residential sorting, there is no literature yet on the impact of such reforms on resource allocation by school districts. This study begins to fill this gap. The Michigan reform affords us a unique opportunity to study the impacts of such reforms on resource ...
Journal Article
Risk management, governance, culture, and risk taking in banks
This article examines how governance, culture, and risk management affect risk taking in banks. It distinguishes between good risks, which are risks that have an ex ante private reward for the bank on a standalone basis, and bad risks, which do not have such a reward. A well-governed bank takes the amount of risk that maximizes shareholder wealth, subject to constraints imposed by laws and regulators. In general, this involves eliminating or mitigating all bad risks to the extent that it is cost effective to do so. The role of risk management in such a bank is not to reduce the bank?s total ...
Speech
Guiding Principles for Financial Regulation; Panel Remarks at \"The Future of Global Finance: Populism, Technology, and Regulation\" Conference, Columbia University, New York, NY
At times, the regulatory framework that has arisen since the global financial crisis can seem like the game of fizzbin (appeared in the original Star Trek TV Show) ? very complicated, seemingly without rationale, and constantly changing. In such an environment, sometimes it helps to take a step back and focus on some underlying principles that should serve as a foundation for any financial regulatory framework, and that can help guide any potential changes to strengthen the framework and promote cross-country harmonization.
Speech
Enhancing financial stability by improving culture in the financial services industry
Remarks at the Workshop on Reforming Culture and Behavior in the Financial Services Industry, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, New York City.
Working Paper
Who Has the Time? Community College Students’ Time-Use Response to Financial Incentives
We evaluate the effect of performance-based scholarship programs for postsecondary students on student time use and effort and whether these effects are different for students we hypothesize may be more or less responsive to incentives. To do so, we administered a time-use survey as part of a randomized experiment in which community college students in New York City were randomly assigned to be eligible for a performance-based scholarship or to a control group that was only eligible for the standard financial aid. This paper contributes to the literature by attempting to get inside the ...
Report
Banks' incentives and the quality of internal risk models
This paper investigates the incentives for banks to bias their internally generated risk estimates. We are able to estimate bank biases at the credit level by comparing bank-generated risk estimates within loan syndicates. The biases are positively correlated with measures of regulatory capital, even in the presence of bank fixed effects, consistent with an effort by low-capital banks to improve regulatory ratios. At the portfolio level, the difference in borrower probability of default is as large as 100 basis points, which can improve the typical loan portfolio?s Tier 1 capital ratio by as ...