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Working Paper
Variance Disparity and Market Frictions
This paper introduces a new model-free approach to measuring the expectation of market variance using VIX derivatives. This approach shows that VIX derivatives carry different information about future variance than S&P 500 (SPX) options, especially during the 2008 financial crisis. I find that the segmentation is associated with frictions such as funding illiquidity, market illiquidity, and asymmetric information. When they are segmented, VIX derivatives contribute more to the variance discovery process than SPX options. These findings imply that VIX derivatives would offer a better estimate ...
Working Paper
Employment Dynamics in a Signaling Model with Workers' Incentives
Many firms adjust employment in a "lumpy" manner -- infrequently and in large bursts. In this paper, I show that lumpy adjustments can arise from concerns about the incentives of remaining workers. Specifically, I develop a model in which a firm's productivity depends on its workers' effort and workers' income prospects depend on the firm's profitability. I use this model to analyze the consequences of demand shocks that are observed by the firm but not by its workers, who can only try to infer the firm's profitability from its employment decisions. I show that the resulting signaling model ...
Working Paper
Initial Public Offerings in Hot and Cold Markets
Asymmetric information models characterize hot IPO markets as periods when better quality firms have an incentive to issue equity, and cold markets when the lemons premium associated with equity is too high to draw in many issuers. Recent empirical evidence, however, suggests that firms that issue in hot markets are a major source of stock price underperformance of equity issuers. We investigate these opposing views with data on IPO firms that issued in 1983, a hot market, and 1988, a cold market. We find that the two sets of firms have similar operating performance, but stock returns are ...
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 ...
Working Paper
Are Lemons Sold First? Dynamic Signaling in the Mortgage Market
A central result in the theory of adverse selection in asset markets is that informed sellers can signal quality and obtain higher prices by delaying trade. This paper provides some of the first evidence of a signaling mechanism through trade delays using the residential mortgage market as a laboratory. We find a strong relationship between mortgage performance and time to sale for privately securitized mortgages. Additionally, deals made up of more seasoned mortgages are sold at lower yields. These effects are strongest in the "Alt-A" segment of the market, where mortgages are often sold ...
Working Paper
Mixed Signals: Investment Distortions with Adverse Selection
We study how adverse selection distorts equilibrium investment allocations in a Walrasian credit market with two-sided heterogeneity. Representative investor and partial equilibrium economies are special cases where investment allocations are distorted above perfect information allocations. By contrast, the general setting features a pecuniary externality that leads to trade and investment allocations below perfect information levels. The degree of heterogeneity between informed agents' type governs the direction of the distortion. Moreover, contracts that complete markets dampen the impact ...
Working Paper
Private Information in Over-the-Counter Markets
We study trading in over-the-counter (OTC) markets where agents have heterogeneous and private valuations for assets. We develop a quantitative model in which assets are issued through a primary market and then traded in a secondary OTC market. Then we use data on the US municipal bond market to calibrate the model. We find that the effects of private information are large, reducing asset supply by 20%, trade volume by 80%, and aggregate welfare by 8%. Using the model, we identify two channels through which the information friction harms the economy. First, the distribution of the existing ...
Speech
The theory and practice of supervision--Remarks at the SIFMA Internal Auditors Society Education Luncheon, Harvard Club, New York City
Remarks at the SIFMA Internal Auditors Society Education Luncheon, Harvard Club, New York City.
Report
Uncertain booms and fragility
I develop a framework of the buildup and outbreak of financial crises in an asymmetric information setting. In equilibrium, two distinct economic states arise endogenously: ?normal times,? periods of modest investment, and ?booms,? periods of expansionary investment. Normal times occur when the intermediary sector realizes moderate investment opportunities. Booms occur when the intermediary sector realizes many investment opportunities, but also occur when it realizes very few opportunities. As a result, investors face greater uncertainty in booms. During a boom, subsequent arrival of ...
Report
The Federal Funds Market over the 2007-09 Crisis
This paper measures how the 2007-09 financial crisis affected the U.S. federal funds market. I accomplish this by developing and estimating a structural model of this market, in which intermediation plays a crucial role and borrowing banks differ in their unobserved probability of default. The estimates imply that the expected probability of default increases 0.29 percentage point at the start of the crisis in mid-2007 and then gains a further 1.91 percentage points after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. These increases do not cause a market freeze, however, because simultaneously there is ...