Corporate Finance

Portfolio credit derivatives are contracts that are tied to an underlying portfolio of defaultable reference assets and have payoffs that depend on the default times of these assets. The hedging of credit derivatives involves the calculation of the sensitivity of the contract value with respect to changes in the credit spreads of the underlying assets, or, more generally, with respect to parameters of the default-time distributions. We derive and analyze Monte Carlo estimators of these sensitivities.

Much of the puzzle of underissuance of national bank notes can be resolved for the period 1880–1900 (the period when detailed, bank-level data are available) by disaggregating, taking account of regulatory limits, and considering differences in banks' opportunity costs cross-sectionally and over time. Banks with poor lending opportunities issued more, within regulatory limits. Banks tended to issue more when bond yields (the backing for notes) were high relative to lending opportunities.

Traditional explanations for indirect trade through an entrepot focus on savings in transport costs and the role of specialized agents in processing and distribution. We provide an alternative perspective based on the potential for entrepots to facilitate tariff evasion. Using data on direct exports to mainland China and indirect exports via Hong Kong SAR, we find that the indirect export rate rises with the Chinese tariff rate, despite the absence of any legal tax advantage to sending goods via Hong Kong SAR.

This paper, the second in CEASA's White Paper series on accounting issues, lays out principles under which fair value accounting satisfies the objective of reporting to shareholders. Its "principles-based" approach embraces broad economic concepts but is also pragmatic and specific enough to guide practice.

Raising equity via convertible securities is a roundabout procedure that can lead to erroneous conclusions in the absence of careful evaluation. How can one determine if issuing convertibles is a better alternative to the straight issuance of common equity? In this paper, we attempt to answer this question in the case of Citigroup by estimating the implied common equity price from its $7.5 billion convertible issue and comparing it to a common equity offering. In doing so, we provide a simple procedure for calculating the implied common equity proceeds of convertible issues.

Venture capitalists add value to portfolio firms by obtaining and transferring information about senior managers across firms over time. Information transfer occurs on a significant scale and takes place both among a single venture capitalist's portfolio firms and between different venture capitalists' firms via a network of venture capitalists, which venture capitalists use to locate and relocate managers. Cross-sectional differences are associated with differences in the intensity with which venture capitalists network.

We consider a trader who aims to liquidate a large position in the presence of an arbitrageur who hopes to profit from the trader's activity. The arbitrageur is uncertain about the trader's position and learns from observed price fluctuations. This is a dynamic game with asymmetric information. We present an algorithm for computing perfect Bayesian equilibrium behavior and conduct numerical experiments. Our results demonstrate that the trader's strategy differs significantly from one that would be optimal in the absence of the arbitrageur.

The separation of ownership and control allows controlling shareholders to pursue private benefits. We develop an analytically tractable dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to study asset pricing and welfare implications of imperfect investor protection. Consistent with empirical evidence, the model predicts that countries with weaker investor protection have more incentives to overinvest, lower Tobin's q, higher return volatility, larger risk premia, and higher interest rate.

A German broker's clients place similar speculative trades and therefore tend to be on the same side of the market in a given stock during a given day, week, month, and quarter. Aggregate liquidity effects, short sale constraints, the systematic execution of limit orders (coordinated through price movements) or the correlated trading of other investors who pick off retail limit orders, do not fully explain why retail investors trade similarly. Correlated market orders lead returns, presumably due to persistent speculative price pressure.