Search Results
Showing results 1 to 10 of approximately 17.
(refine search)
Working Paper
Institutional Herding and Its Price Impact : Evidence from the Corporate Bond Market
Among growing concerns about potential financial stability risks posed by the asset management industry, herding has been considered as an important risk amplification channel. In this paper, we examine the extent to which institutional investors herd in their trading of U.S. corporate bonds and quantify the price impact of such herding behavior. We find that, relative to what is documented for the equity market, the level of institutional herding is much higher in the corporate bond market, particularly among speculative-grade bonds. In addition, mutual funds have become increasingly likely ...
Report
A Demand System Approach to Asset Pricing
This Staff Report was previously titled "An Equilibrium Model of Institutional Demand and Asset Prices." {{p}} We develop an asset pricing model with rich heterogeneity in asset demand across investors, designed to match institutional holdings data. The equilibrium price vector is uniquely determined by market clearing, which equates the supply of each asset to aggregate demand. We estimate the model on U.S. stock market data by instrumental variables, under an identifying assumption that allows for price impact. The model sheds light on the role of institutions in stock market ...
Working Paper
Impact investing for small, place-based fiduciaries: the research study initiated by the United Way of the Bay Area
Most fiduciaries of institutional funds (public-defined benefit plans, endowment funds, and quasi-private/public foundations) for many reasons have been reluctant to adopt Impact Investing, Social Responsible Investing (SRI), or Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors in their investment policies and philosophies. Primarily, such social impact factors are deemed to be limiting to the opportunity set of investments and therefore imply a financial return that is potentially substandard. This paper is the result of a challenge to identify if and how a model portfolio could be built ...
Working Paper
The Dollar and Corporate Borrowing Costs
We show that U.S. dollar movements affect syndicated loan terms for U.S. borrowers, even for those without trade exposure. We identify the effect of dollar movements using spread and loan amount adjustments during the syndication process. Using this high-frequency, within loan variation, we find that a one standard deviation increase in the dollar index increases spreads by up to 15 basis points and reduces loan amounts and underpricing by up to 2 percent and 7 basis points, respectively. These effects are concentrated in dollar appreciations. Our results suggest that global factors reflected ...
Working Paper
Pushing Bonds Over the Edge: Monetary Policy and Municipal Bond Liquidity
We examine the role of institutional investors in monetary policy transmission to asset markets by exploiting a discontinuous threshold in the tax treatment of municipal bonds. As bonds approach the threshold, mutual funds, the primary institutional traders in the market, dispose of the bonds at significant risk of falling below the threshold. This is driven by mutual funds anticipating future illiquidity. Once bonds cross the threshold, their liquidity declines and illiquidity-induced yield spreads increase substantially as retail investors become more important in price formation. ...
Working Paper
A Critical Review of the Common Ownership Literature
The rapid growth in index funds and significant consolidation in the asset-management industry over the past few decades has led to higher levels of common ownership and increased attention on the topic by academic researchers. A consensus has yet to emerge from the literature regarding the consequences of increased common ownership on firm behavior and market outcomes. Given the potential implications for firms and investors alike, it is perhaps not surprising that policymakers, legal scholars, finance and accounting academics, and practitioners have all taken a keen interest in the subject. ...
Working Paper
The Effects of Institutional Investor Objectives on Firm Valuation and Governance
We find that ownership by different types of institutional investor has different implications for future firm misvaluation and governance characteristics. Dedicated institutional investors decrease future firm misvaluation relative to fundamentals, as well as the magnitude of this misvaluation. In contrast, transient institutional investors have the opposite effect. Using SEC Regulation FD as an exogenous shock to information dissemination, we find evidence consistent with dedicated institutions having an information advantage. The valuation effects are primarily driven by institutional ...
Newsletter
How central bank swap lines affect the leveraged loan market
The cost of borrowing U.S. dollars through foreign exchange (FX) swap markets increased significantly at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in February 2020, indicated by larger deviations from covered interest rate parity (CIP). CIP deviations narrowed again when the Federal Reserve expanded its swap lines to support U.S. dollar liquidity globally—by enhancing and extending its swap facility with foreign central banks and introducing the new temporary Foreign and International Monetary Authorities (FIMA) repurchase agreement facility for foreign and international monetary authorities. ...
Working Paper
Investment, idiosyncratic risk, and ownership
High-powered incentives may induce higher managerial effort, but they also expose managers to idiosyncratic risk. If managers are risk averse, they might underinvest when firm-specific uncertainty increases, leading to suboptimal investment decisions from the perspective of well-diversified shareholders. We empirically document that when idiosyncratic risk rises, firm investment falls, and more so when managers own a larger fraction of the firm. This negative effect of managerial risk aversion on investment is mitigated if executives are compensated with options rather than with shares or if ...
Report
Asset price effects of peer benchmarking: evidence from a natural experiment
We estimate the effects of peer benchmarking by institutional investors on asset prices. To identify trades purely due to peer benchmarking as separate from those based on fundamentals or private information, we exploit a natural experiment involving a change in a government-imposed underperformance penalty applicable to Colombian pension funds. This change in regulation is orthogonal to stock fundamentals and only affects incentives to track peer portfolios, allowing us to identify the component of demand that is caused by peer benchmarking. We find that these peer effects generate excess ...