Financial system risk


3 Steps to Reduce Financial System Risk

By using complex derivative products, banks are better able to manage risk. But this "credit risk transfer" technology is transferring risk to a new set of investors inexperienced in this arena and posing exposure problems for the international financial system as a whole, argues Harvard Business School professor Mohamed El-Erian. Here's how to fix the problem.


Economic Catastrophe Bonds

Pooling economic assets into large portfolios and tranching them into sequential cash-flow claims has become a big business, generating record profits for both the Wall Street originators and the agencies that rate these securities. This paper by business economics doctoral student Jakub Jurek and HBS professors Joshua Coval and Erik Stafford investigates the pricing and risks of instruments created as a result of recent structured finance activities. It demonstrates that senior collateralized debt obligation (CDO) tranches have significantly different systematic risk exposures than their credit rating-matched, single-name counterparts, and should therefore command different risk premia.

Auditing in the Self-reporting Economy

Intellectual property can be used by its owner directly, licensed to a third party for a fixed royalty, or licensed to a third party for a variable royalty. The variable royalty arrangement depends on self-reporting by the licensee, which in turn induces demand for auditing by the licensor. This research studies a setting with the following features: a production cost advantage on the part of the outside party that creates gains from licensing; a limited liability constraint that prevents the licensee from owing more royalties than the gross profits of licensing the intellectual property and prevents the licensor from capturing all of the economic surplus via a fixed royalty agreement; and accounting and auditing costs that reduce the benefits of a variable royalty agreement.

Leveling the Executive Options Playing Field

Harvard Business School professor Mihir A. Desai recently presented testimony to a U.S. Senate subcommittee looking at the subject of executive stock options. His theme: A "dual-reporting system" makes it difficult for investors and tax authorities to learn the real numbers.Behavioral Finance—Benefiting from Irrational InvestorsDo investors really behave rationally? Behavioral finance researchers Malcolm Baker and Joshua Coval don't think humans are such cold calculators. One proof: Individual and even institutional investors often give in to inertia and hold on to shares in unwanted stock. And therein lays opportunity for investment managers and firms.

Growth and the Quality of Foreign Direct Investment: Is All FDI Equal?

Understanding the effect of foreign direct investment is important for two main reasons: It informs foreign investment policy, and it has implications for the effect of rapidly growing investment flows on the process of economic development. While academics tend to treat foreign direct investment as a homogenous capital flow, policymakers maintain that some FDI projects are better than others. In fact, national policies toward FDI seek to attract some types of FDI while regulating other types, reflecting a belief among policymakers that FDI projects differ greatly in terms of the national benefits to be derived from them. Policymakers from Dublin to Beijing, for instance, have implemented complex FDI regimes in order to influence the nature of FDI projects attracted to their shores. Using a dataset on 29 countries, Alfaro and Charlton distinguished different qualities of FDI in order to examine the various links between types of FDI and growth.


All Eyes on Slovakia's Flat Tax

The flat tax is an idea that's burst to life in post-communist Eastern and Central Europe, especially in Slovakia. But is the rest of the world ready? A new Harvard Business School case on Slovakia's complex experience highlights many hurdles elsewhere, as HBS professor Laura Alfaro, Europe Research Center Director Vincent Dessain, and Research Assistant Ane Damgaard Jensen explain in this Q&A.