Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 115-120). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 115-120). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 220-224).

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Naval Postgraduate School, December 2003. / Thesis advisor(s): Donald Summers, Juliette Webb. Includes bibliographical references (p. 67-69). Also available online.

Credit rating agencies are controversial yet influential financial gatekeepers. Many have attributed the recent failures of credit rating agencies to conflicts of interest, such as the agencies’ issuer-pays business model and the agencies’ provision of ancillary services. This report identifies these conflicts; examines recently-finalized Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations proscribing these conflicts; and suggests other possible regulatory measures. The strategies available to regulators are diverse and differ widely in their political and administrative feasibility. These strategies include outright prohibition of conflicts; removing regulatory references to credit ratings; enhancing agency liability; organizational firewalls; performance disclosures; demonstrating due diligence and its results; increasing competition; staleness reforms; internal governance; administrative registration; and requiring alternative business models. While the report primarily focuses on how the most recent financial crisis—and the related market for asset-backed securities—highlighted conflicts of interest at credit rating agencies, this report also examines how credit ratings—and their limitations—affect sovereign debt markets. / text

This dissertation is a collection of three essays that study the market for consumer information. The first chapter studies the role of information intermediaries and their impact on consumer privacy. The second chapter presents an analysis of signaling in credit and insurance markets through default and repayment decisions. The third chapter studies some special topics such the manipulation of credit histories by fake borrowing or deletion of records. It also identifies a learning mechanism through which uninformed consumers can endogenously learn the link between credit market behavior and insurance market outcomes. / text

published_or_final_version / Business / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

As evidenced by its market size, credit default swaps (CDSs) has been the cornerstone product of the credit derivatives market. The central question that I attempt to answer in this thesis is: why and how does the introduction of CDS market affect bank loan financing? Theoretical works predict some potential effects from CDS market, but empirical evidence is still rare. This dissertation empirically examines the effects of CDS trading on bank loan financing. In chapter one, I find that banks increase average loan amount and charge higher loan spread after the onset of CDS trading on the borrower’s debt. Also, credit quality of the borrower deteriorates for those with active CDS trading. These findings suggest that banks tend to take on more credit risk by issuing larger loans and by lending to riskier firms that could not obtain bank loan in the absence of CDS. The risk-taking by banks ultimately transmitted to higher bank-level risk profile. The second chapter is the first empirical study of CDS’ role in determining loan syndicate structure. I find larger lead bank share when CDS is in place. Moreover, participation of credit derivatives trading by lead banks is much larger than by the participants, suggesting that lead banks have better chance to use CDS to their own advantage. Further analysis shows that lead banks retain an even larger share when it is more experienced dealing with the borrower and when information asymmetry between the lender and the borrower is less severe. Different from conventional wisdom about moral hazard in syndicated lending, our findings suggest that the lead bank likely takes on more credit risk voluntarily due to its increased financing capacity. The third chapter focuses on the effects of CDS on debt contracting. Given that current evidence does not show CDS reduces average cost of debt, we conjecture that the diversification benefit is reflected by relaxation of restrictions imposed on borrowers. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find the marginal effect from CDS trading on covenant strictness measure is 16.8% on average. One standard deviation increase in the number of outstanding CDS contracts loosens net worth covenants by approximately 8.9%. Using various endogeneity controls, we are able to show the loosening of covenants is due to the reduced level of debtholder-shareholder conflict. Furthermore, the loosening effect is stronger when the expected renegotiation cost is larger, consistent with the view that CDS mitigates contracting friction and improves contracting efficiency. Overall, this dissertation attempts to provide first empirical evidence on how CDS affects bank loan financing. We focus the analysis on loan issuance, syndicate structure and contracting. The findings suggest that banks lend to riskier borrowers in the presence of CDS. On a positive note, banks tend to impose less restrictive covenants on its borrower, which may mitigate frictions in lending market in terms of ex ante bargaining and ex post renegotiation cost. / published_or_final_version / Economics and Finance / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

We examine recovery rates of defaulted bonds in the US corporate bond market, based on a complete set of traded prices and volumes. A study of the trading microstructure around various types of default events is provided. We document temporary price pressure with high trading volumes on the default day and the following 30 days, and low trading activity thereafter. Based on this analysis, we determine market-based recovery rates and quantify various liquidity measures. We study the relation between the recovery rates and these measures, considering additionally a comprehensive set of bond characteristics, firm fundamentals, and macroeconomic variables. (authors' abstract)

This dissertation studies the impact of several different housing market features on the macroeconomy. Chapter 1 augments the New-Keynesian model with collateral constraints to incorporate long-term debt in order to examine the interaction between multi-period loans, leverage, and indeterminacy. Allowing firms to borrow heavily against commercial housing by increasing the loan-to-value ratio from 0.01 to 0.90 reduces the level of steady state output approximately 3.19% and decreases social welfare. In contrast, increasing the debt limit of households increases steady state output by 2.72%. Social welfare is maximized under a utilitiarian function when households can borrow at a loan-to-value ratio of about 0.49. An economy with long-term debt also makes stabilization much more difficult for monetary policymakers because determinacy is harder to attain. Instead of only having to satisfy the Taylor Principle (which implies that a more than one-to-one response to inflation), central bankers must either use a strict inflation target or aggressively respond to inflation and the output gap to ensure determinacy. Chapter 2 examine a New-Keynesian model with housing where default occurs if housing prices are sufficiently low, resulting in a loss of access to credit and housing markets. Default decreases aggregate and patient household consumption, increases impatient household consumption, and amplifies the decline in housing prices due to a misallocation of housing. The effects on consumption often peak immediately before default occurs. Policies that prevent underwater borrowing or raise interest rates along with housing prices are generally desirable because they increase utilitarian social welfare. This paper shows that default is not simply a symptom of economic downturns, but a cause. Chapter 3 explores the correlation between the home mortgage interest deduction (HMID) and state economic growth. The HMID was introduced to incentivize home purchases by distorting the after-tax price, resulting in an overinvestment in real estate. Previous empirical work has shown that investment in physical capital increases economic growth more so than investment in structures. Theoretically, the anticipated effect of the HMID would be lower subsequent economic growth. However, this paper finds that residential housing is actually beneficial for economic growth.