This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. This paper examines the strengths and weaknesses of securitie...

The comply-or-explain principle is a central element of most codes of corporate governance. Originally put forward by the Cadbury Committee in the UK as a practical means of establishing a code of corporate governance whilst avoiding an inflexible ‘one size fits all’ approach, it has since been incorporated into code regimes around the world. Despite its wide application very little is known ab...

This paper uses the Shapley Value decomposition technique to assess the factors behind the rise of inequality in China. It finds that, in many ways, inequality may have been an inevitable by-product of China’s investment and export-led growth model. Between Chinese households, we find that the most important factors explaining income inequality are location, education, access to health insuranc...

The paper examines the applicability of GDP-linked bonds for the financing of developing countries and emerging markets. GDP-linked bonds are bonds of which the coupon and/or redemption payments are tied to the GDP of the issuing country. The study encompasses a detailed empirical analysis of their pricing behaviour, the pricing sensitivities to changes in GDP, and of their behaviour in a portf...

We evaluate the effect that payday loan access has on credit and labor market outcomes of individuals in the U.S. Army. Along with the conditional random assignment of servicemembers to different states, we employ three identification strategies using cross-sectional variation in state policies, within-state variation in payday lending laws over time, and difference-indifference analysis using ...

Financial institutions around theworld expected themillennium date change (Y2K) to cause an aggregate liquidity shortage. Responding to the concern, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York auctioned Y2K options to primary dealers. The options gave the dealers the right to borrow from the Fed at a predetermined interest rate. Using the implied volatilities of Y2K options and the on/off-the-run spre...

We study the strategic interaction between fundamental informed trading and order-flow informed trading. In a standard two-period Kyle (1985) model, we add a “back-runner” who observes, ex post and potentially with noise, the order flow of the fundamental informed investor in the first period. Learning from orderflow information, the back-runner competes with the fundamental investor in the sec...

We derive the quantitative implications of growth theory for U.S. corporate equity plus net debt over the period 1960–2001. There were large secular movements in corporate equity values relative to GDP, with dramatic declines in the 1970s and dramatic increases starting in the 1980s and continuing throughout the 1990s. During the same period, there was little change in the capital-output ratio ...

Article history: Received 5 December 2011 Received in revised form 10 July 2012 Accepted 10 July 2012 Available online 20 July 2012 This paper analyzes the effect of financial leverage on corporate operating performance and how this effect varies across countries. Results for 10,375 firms in 39 countries indicate that the performance of firms with greater leverage is significantly reduced compa...

Fraud and misconduct in financial markets have recently become a key regulatory issue against the backdrop of the financial crisis. This paper investigates the sanctions policy and practices of the French financial regulator, Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF). It argues that, over time, the AMF has shifted from substantive to procedural regulation of finance. This shift consists in departin...