Project acronym Dynamic Delegation
Project Implications of the Dynamic Nature of Portfolio Delegation
Researcher (PI) Ron Kaniel
Host Institution (HI) INTERDISCIPLINARY CENTER (IDC) HERZLIYA
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH1, ERC-2012-StG_20111124
Summary The asset management industry is a 60 trillion euros industry world wide, with a ratio of assets under management by asset managers to GDP around 100 percent. Despite the prominence of financial intermediaries in financial markets, our understanding of the portfolio delegation relationship, and its equilibrium asset pricing and contracting implications is at its infancy. The recent financial crisis has further underscored the importance of better understanding the incentives of financial intermediaries, the distortions induced by these incentives, the contracts that can help mitigate these distortions, and the impact of their trading on asset pricing dynamics.
One key feature that is at the core of the asset management relationship is its dynamic nature: investors can, and do, periodically re-allocate funds between managers and between funds and other investment vehicles. The magnitude of fund flows, both over time and accross funds at a given point in time, have been shown to be quantitatively large relative to assets under management. The ability of investors to quickly pull money out of funds at a time of crisis can have significant ramifications for the stability of the financial system.
Understanding implications of the dynamic nature of the delegation relationship is imperative in order to understand multiple aspects related to delegation and financial markets at large, including: risk taking behavior by funds; welfare implications for investors who invest in funds; what regulatory restrictions should be imposed on contracts; the evolution, past and future, of the asset management industry; securities return dynamics.
The objective is to develope models that will incorporate dynamic flows in settings that will allow studying implications and deriving empirical predictions on multiple dimensions: portfolio choice; optimal contracting; distribution of assets across funds; equilibrium asset pricing dynamics.
Summary
The asset management industry is a 60 trillion euros industry world wide, with a ratio of assets under management by asset managers to GDP around 100 percent. Despite the prominence of financial intermediaries in financial markets, our understanding of the portfolio delegation relationship, and its equilibrium asset pricing and contracting implications is at its infancy. The recent financial crisis has further underscored the importance of better understanding the incentives of financial intermediaries, the distortions induced by these incentives, the contracts that can help mitigate these distortions, and the impact of their trading on asset pricing dynamics.
One key feature that is at the core of the asset management relationship is its dynamic nature: investors can, and do, periodically re-allocate funds between managers and between funds and other investment vehicles. The magnitude of fund flows, both over time and accross funds at a given point in time, have been shown to be quantitatively large relative to assets under management. The ability of investors to quickly pull money out of funds at a time of crisis can have significant ramifications for the stability of the financial system.
Understanding implications of the dynamic nature of the delegation relationship is imperative in order to understand multiple aspects related to delegation and financial markets at large, including: risk taking behavior by funds; welfare implications for investors who invest in funds; what regulatory restrictions should be imposed on contracts; the evolution, past and future, of the asset management industry; securities return dynamics.
The objective is to develope models that will incorporate dynamic flows in settings that will allow studying implications and deriving empirical predictions on multiple dimensions: portfolio choice; optimal contracting; distribution of assets across funds; equilibrium asset pricing dynamics.
Max ERC Funding
728 436 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-01-01, End date: 2017-12-31
Project acronym ECOMATCH
Project Economics of Matching Markets: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations
Researcher (PI) Alfred Galichon
Host Institution (HI) FONDATION NATIONALE DES SCIENCES POLITIQUES
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH1, ERC-2012-StG_20111124
Summary This project offers a theoretical and empirical investigation of matching markets. Matching is, broadly speaking, the study of complementarities, which explains the formation of coalitions. Matching models are found in many applied fields within Economics: Labour Economics, Family Economics, Consumer theory of differentiated goods (hedonic models), Trade, etc. Desirable properties of these coalitions, such as stability, lead to testable implications of the surplus that individuals generate in a match, allowing for structural estimation of matching models.
The goal of this proposal is to expand the frontiers of the theory of matching to design a very general and highly flexible model of matching that will lend itself to estimation and thus lead to empirical findings in various fields of Economics. Based on promising work initiated by the PI, this proposal seeks to bridge the gap between the theory and the empirics of matching markets that was traditionally observed in this literature.
Particular focus will be given to situations where stable outcomes may not exist (such as unipartite, or one-to-many matching models), frictions, taxes. In these cases, a thorough investigation is carried on what solution concept should be used, and what are the testable implications.
Applications will be given to various empirical issues or policy relevant questions such as:
- The nature of the complementarities between senior and junior employees within teams,
- The role played by the marriage market in the problem of rural depletion in China,
- The impact of CEO risk aversion on assignment to firms, and on the CEO compensation package,
- The pricing of attributes of French wines.
Summary
This project offers a theoretical and empirical investigation of matching markets. Matching is, broadly speaking, the study of complementarities, which explains the formation of coalitions. Matching models are found in many applied fields within Economics: Labour Economics, Family Economics, Consumer theory of differentiated goods (hedonic models), Trade, etc. Desirable properties of these coalitions, such as stability, lead to testable implications of the surplus that individuals generate in a match, allowing for structural estimation of matching models.
The goal of this proposal is to expand the frontiers of the theory of matching to design a very general and highly flexible model of matching that will lend itself to estimation and thus lead to empirical findings in various fields of Economics. Based on promising work initiated by the PI, this proposal seeks to bridge the gap between the theory and the empirics of matching markets that was traditionally observed in this literature.
Particular focus will be given to situations where stable outcomes may not exist (such as unipartite, or one-to-many matching models), frictions, taxes. In these cases, a thorough investigation is carried on what solution concept should be used, and what are the testable implications.
Applications will be given to various empirical issues or policy relevant questions such as:
- The nature of the complementarities between senior and junior employees within teams,
- The role played by the marriage market in the problem of rural depletion in China,
- The impact of CEO risk aversion on assignment to firms, and on the CEO compensation package,
- The pricing of attributes of French wines.
Max ERC Funding
1 119 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-01-01, End date: 2018-09-30
Project acronym FINET
Project Firm Networks Trade and Growth
Researcher (PI) Thomas Chaney
Host Institution (HI) FONDATION NATIONALE DES SCIENCES POLITIQUES
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH1, ERC-2013-StG
Summary The general theme of this research is to introduce the notion of large-scale economic networks into the mainstream of economics, in particular in macroeconomics and international trade. Economic agents often do not have access to all the relevant information they may need: whom they know, whom they interact with represents a small fraction of all possible interactions. I model this limited set of interactions as a network: agents are nodes, and they only interact with other agents they have formed a link with. What is the shape of this network of linkages between agents, and how does it evolve? More importantly, what are the aggregate implications of the shape of this network? These are the broad questions I will address in this research. I will consider six specific applications of this unifying idea in various fields: international trade, IO, macroeconomics and growth. In international trade, we have only a very crude understanding of the frictions that prevent most firms from exporting. I propose to model trade frictions as a dynamic network: at a point in time, a given exporter only has information about a limited set of potential customers in a few foreign countries; over time, this exporter discovers new export opportunities, and its network of customers evolves dynamically. I offer theoretical and empirical tools to understand and analyze the properties of this network, and show how it shapes aggregate trade patterns. In IO and macroeconomics, most plants only have few suppliers. I will model the input-output linkages between plants as a dynamic network; I offer theoretical and empirical tools to analyze this network, and show how it shapes the propagation of plant level shocks to generate aggregate fluctuations. Human capital accumulation is key to economic growth and development, with workers learning from each other. I will model these growth-enhancing interactions as a dynamic network; I will show how the properties of this network shape long run growth.
Summary
The general theme of this research is to introduce the notion of large-scale economic networks into the mainstream of economics, in particular in macroeconomics and international trade. Economic agents often do not have access to all the relevant information they may need: whom they know, whom they interact with represents a small fraction of all possible interactions. I model this limited set of interactions as a network: agents are nodes, and they only interact with other agents they have formed a link with. What is the shape of this network of linkages between agents, and how does it evolve? More importantly, what are the aggregate implications of the shape of this network? These are the broad questions I will address in this research. I will consider six specific applications of this unifying idea in various fields: international trade, IO, macroeconomics and growth. In international trade, we have only a very crude understanding of the frictions that prevent most firms from exporting. I propose to model trade frictions as a dynamic network: at a point in time, a given exporter only has information about a limited set of potential customers in a few foreign countries; over time, this exporter discovers new export opportunities, and its network of customers evolves dynamically. I offer theoretical and empirical tools to understand and analyze the properties of this network, and show how it shapes aggregate trade patterns. In IO and macroeconomics, most plants only have few suppliers. I will model the input-output linkages between plants as a dynamic network; I offer theoretical and empirical tools to analyze this network, and show how it shapes the propagation of plant level shocks to generate aggregate fluctuations. Human capital accumulation is key to economic growth and development, with workers learning from each other. I will model these growth-enhancing interactions as a dynamic network; I will show how the properties of this network shape long run growth.
Max ERC Funding
1 169 400 €
Duration
Start date: 2013-12-01, End date: 2018-11-30
Project acronym HETMAT
Project Heterogeneity That Matters for Trade and Welfare
Researcher (PI) Thierry Mayer
Host Institution (HI) FONDATION NATIONALE DES SCIENCES POLITIQUES
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH1, ERC-2012-StG_20111124
Summary Accounting for firms' heterogeneity in trade patterns is probably one of the key innovations of international trade that occurred during the last decade. The impact of initial papers such as Melitz (2003) and Bernard and Jensen (1999) is so large in the field that it is considered to have introduced a new paradigm. Apart from providing a convincing framework for a set of empirical facts, the main motivation of this literature was that there are new gains to be expected from trade liberalization. Those come from a selection process, raising aggregate productivity through the reallocation of output among heterogeneous firms. It initially seemed that the information requirements for trade policy evaluations had become much more demanding, in particular requiring detailed micro data. However, the recent work of Arkolakis et al. (2011) suggests that two aggregate ``sufficient statistics'' may be all that is needed to compute the welfare changes associated with trade liberalization. More, they show that those statistics are the same when evaluating welfare changes in representative firm models. The project has three parts. The first one starts by showing that the sufficient statistics approach relies crucially on a specific distributional assumption on heterogeneity, the Pareto distribution. When distributed non-Pareto, heterogeneity does matter, i.e. aggregate statistics are not sufficient to evaluate welfare changes and predict trade patterns. The second part of the project specifies which type of firm-level heterogeneity matters. It shows how to identify which sectors are characterized by ``productivity sorting'' and in which ones ``quality sorting'' is more relevant. Extending the analysis to multiple product firms, the third part shows that heterogeneity inside the firm also matters for welfare changes following trade shocks. It considers how the change in the product mix of the firm following trade liberalization alters the measured productivity of the firm.
Summary
Accounting for firms' heterogeneity in trade patterns is probably one of the key innovations of international trade that occurred during the last decade. The impact of initial papers such as Melitz (2003) and Bernard and Jensen (1999) is so large in the field that it is considered to have introduced a new paradigm. Apart from providing a convincing framework for a set of empirical facts, the main motivation of this literature was that there are new gains to be expected from trade liberalization. Those come from a selection process, raising aggregate productivity through the reallocation of output among heterogeneous firms. It initially seemed that the information requirements for trade policy evaluations had become much more demanding, in particular requiring detailed micro data. However, the recent work of Arkolakis et al. (2011) suggests that two aggregate ``sufficient statistics'' may be all that is needed to compute the welfare changes associated with trade liberalization. More, they show that those statistics are the same when evaluating welfare changes in representative firm models. The project has three parts. The first one starts by showing that the sufficient statistics approach relies crucially on a specific distributional assumption on heterogeneity, the Pareto distribution. When distributed non-Pareto, heterogeneity does matter, i.e. aggregate statistics are not sufficient to evaluate welfare changes and predict trade patterns. The second part of the project specifies which type of firm-level heterogeneity matters. It shows how to identify which sectors are characterized by ``productivity sorting'' and in which ones ``quality sorting'' is more relevant. Extending the analysis to multiple product firms, the third part shows that heterogeneity inside the firm also matters for welfare changes following trade shocks. It considers how the change in the product mix of the firm following trade liberalization alters the measured productivity of the firm.
Max ERC Funding
1 119 040 €
Duration
Start date: 2012-11-01, End date: 2018-07-31
Project acronym INFINHET
Project Within and across countries heterogeneity in international finance
Researcher (PI) Nicolas Mathieu Georges Coeurdacier
Host Institution (HI) FONDATION NATIONALE DES SCIENCES POLITIQUES
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH1, ERC-2013-StG
Summary Financial globalization has led to a large increase in capital flows together with increasing global imbalances. Understanding how investors structure their international portfolios and how such decisions interact with the real side of the economy has become a critical macro issue. Recently, policy makers have been advocating the understanding of capital flows and global imbalances as a necessary step to analyze the roots of the last financial crisis and its international transmission. Another important evolution is the larger role played by fast growing emerging markets. The world is getting more asymmetric as they feature very different characteristics compared to developed countries.
INFINHET aims at developing new dynamic multi-country macro-models to better account for the heterogeneity across agents and across countries in order to answer age-old questions in international macro such as the benefits from financial integration, the adjustment of global imbalances, the dynamics of exchange rates and asset prices, international financial contagion, the international dimension of tax policies.
The first part of INFINHET deals with new methods for dynamic stochastic models with heterogeneous agents/countries. Applications include normative questions regarding the welfare impact of policies in open economies and positive questions regarding the dynamics of asset prices and capital flows. The second part focuses on long-term issues in multi-country overlapping generations models. It analyzes the importance of asymmetries between countries on macroeconomic outcomes in a globalized world. Besides differences in growth and demographics, asymmetries in financial institutions, insurance mechanisms and welfare states are emphasized, with a particular focus on the specificities of China. The theoretical predictions will be tested empirically. This will require the development of panel data based on cross-country aggregates and the use of micro data based on individuals.
Summary
Financial globalization has led to a large increase in capital flows together with increasing global imbalances. Understanding how investors structure their international portfolios and how such decisions interact with the real side of the economy has become a critical macro issue. Recently, policy makers have been advocating the understanding of capital flows and global imbalances as a necessary step to analyze the roots of the last financial crisis and its international transmission. Another important evolution is the larger role played by fast growing emerging markets. The world is getting more asymmetric as they feature very different characteristics compared to developed countries.
INFINHET aims at developing new dynamic multi-country macro-models to better account for the heterogeneity across agents and across countries in order to answer age-old questions in international macro such as the benefits from financial integration, the adjustment of global imbalances, the dynamics of exchange rates and asset prices, international financial contagion, the international dimension of tax policies.
The first part of INFINHET deals with new methods for dynamic stochastic models with heterogeneous agents/countries. Applications include normative questions regarding the welfare impact of policies in open economies and positive questions regarding the dynamics of asset prices and capital flows. The second part focuses on long-term issues in multi-country overlapping generations models. It analyzes the importance of asymmetries between countries on macroeconomic outcomes in a globalized world. Besides differences in growth and demographics, asymmetries in financial institutions, insurance mechanisms and welfare states are emphasized, with a particular focus on the specificities of China. The theoretical predictions will be tested empirically. This will require the development of panel data based on cross-country aggregates and the use of micro data based on individuals.
Max ERC Funding
1 176 938 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-01-01, End date: 2018-12-31
Project acronym INTEGRATION
Project International Integration and Social Identity: Theory and Evidence
Researcher (PI) Moses Shayo
Host Institution (HI) THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH1, ERC-2013-StG
Summary Understanding economic and political integration has long been a central concern for economists. An important missing ingredient in the existing literature is the analysis of endogenously determined social identity. By “social identity” I refer to the fact that individuals often care deeply about the groups to which they belong. By “endogenously determined” I refer to the fact that individuals do not automatically identify with every group they belong to: whether or not an individual identifies with a given group depends on the characteristics of this group as well as on how close to this group the individual perceives herself. Empirical results obtained over the past decade allow us to integrate identity concerns into standard economic models. I propose to develop and test a theory of integration that does just that.
Consider two states that may either be independent countries or form a union. The stability and desirability of unification may sometimes depend on the extent to which citizens identify with the union or with their states. But the profile of identities itself depends on the political-economic outcome under unification. The first step in developing the theory is to translate the evidence concerning behavior in groups into a concise statement of what it means to “identify” with a particular group and what factors shape identification decisions. The theory will then study the equilibrium outcomes of a political economy model of integration, where actions and identities are endogenously determined.
The second part of the project will empirically examine the relation between social identities, individual characteristics, and European integration. To appropriately measure identification, I propose to employ experimental methods based on revealed preference conducted with a large and diverse sample of European citizens. This will be complemented by historical multi-country survey data on self-reported identity, political attitudes and behavior.
Summary
Understanding economic and political integration has long been a central concern for economists. An important missing ingredient in the existing literature is the analysis of endogenously determined social identity. By “social identity” I refer to the fact that individuals often care deeply about the groups to which they belong. By “endogenously determined” I refer to the fact that individuals do not automatically identify with every group they belong to: whether or not an individual identifies with a given group depends on the characteristics of this group as well as on how close to this group the individual perceives herself. Empirical results obtained over the past decade allow us to integrate identity concerns into standard economic models. I propose to develop and test a theory of integration that does just that.
Consider two states that may either be independent countries or form a union. The stability and desirability of unification may sometimes depend on the extent to which citizens identify with the union or with their states. But the profile of identities itself depends on the political-economic outcome under unification. The first step in developing the theory is to translate the evidence concerning behavior in groups into a concise statement of what it means to “identify” with a particular group and what factors shape identification decisions. The theory will then study the equilibrium outcomes of a political economy model of integration, where actions and identities are endogenously determined.
The second part of the project will empirically examine the relation between social identities, individual characteristics, and European integration. To appropriately measure identification, I propose to employ experimental methods based on revealed preference conducted with a large and diverse sample of European citizens. This will be complemented by historical multi-country survey data on self-reported identity, political attitudes and behavior.
Max ERC Funding
1 050 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-03-01, End date: 2019-02-28
Project acronym POEMH
Project Parsimony and operator methods for treatment of endogeneity and multiple sources of unobserved heterogeneity
Researcher (PI) Eric Gautier
Host Institution (HI) FONDATION JEAN-JACQUES LAFFONT,TOULOUSE SCIENCES ECONOMIQUES
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH1, ERC-2013-StG
Summary "Unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity are prevalent notions throughout econometrics. Most of the literature focuses on scalar unobserved heterogeneity. It implies strong restrictions on the heterogeneity of the behaviour of economic agents. This is the case in a binary treatment effect model where scalar unobserved heterogeneity and additive separability of the index in the selection equation are equivalent to the restrictive monotonicity assumption. Nonparametric random coefficients models allow for multiple sources of unobserved heterogeneity and are in line with structural economics. They are also benchmark nonseparable models and can be generalized in various ways. Due to unobserved heterogeneity, but also simultaneity or error in variables, structural models usually involve as well endogenous regressors.
Nonparametric models of unobserved heterogeneity and estimation by instrumental variables usually give rise to ill-posed inverse problems. High-dimensional methods are a new set of tools that are increasingly popular in econometrics and allow handling new data configurations with many more potential regressors than observations. They are based on convex relaxation, linear or conic programming ideas, or MCMC algorithms. When the model is well approximated by a parsimonious model where many coefficients are zero they can usually estimate the parameter as well as an oracle who would know the best sparse approximation. They also offer new tools for adaptive nonparametric estimation. Some recent developments are concerned with hidden structured sparsity (structural breakpoints or other patterns other than zeros). This research proposal is on the development of a general framework and new inference tools for flexible models – nonparametric or high-dimensional – with multiple sources of unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity in various models from economics, in particular: programme evaluation, consumer demand, demand for differentiated products, games, etc."
Summary
"Unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity are prevalent notions throughout econometrics. Most of the literature focuses on scalar unobserved heterogeneity. It implies strong restrictions on the heterogeneity of the behaviour of economic agents. This is the case in a binary treatment effect model where scalar unobserved heterogeneity and additive separability of the index in the selection equation are equivalent to the restrictive monotonicity assumption. Nonparametric random coefficients models allow for multiple sources of unobserved heterogeneity and are in line with structural economics. They are also benchmark nonseparable models and can be generalized in various ways. Due to unobserved heterogeneity, but also simultaneity or error in variables, structural models usually involve as well endogenous regressors.
Nonparametric models of unobserved heterogeneity and estimation by instrumental variables usually give rise to ill-posed inverse problems. High-dimensional methods are a new set of tools that are increasingly popular in econometrics and allow handling new data configurations with many more potential regressors than observations. They are based on convex relaxation, linear or conic programming ideas, or MCMC algorithms. When the model is well approximated by a parsimonious model where many coefficients are zero they can usually estimate the parameter as well as an oracle who would know the best sparse approximation. They also offer new tools for adaptive nonparametric estimation. Some recent developments are concerned with hidden structured sparsity (structural breakpoints or other patterns other than zeros). This research proposal is on the development of a general framework and new inference tools for flexible models – nonparametric or high-dimensional – with multiple sources of unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity in various models from economics, in particular: programme evaluation, consumer demand, demand for differentiated products, games, etc."
Max ERC Funding
911 388 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-09-01, End date: 2019-08-31
Project acronym SolSys
Project Systemic Risk and Financial Vulnerabilities: Diagnosis and Solutions
Researcher (PI) Jean-Augustin Landier
Host Institution (HI) FONDATION JEAN-JACQUES LAFFONT,TOULOUSE SCIENCES ECONOMIQUES
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH1, ERC-2012-StG_20111124
Summary The general purpose of this research proposal is to improve our scientific understanding of the risk-taking of financial intermediaries, the sources and structure of systemic risk and to investigate new directions regarding risk measurement and optimal regulation of the financial sector.
When financial institutions experience negative shocks, they can contaminate each-other. The amplification of initial shocks can spiral into a threat to the solvency of the entire financial system: this is systemic risk. Such contagion between financial intermediaries stems from several kinds of linkages and incentive structures which the proposal investigates. The understanding, measurement and anticipation of financial fragility has been high on financial regulators' priority list since the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers and has been revived further by the European sovereign risk.
The research to be initiated under this proposal will mix intimately theoretical work and micro-empirical work. It will try to both increase our understanding of the financial crisis by opening the “black-box” of financial institutions and to directly touch in a concrete and forward-looking manner upon regulatory issues.
The proposal articulates a research program around five main independent projects. Each project combines modeling and empirical tests and is intended to lead to a series of separate academic papers and policy implications.
Project 1: Bank Vulnerability and Fire-Sales Spirals
Project 2: Risk-Shifting, Systemic Risk and Monetary Policy
Project 3: The Source and Dynamics of Rents in the Financial Industry
Project 4: Regulating through Information: What Level of Transparency is Optimal?
Project 5: Inequality, Political Economy and Financial Instability
Summary
The general purpose of this research proposal is to improve our scientific understanding of the risk-taking of financial intermediaries, the sources and structure of systemic risk and to investigate new directions regarding risk measurement and optimal regulation of the financial sector.
When financial institutions experience negative shocks, they can contaminate each-other. The amplification of initial shocks can spiral into a threat to the solvency of the entire financial system: this is systemic risk. Such contagion between financial intermediaries stems from several kinds of linkages and incentive structures which the proposal investigates. The understanding, measurement and anticipation of financial fragility has been high on financial regulators' priority list since the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers and has been revived further by the European sovereign risk.
The research to be initiated under this proposal will mix intimately theoretical work and micro-empirical work. It will try to both increase our understanding of the financial crisis by opening the “black-box” of financial institutions and to directly touch in a concrete and forward-looking manner upon regulatory issues.
The proposal articulates a research program around five main independent projects. Each project combines modeling and empirical tests and is intended to lead to a series of separate academic papers and policy implications.
Project 1: Bank Vulnerability and Fire-Sales Spirals
Project 2: Risk-Shifting, Systemic Risk and Monetary Policy
Project 3: The Source and Dynamics of Rents in the Financial Industry
Project 4: Regulating through Information: What Level of Transparency is Optimal?
Project 5: Inequality, Political Economy and Financial Instability
Max ERC Funding
1 117 200 €
Duration
Start date: 2012-10-01, End date: 2017-09-30
