Direct experience of a peer’s punishment might have a sobering effect above and beyond deterrence (information about punishments). We test this mechanism in China studying the reactions to listed state-owned enterprises’ (SOEs) punishments for fraudulent loan guarantees by firms in the same location or industry (peers) and non-peer firms, across SOEs and non-SOEs. After experiencing SOEs’ punishments, peer SOEs cut their loan guarantees by more than non-peer SOEs and peer non-SOEs, even if information is common to all firms. The reaction is stronger for peer SOEs whose CEOs have higher career concerns or face lower costs of cutting guarantees.

We examine how regulators tackle two types of widespread tunneling activities in China. Controlling shareholders and related parties can divert assets from listed firms or coerce firms to serve as guarantors on questionable loans. The government announced and enacted two new rules during the same period: the first rule prohibits asset diversion from listed firms for ‘non-operational’ purposes by large shareholders, while the second standardizes the practice of listed firms providing loan guarantees. Relative to firms not affected by either rule, firms complying with the first rule experience a reduction in the ownership stakes of controlling shareholders, an increase in investment, and significantly better performance. The second rule has no impact on firms. Our results highlight the importance of enforceability: laws and regulations that can be enforced at lower costs are much more likely to succeed, especially in countries with weak institutions.

Building on the important study by Allen, Qian and Qian (2005) and Ayyagari, Demirgüc-Kunt and Maksimovic (2010), I examine whether third party guarantors play an effective role in assessing loan risk. Using a proprietary database of third party loan guarantees in China, I find strong evidence that guarantors and banks disagree on pricing loan risk, and that banks can better predict loan defaults than guarantors. I also find that the probability of loan default is affected by the capability of guarantor officers. My findings question the contribution of soft information in the improvement of credit scoring and support the view that informal finance should be limited. This paper also supports the implications of studies on human capital in financial intermediation.

This paper examines the effects of the agency costs on firm value in 156 Chinese publicly listed companies with individual ultimate owners between 2002 and 2007. The ultimate owners’ agency costs, as measured by the divergence between control rights and cash flow rights, are shown to negatively and significantly affect firm value, as measured by the market-to-book ratio of assets (an approximation of Tobin’s Q). As the agency costs grow, the stock returns decrease around the connected party transaction announcements, and firms are more likely to engage in value-destroying connected party transactions. These effects are particularly strong for some types of connected party transactions, notably loan guarantees and direct fund transfers. Further, as the agency costs grow, the firms violate laws more frequently and the nature of legal violations becomes more severe. Evidence from an exogenous policy shock, the non-tradable share reform confirms that higher agency costs cause more unfavorable stock market reactions to connected party transaction announcements.

A model of the domestic financial intermediation of foreign capital inflows based on agency costs is developed for studying financial crises in emerging markets. In equilibrium, the banking system becomes progressively more fragile under imperfect prudential regulation and public sector loan guarantees until a crisis occurs with a sudden reversal of capital flows. The crisis evolves endogenously as the banking system becomes increasingly vulnerable through the renegotiation of loans after idiosyncratic firm-specific revenue shocks. The model generates dynamic relationships between foreign capital inflows, domestic investment, corporate debt and equity values in an endogenous growth model The model's assumptions and implications for the behavior of the economy before and after crisis are compared to the experience of five East Asian economies. The case studies compare three that suffered a crisis or near-crisis, Thailand and Malaysia, to two that did not, Taiwan Province of China and Singapore, and lend support to the model.

The seminal works of Jensen and Meckling (1976) and Myers (1977) highlight the conflicts of interest between the owners, managers, and debt holders of the firm and discuss the risk-shifting behavior of the managers assumed for our purpose to be the“firm” in detriment of their debt holders. Although a considerable amount of research has been undertaken on this topic, much less studies are devoted to endogenizing risk choices in the presence of financial guarantees and in the context of corporate project financing. A firm risk’s appetite increases when it has a guarantee contract on its debt, which creates a conflict between the firm and the guarantee provider. Addressing formally this moral hazard issue, we propose an equilibrium model in which the borrowing firm and the guarantee provider pre-commit themselves to conscripted risk levels at the signature of the loan guarantee contract. We show if the borrowing firm and the guarantor precommit, the equilibrium risk level is lower than the one the firm will choose unilaterally. For short (long) maturity debts, both parties gain by agreeing on a high (low) risk project when the firm shareholders have a big equity stake in the new project. We also study the trade-off between the borrowing firm’s capital structure and its risk level. The optimal risk level of the firm is entirely determined by its ex-post capital structure.