Ever since Mayers and Smith first claimed, 30 years ago, that the corporate form provides an effective hedge that allows stockholders to eliminate insurable risk through diversification, the quest to explain the corporate demand for insurance has continued. Their claim is demonstrated here so that the corporate demand for insurance may be distinguished from the individual’s demand for insurance. Then some of the determinants of the demand for corporate insurance that exist in the literature are reviewed and generalized. The generalizations show how the corporation may use insurance to solve underinvestment and risk-shifting problems; the analysis includes a new simpler proof of how the risk-shifting problem may be solved with corporate insurance. Management compensation is also introduced here and the analysis shows the conditions which motivate the corporate insurance decision. Finally, some discussion is provided concerning the empirical implications of the extant theory, the tests that have been made, and the tests that should be made going forward.

On the Demand for Corporate Insurance: Creating Value

We characterize a firm as a nexus of activities and projects with their associated cashflows. Production and operations activities and real risk management activities distribute cashflows over states of nature and time periods, leading to a transformation possibility frontier similar to a production function. The concavity of the frontier induces a firm to react more or less to changes in market prices of risks to attain the new value maximizing portfolio of real activities. Financial risk management helps implement these real project changes and alleviate the related reorganization and coordination problems. Empirically, we show that a firm’s reactiveness to variations in risk prices are linked to its hedging activities. We also argue that financial risk management allows a firm to meet cashflow-at-risk or value-at-risk constraints at little or no cost.

/pdf/the-value-of-real-and-financial-risk-management-4cggb0tm9o.pdf

The Value of Real and Financial Risk Management

We characterize a firm as a nexus of activities and projects with their associated cash flow distributions across states of the world and time periods. We propose a characterization of the firm where variations in the market price of risk induce adjustments in the value-maximizing combination of projects. Changing the portfolio of projects generates coordination costs. We propose a new role for financial risk management based on the idea that the use of financial derivatives may reduce coordination costs. We find empirical support for this new rationale for the use of financial derivatives, after controlling for the traditional variables explaining the need for financial risk management.

Alleviating Coordination Problems and Regulatory Constraints Through Financial Risk Management

Seeing the firm as a nexus of activities and projects, we propose a characterization of the firm where variations in the market price of risk should induce adjustments in the firm's portfolio of projects. In a setting where managers disagree with respect to what investment maximizes value, changing the portfolio of projects generates coordination costs. We then propose a new role for financial risk management based on the idea that the use of financial derivatives reduces coordination costs by moving the organization's expected cash flows and risks toward a point where coordination in favor of real changes is easier to achieve. We find empirical support for this new rationale for the use of financial derivatives, after controlling for the traditional variables explaining the need for financial risk management.

/pdf/alleviating-coordination-problems-and-regulatory-constraints-3ggd03c0ck.pdf

We characterize a firm as a nexus of activities and projects with their associated cashflow distributions across states of the world and time. With specialized managers intent on maximizing firm value, we show that such a representation leads to a transformation possibility frontier between the riskiness and expected value of cashflows. A firm reacts to changes in the market prices of risks by adjusting its value maximizing portfolio of real activities. We show that financial risk management can help to alleviate the reorganization and coordination problems related to the implementation of the desired adjustments. Empirically, we show that a firm's use of financial derivatives is linked to its reactivity to variations in risk prices. We also argue that financial risk management allows a firm to maintain its value in the presence of cashflow-at-risk or value-at-risk constraints.

https://cireqmontreal.com/wp-content/uploads/cahiers/06-2010-cah.pdf

The alleviation of coordination problems through financial risk management

We address two apparent paradoxes of risk management: (1) managers hedge in order to avoid negative earnings surprises, yet they tend to hedge risks uninformative of the value of the company; and (2) the presence of options in managers’ compensation distorts their incentive to hedge, inducing them to expose the company to too much risk. Our model is based on informational asymmetry between insiders (managers) and outsiders (investors). Investors derive information about company value from net cash flows (earnings), but the information revealed through earnings depends on the risk management strategy pursued by managers. Fully revealing earnings information is in the investors’ interest, so they design a compensation package to induce managers to make the earnings fully informative. With appropriate assumptions, we show that managers will select the efficient hedge strategy if their compensation includes stock options. Our model also provides a rational explanation for the observed vigorous response of stock prices to modest earnings surprises. Results based upon the analysis of Compustat and Execucomp data provide empirical support for our model; other things equal, firms that offer their CEO’s proportionately higher options-related compensation exhibit stronger stock price responses to changes in earnings and tend to have higher Tobin’s q’s.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2281888_code17230.pdf?abstractid=1915206&mirid=4

Noise Hedging and Executive Compensation

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

Sven Sinclair

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

Noise Hedging and Executive Compensation