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Anticipating the financial crisis: evidence from insider trading in banks

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dc.contributor.author Akin, Ozlem
dc.contributor.author Marín Vigueras, José María
dc.contributor.author Peydró, José-Luis
dc.date.accessioned 2020-06-26T07:34:04Z
dc.date.issued 2020
dc.identifier.citation Akin O, Marín JM, Peydró JL. Anticipating the financial crisis: evidence from insider trading in banks. Economic Policy. 2020 Apr;35(102):213-67. DOI: 10.1093/epolic/eiaa012
dc.identifier.issn 1468-0327
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10230/45030
dc.description.abstract Banking crises are recurrent phenomena, often induced by excessive bank risk-taking, which may be due to behavioural reasons (over-optimistic banks neglecting risks) and to conflicts of interest between bank shareholders/managers and debtholders/taxpayers (banks exploiting moral hazard). We test whether US banks' stock returns in the 2007-08 financial crisis are associated with bank insiders' sales of their own bank’s shares in the period prior to 2006Q2 (the peak and reversal in real estate prices). We find that top-five executives' sales of shares predict bank performance during the crisis. Interestingly, effects are insignificant for the sales of independent directors and other officers. Moreover, the top-five executives' impact is stronger for banks with higher exposure to the real estate bubble, where a one standard deviation increase of insider sales is associated with a 13.33 percentage point drop in stock returns during the crisis period. Finally, even though bankers in riskier banks sold more shares (furthering their own interests), they did not change their bank’s policies, e.g. by reducing bank-level exposure to real estate. The informational content of bank insider trading before the crisis suggests that insiders knew that their banks were taking excessive risks, which has important implications for theory, public policy, and the understanding of crises, as well as a supervisory tool for early warning signals.
dc.description.sponsorship José M. Marín acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economics and Competitiveness (project ECO2015-69205). This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 648398). José-Luis Peydró also acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through grant ECO2012-32434 and through the Severo Ochoa Programme for Centres of Excellence in R&D (SEV-2015-0563).
dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
dc.language.iso eng
dc.publisher Oxford University Press
dc.relation.ispartof Economic Policy. 2020 Apr;35(102):213-67. DOI: 10.1093/epolic/eiaa012
dc.rights © Oxford University Press. This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Economic Policy following peer review. The version of record Akin O, Marín JM, Peydró JL. Anticipating the financial crisis: evidence from insider trading in banks. Economic Policy. 2020 Apr;35(102):213-67. DOI: 10.1093/epolic/eiaa012 is available online at: https://academic.oup.com/economicpolicy/article-abstract/doi/10.1093/epolic/eiaa012/5862015
dc.title Anticipating the financial crisis: evidence from insider trading in banks
dc.type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
dc.identifier.doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/epolic/eiaa012
dc.subject.keyword Financial crises
dc.subject.keyword Insider trading
dc.subject.keyword Banking
dc.subject.keyword Risk-taking
dc.subject.keyword Principal-agent problems
dc.relation.projectID info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/648398
dc.relation.projectID info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/1PE/ECO2015-69205
dc.relation.projectID info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/3PN/ECO2012-32434
dc.relation.projectID info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/1PE/SEV-2015-0563
dc.rights.accessRights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.type.version info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersion

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