OMDS Finance Seminar (formerly Brown Bag Seminar)

Department members are encouraged to regularly present current research and research ideas at an early stage in the weekly departmental lunch seminar. Occasionally, cooperation partners are also invited to present their work in progress. The seminar is organised by our post-docs. Students of the master's program in Banking and Finance are welcome to attend.

 

 

Past Seminars in WS 2024/2025 

 

  • Speaker: Sapnoti Eswar (University of St. Andrews)
  • Title: Cross-border Patenting and Corporate Debt Capacity
  • Time: Wednesday, Oct. 9, 12 – 1 pm
  • Location: Seminar Room 6, OMP-1
  • Abstract: We use global patent data and exploit the staggered adoption of the Patent Prosecution Highway, a patent examination cooperation program to evaluate the effect of globalization of patents on debt capacity of firms.  We show that patents filed globally are of higher quality, and loans to patenting firms increases. This increase is driven by a reduction in information asymmetry in global lending markets.  We also find that firms obtain international loans in low-tax countries which leads to a lower average tax burden.  This lower burden creates a higher debt capacity for patenting firms.  
  • Speaker: Andrew Winton (University of Minnesota)
  • Title: Slippery Slope or Tip of the Iceberg? A Model of Detected and Undetected Financial Misreporting (co-authored with Xiaoyun Yu)
  • Time: Wednesday, Oct. 23, 12 – 1 pm
  • Location: Seminar Room 6, OMP-1
  • Abstract: Recent empirical work suggests that most financial misreporting is undetected, so that detected cases are just "the tip of the iceberg". At the same time, based on a sample of detected cases, Schrand and Zechman (2012) argue for a “slippery slope” to fraud, where managers initially engage in relatively unintentional misreporting due to excessive optimism about firm prospects, and then are forced to misreport more and more when those prospects fail to materialize.  We present a dynamic model of financial misreporting that combines slippery slope ideas with the problem of imperfect fraud detection. Although excessive optimism can magnify the problem, one can get the observed patterns even in the presence of perfectly rational managers and investors.
  • Speaker: Francesco Sannino (Frankfurt School of Finance and Management)
  • Title: Committing to Trade: A Theory of Intermediation
  • Time: Wednesday, Nov. 13, 12 – 1 pm
  • Location: Seminar Room 6, OMP-1
  • Abstract: In a “lemons” market, a shock to gains from trade is publicly observed just before buyers make their offer. When gains from trade are lower, prices contain a larger adverse selection discount. By trading with intermediaries beforehand, sellers commit not to keep high-quality assets in such states, which may improve surplus, despite impeding efficient use of available information. The distribution of agents' valuations and the level of uncertainty in gains from trade affect intermediaries' markups, traded assets' quality and volumes. In the optimal contract, intermediaries (inefficiently) ration buyers when gains from trade are lowest, as documented in the leveraged loans market.
  • Speaker: Sheran Deng (University of Vienna) 
  • Title: A Model of Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Finance
  • Time: Wednesday, Dec. 11, 12 – 1 pm
  • Location: Seminar Room 6, OMP-1
  • Abstract: One of the biggest challenges in addressing the climate crisis is that poorer regions, which suffer the most from pollution caused by wealthier regions, often lack the resources to invest in mitigation and adaptation. How much mitigation and adaptation funding will wealthy regions provide? Will they prioritize divestment or funding mitigation and adaptation? What policies will planners adopt? In this paper, we develop a model to explore these questions.
  • Speaker: Christian Westheide (University of Vienna) 
  • Title: How Standardizing Corporate Environmental Sustainability Information Reshapes Mutual Fund Green Investing: Evidence from the EU Taxonomy (joint with Sheran Deng - University of Vienna, and Li Gu - Fed Board)
  • Time: Wednesday, Dec. 18, 12 – 1 pm
  • Location: Seminar Room 6, OMP-1
  • Abstract: The EU Green Taxonomy regulation standardizes criteria for assessing the environmental performance of business activities and mandates public corporations to disclose their performance against this benchmark. We track mutual fund investing in EU firms throughout the implementation of the first phase of the taxonomy (related to climate change) from 2020 to 2023. We find that green funds reallocate portfolios towards high taxonomy-score firms. However, some green funds change to brown labels and they allocate portfolios away from high taxonomy-score firms during their exit from green labels. Ex-ante, these transitioning funds’ portfolios were less aligned with the taxonomy before the disclosure. As brown funds appear to move away from high taxonomy-score firms, we find no significant increase in aggregate holdings by both green and brown funds of high taxonomy-score firms, nor abnormal positive price reactions for the high taxonomy-score firms, suggesting adjustments by green and brown funds taken together may not benefit high taxonomy-score firms.