HEC Paris

About: HEC Paris is a education organization based out in Jouy-en-Josas, France. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Market liquidity & Entrepreneurship. The organization has 584 authors who have published 2756 publications receiving 104467 citations. The organization is also known as: Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales & HEC School of Management Paris.

Participatory budgeting at a community level in Porto Alegre: a Bourdieusian interpretation

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how accountability practices can enable sociopolitical emancipation. Design/methodology/approach – The authors explore the emancipatory potential of accountability from a Bourdieusian perspective. The study is informed by a two-month socio-ethnographic study of the participatory budgeting (PB) process in Porto Alegre (Brazil). The field study enabled us to observe accountability and participatory practices, conduct 18 semi-structured interviews with councillors, and analyze survey data gathered from budgeting participants. Findings – The paper demonstrates how PB both strengthened the dominants in the Porto Alegrense political field and changed the game played in this field; was characterized by accountability practices favouring the election of councillors with distinctive capitals, who were “dominated-dominants dominating the dominated”; brought emancipatory perspectives to councillors and, by doing so, opened the path to social change but also widened t...

Banks' Exposure to Interest Rate Risk and the Transmission of Monetary Policy

Abstract: We show that banks' exposure to interest rate risk, or income gap, plays a crucial role in monetary policy transmission. While banks have, on average, positive levels of income gap - their assets are more sensitive to interest rate changes than their liabilities - there is substantial heterogeneity in the cross-section of banks in how exposed they are to interest rate risk. In a first step, we show that the sensitivity of bank profits to interest rates increases significantly with their income gap, even when banks use interest rate derivatives. In a second step, we show that the income gap also predicts the sensitivity of bank lending to interest rates, both for commercial & industrial loans and for mortgages. Quantitatively, a 100 basis point increase in the Fed funds rate leads a bank at the 75th percentile of the income gap distribution to increase lending by about 1.6 percentage points annually relative to a bank at the 25th percentile. We conclude that banks' exposure to interest rate risk is an important determinant of the lending channel.

Housing Collateral and Entrepreneurship

Abstract: This paper shows that collateral constraints restrict firm entry and post-entry growth, even in the long-run. We use French administrative data and exploit cross-sectional variation in local house-price appreciation as shocks to the value of collateral available to homeowners. We control for local demand shocks by comparing homeowners to two control groups that live in the same region but do not experience collateral shocks: (i) renters and (ii) homeowners with a mortgage outstanding, who - in France - cannot take out a second mortgage on their house. In both comparisons, we find that an increase in collateral value leads to a higher probability of becoming an entrepreneur. Conditional on entry, entrepreneurs with access to more valuable collateral use more debt, start larger firms, and remain significantly larger even six years after creation.

Earnings Management and Value Relevance During the Mandatory Transition from Local GAAPs to IFRS in Europe

Abstract: This paper analyzes a sample of 1,722 European firms during their mandatory transition from local country accounting rules (Local GAAP) to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in 2004 and 2005 using the same set of firm-year observations. We use this unique transition period to examine the impact of a change in accounting standards on the quality of firms' financial statements. The transition to IFRS appears to have a small but significant impact on firms' reported total assets and book equity, as well as on their reported goodwill, intangible assets, property plant and equipment, long term debt and current assets and liabilities. For the same reporting period, Return on Assets (ROA) is significantly higher under IFRS than under Local GAAP with the greater increase occurring in those firms with lower levels of ROA under Local GAAP. This transition earnings management is present in all countries, but its level is highest in those countries with weaker legal institutions and higher levels of pre-transition earnings management. These results are consistent with managers using the transition to improve their reported earnings and ROA. IFRS earnings reconciliation disclosures are value relevant even with the noted transition earnings management. The value relevance of the book value of equity is limited to the Local GAAP reports. Both, partial and full IFRS earnings reconciliations are associated with market value and returns.