IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/rfinst/v30y2017i6p1903-1934..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Political Economy of Financial Innovation: Evidence from Local Governments

Author

Listed:
  • Christophe Pérignon
  • Boris Vallée

Abstract

We investigate the development of an innovative and high-risk type of borrowing for local governments, known as structured loans. Using transaction data for more than 2,700 local governments in France, we show that the adoption of these instruments is more frequent for politicians from highly indebted local governments, from politically contested areas, and during political campaigns. Taking on structured loans helps incumbents win a reelection, and initially allows them to maintain lower taxes. Our findings illustrate how financial innovation can amplify principal-agent problems within the political system.

Suggested Citation

  • Christophe Pérignon & Boris Vallée, 2017. "The Political Economy of Financial Innovation: Evidence from Local Governments," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(6), pages 1903-1934.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:30:y:2017:i:6:p:1903-1934.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/rfs/hhx029
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anne-Laure Delatte & Adrien Matray & Noémie Pinardon-Touati, 2020. "Private Credit Under Political Influence: Evidence from France," Working Papers 2020-56, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    2. Bourdeau-Brien, Michael & Kryzanowski, Lawrence, 2019. "Municipal financing costs following disasters," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 48-64.
    3. Victoria Ivashina & Boris Vallee, 2020. "Weak Credit Covenants," NBER Working Papers 27316, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Francesco D'Acunto & Laurent Frésard, 2018. "Finance, Talent Allocation, and Growth," CESifo Working Paper Series 6883, CESifo.
    5. Akey, Pat & Heimer, Rawley Z. & Lewellen, Stefan, 2021. "Politicizing consumer credit," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(2), pages 627-655.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State
    • H74 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Borrowing
    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:rfinst:v:30:y:2017:i:6:p:1903-1934.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfsssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.