Ratio of real to total assets = = 0.2
Conclusion: When the firm starts up and raises working capital, it will be characterized by a low ratio of real to total assets. When it is in full production, it will have a high ratio of real assets. When the project "shuts down" and the firm sells it, the percentage of real assets to total assets goes down again because the product is again exchanged into financial assets.
Passed in 2010, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act proposed several mechanisms to mitigate systemic risk. The act attempts to limit the risky activities in which the banks can engage and calls for stricter rules for bank capital, liquidity, and risk management practices, especially as banks become larger and their potential failure becomes more threatening to other institutions. The act seeks to unify and clarify the lines of regulatory authority and responsibility in government agencies and to address the incentive issue by forcing employee compensation to reflect longer-term performance. It also mandates increased transparency, especially in derivatives markets.
a. For commercial banks, the ratio is: = 0.0102
b. For non-financial firms, the ratio is: = 0.5238
c. The difference should be expected since the business of financial institutions is to make loans that are financial assets.
National wealth is a measurement of the real assets used to produce GDP in the economy. Financial assets are claims on those assets held by individuals.
Financial assets owned by households represent their claims on the real assets of the issuers, and thus show up as wealth to households. Their interests in the issuers, on the other hand, are obligations to the issuers. At the national level, the financial interests and the obligations cancel each other out, so only the real assets are measured as the wealth of the economy. The financial assets are important since they drive the efficient use of real assets and help us allocate resources, specifically in terms of risk return trade-offs.
Compensation and Agency Problems
A fixed salary means compensation is (at least in the short run) independent of the firm's success. This salary structure does not tie the manager’s immediate compensation to the success of the firm, and thus allows the manager to envision and seek the sustainable operation of the company. However, since the compensation is secured and not tied to the performance of the firm, the manager might not be motivated to take any risk to maximize the value of the company.
A salary paid in the form of stock in the firm means the manager earns the most when shareholder wealth is maximized. When the stock must be held for five years, the manager has less of an incentive to manipulate the stock price. This structure is most likely to align the interests of managers with the interests of the shareholders. If stock compensation is used too much, the manager might view it as overly risky since the manager’s career is already linked to the firm. This undiversified exposure would be exacerbated with a large stock position in the firm.
When executive salaries are linked to firm profits, the firm creates incentives for managers to contribute to the firm’s success. However, this may also lead to earnings manipulation or accounting fraud, such as divestment of its subsidiaries or unreasonable revenue recognition. That is what audits and external analysts will look out for.
Even if an individual investor has the expertise and capability to monitor and improve the managers’ performance, the payoffs would not be worth the effort, since his ownership in a large corporation is so small compared to that of institutional investors. For example, if the individual investor owns $10,000 of IBM stock and can increase the value of the firm by 5%, a very ambitious goal, the benefit would only be: $10,000 x 5% = $500.
In contrast, a bank that has a multimillion-dollar loan outstanding to the firm has a big stake in making sure the firm can repay the loan. It is clearly worthwhile for the bank to spend considerable resources to monitor the firm.
Since the traders benefited from profits but did not get penalized by losses, they were encouraged to take extraordinary risks. Since traders sell to other traders, there also existed a moral hazard since other traders might facilitate the misdeed. In the end, this represents an agency problem.
Securitization requires access to many potential investors. To attract these investors, the capital market needs: