Adi Sunderam
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
Adi Sunderam is an assistant professor of business administration in the Finance Unit, where he teaches Finance II in the MBA required curriculum. In 2009 and 2010, he served in the U.S. Treasury Department as a special assistant and liaison to the White House National Economic Council. Professor Sunderam's research interests are in corporate finance, asset pricing, and financial intermediation. His recent work focuses on the organization of financial markets and its effect on asset prices and corporate investment. Professor Sunderam holds a Ph.D. in business economics and an A.B. in computer science and economics, both from Harvard University.
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Article
| Journal of Financial Economics
| Forthcoming
Are There Too Many Safe Securities? Securitization and the Incentives for Information Production
Samuel Gregory Hanson and Aditya Vikram Sunderam
We present a model that helps explain several past collapses of securitization markets. Originators issue too many informationally insensitive securities in good times, blunting investor incentives to become informed. The resulting endogenous scarcity of informed investors exacerbates primary market collapses in bad times. Inefficiency arises because informed investors are a public good from the perspective of originators. All originators benefit from the presence of additional informed investors in bad times, but each originator minimizes his reliance on costly informed capital in good times by issuing safe securities. Our model suggests regulations that limit the issuance of safe securities in good times.
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Article
| Review of Financial Studies
| Forthcoming
The Real Consequences of Market Segmentation
Sergey Chernenko and Adi Sunderam
We study the real effects of market segmentation due to credit ratings using a matched sample of firms just above and just below the investment-grade cutoff. These firms have similar observables, including average investment rates. However, flows into high-yield mutual funds have an economically significant effect on the issuance and investment of the speculative-grade firms relative to their matches, especially for firms likely to be financially constrained. The effect is associated with the discrete change in label from investment-grade to speculative-grade, not with changes in continuous measures of credit quality. We do not find similar effects at other rating boundaries.
Keywords: Segmentation;
Credit;
Investment;
Investment Funds;
Quality;
Markets;
Measurement and Metrics;
Business Ventures;
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Article
| Review of Economics and Statistics
| Forthcoming
The Variance of Non-Parametric Treatment Effect Estimators in the Presence of Clustering
Samuel G. Hanson and Adi Sunderam
Non-parametric estimators of treatment effects are often applied in settings where clustering may be important. We provide a general methodology for consistently estimating the variance of a large class of non-parametric estimators, including the simple matching estimator, in the presence of clustering. Software for implementing our variance estimator is available in Stata.
Keywords: Software;
Mathematical Methods;
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Mimeo
| 2012
Money Creation and the Shadow Banking System
Adi Sunderam
Many explanations for the rapid growth of the shadow banking system in the mid-2000s focus on money demand. This paper asks whether the short-term liabilities of the shadow banking system behave like money. We first present a simple model where households demand money services, which are supplied by three types of claims: deposits, Treasury bills, and asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP). The model provides predictions for the price and quantity dynamics of these claims, as well as the behavior of the banking system (in terms of issuance) and the monetary authority (in terms of open market operations). Consistent with the model, the empirical evidence suggests that the shadow banking system does respond to money demand. An extrapolation of our estimates would suggest that heightened money demand could explain up to approximately 1/2 of the growth of ABCP in the mid-2000s.
Keywords: Banks and Banking;
Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms;
Money;
Behavior;
Demand and Consumers;
Mathematical Methods;
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Mimeo
| 2012
Frictions in Shadow Banking: Evidence from the Lending Behavior of Money Market Funds
Sergey Chernenko and Adi Sunderam
We document the consequences of money market fund risk taking during the European sovereign debt crisis. Using a novel data set of security-level holdings of prime money market funds, we show that funds with large exposures to risky Eurozone banks suffered significant outflows between June and August 2011. Due to credit market frictions, these outflows have significant spillover effects on other firms: non-European issuers that typically rely on these funds raise less financing in this period. The results are not driven by issuers' riskiness or exposure to Europe: for the same issuer, money market funds with greater exposure to Eurozone banks decrease their holdings more than other funds. We show that relationships are important in short-term credit markets so that these spillover effects cannot be seamlessly offset, even though issuers are large, highly rated firms. Our results illustrate that instabilities associated with money market funds persist despite recent changes to the regulations governing them.
Keywords: Financial Crisis;
Borrowing and Debt;
Banks and Banking;
Investment Funds;
Sovereign Finance;
Financial Services Industry;
Europe;
United States;
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Mimeo
| 2013
The Growth and Limits of Arbitrage: Evidence from Short Interest
Samuel G. Hanson and Adi Sunderam
We develop a novel methodology to infer the amount of capital allocated to quantitative equity arbitrage strategies. Using this methodology, which exploits time-variation in the cross section of short interest, we document that the amount of capital devoted to value and momentum strategies has grown significantly since the late 1980s. We provide evidence that this increase in capital has resulted in lower strategy returns. However, consistent with theories of limited arbitrage, we show that strategy-level capital flows are influenced by past strategy returns, strategy return volatility, and that arbitrage capital is most limited during times when strategies perform best. This suggests that the growth of arbitrage capital may not completely eliminate returns to these strategies.
Keywords: Capital;
Stocks;
Investment;
Investment Return;
Mathematical Methods;
Risk and Uncertainty;
Competitive Strategy;
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Mimeo
| 2013
Concentration in Mortgage Lending, Refinancing Activity, and Mortgage Rates
David S. Scharfstein and Adi Sunderam
We present evidence that high concentration in local mortgage lending reduces the sensitivity of mortgage rates and refinancing activity to mortgage-backed security (MBS) yields. A decrease in MBS yields is typically associated with greater refinancing activity and lower rates on new mortgages. However, this effect is dampened in counties with concentrated mortgage markets. We isolate the direct effect of mortgage market concentration and rule out alternative explanations based on borrower, loan, and collateral characteristics in two ways. First, we use a matching procedure to compare high- and low-concentration counties that are very similar on observable characteristics and find similar results. Second, we examine counties where concentration in mortgage lending is increased by bank mergers. We show that within a given county, sensitivities to MBS yields decrease after a concentration-increasing merger. Our results suggest that the effectiveness of housing as a monetary policy transmission channel varies in both the time series and the cross section. Increasing concentration by one standard deviation above the mean reduces the overall impact of a decline in MBS yields by approximately 50%.
Keywords: Mortgages;
Banking Industry;
United States;
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Working Paper
| 2013
An Evaluation of Money Market Fund Reform Proposals
Samuel G. Hanson, David S. Scharfstein and Adi Sunderam
We analyze the leading reform proposals to address the structural vulnerabilities of money market mutual funds (MMFs). We assume that the main goal of MMF reform is safeguarding financial stability. In light of this goal, reforms should reduce the ex ante incentives for MMFs to take excessive risk and increase the ex post resilience of MMFs to system-wide runs. Our analysis suggests that requiring MMFs to have subordinated capital buffers could generate significant financial stability benefits. Subordinated capital provides MMFs with loss absorption capacity, lowering the probability that a MMF suffers losses large enough to trigger a run, and reduces incentives to take excessive risks. We estimate that a capital buffer in the range of 3 to 4% would significantly reduce the probability that ordinary MMF shareholders ever suffer losses. In exchange for having the safer investment product made possible by subordinated capital, the yield paid to ordinary MMFs shareholders would decline by only 0.05%. Other reform alternatives such as converting MMFs to a floating NAV would likely be less effective in protecting financial stability.
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Working Paper
| HBS Working Paper Series
| 2013
Inflation Bets or Deflation Hedges? The Changing Risks of Nominal Bonds
John Y. Campbell, Adi Sunderam and Luis M. Viceira
The covariance between U.S. Treasury bond returns and stock returns has moved considerably over time. While it was slightly positive on average in the period 1953–2009, it was unusually high in the early 1980s and negative in the 2000s, particularly in the downturns of 2000–2002 and 2007–2009. This paper specifies and estimates a model in which the nominal term structure of interest rates is driven by four state variables: the real interest rate, temporary and permanent components of expected inflation, the "nominal-real covariance" of inflation, and the real interest rate with the real economy. The last of these state variables enables the model to fit the changing covariance of bond and stock returns. Log bond yields and term premia are quadratic in these state variables, with term premia determined by the nominal-real covariance. The concavity of the yield curve―the level of intermediate-term bond yields, relative to the average of short- and long-term bond yields―is a good proxy for the level of term premia. The nominal-real covariance has declined since the early 1980s, driving down term premia.
Keywords: Inflation and Deflation;
Bonds;
Interest Rates;
Investment Return;
Risk Management;
United States;
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Working Paper
| 2013
Internet Appendix for 'Inflation Bets or Deflation Hedges? The Changing Risks of Nominal Bonds'
Adi Sunderam, Luis M. Viceira and John Y. Campbell
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