Three essays in financial economics.

Summary The three chapters of this thesis focus on the impact of financial constraints in different contexts. For example, the first chapter analyzes the impact of new regulatory constraints on the interest rate derivatives portfolio of US commercial banks. In particular, we study the effect of the central clearing requirement for interest rate derivatives, which can represent a significant cost for end users. Our results show that a significant number of banks rebalanced their derivatives portfolios after the implementation of the reform, precisely in order to limit the use of central clearing. This type of behavior indicates that the new regulatory landscape does not create a systematic financial incentive to use central clearing for all end users subject to the reform. The second chapter studies the impact of inadequate bank credit conditions on intangible investment by European firms. For this analysis, we use new survey data providing information on firms' investment in several distinct categories of intangible assets. In addition, the survey measures firms' satisfaction with four dimensions of the loan contract, allowing us to cover a broad spectrum of possible financial constraints. Our results show that satisfaction with the loan amount is the main determinant of the likelihood to invest in intangible assets. Dissatisfaction with the interest rate, maturity and/or collateral requirements, on the other hand, negatively affects firms' ability to invest in multiple intangible assets simultaneously, preventing firms from benefiting from the complementarity of these assets. The last chapter studies from a theoretical perspective the impact of collateral constraints on the stability of financial asset prices in a market where investors have different levels of ambiguity aversion. Collateral constraints and ambiguity aversion are two market characteristics that were particularly analyzed during the 2007-2009 financial crisis given their possible roles in amplifying the initial shock. An important aspect of our model is that the growth expectations of ambiguity averse agents are endogenous and, therefore, can be impacted by regulatory constraints on collateral put in place by policy makers. The simulations show that active constraints can reduce price volatility in this context, suggesting a possible stabilizing role for tighter regulatory constraints when a portion of investors are ambiguity-averse.