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Institute
- Wirtschaftswissenschaften (215) (remove)
Optimal trend inflation
(2017)
We present a sticky-price model incorporating heterogeneous Firms and systematic firm-level productivity trends. Aggregating the model in closed form, we show that it delivers radically different predictions for the optimal inflation rate than canonical sticky price models featuring homogenous Firms:
(1) the optimal steady-state inflation rate generically differs from zero and,
(2) inflation optimally responds to productivity disturbances.
Using micro data from the US Census Bureau to estimate the inflation-relevant productivity trends at the firm level, we find that the optimal US inflation rate is positive. It was slightly above 2 percent in the year 1986, but continuously declined thereafter, reaching about 1 percent in the year 2013.
In this paper we propose a way forward towards increased financial resilience in times of growing disagreement concerning open borders, free trade and global regulatory standards. In light of these concerns, financial resilience remains a highly valued policy objective. We wish to contribute by suggesting an agenda of concrete, do-able steps supporting an enhanced level of resilience, combined with a deeper understanding of its relevance in the public domain.
First, remove inconsistencies across regulatory rules and territorial regimes, and ensure their credibility concerning implementation. Second, discourage the use of financial regulatory standards as means of international competition. Third, give more weight to pedagogically explaining the established regulatory standards in public, to strengthen their societal backing.
We extend the classical ”martingale-plus-noise” model for high-frequency prices by an error correction mechanism originating from prevailing mispricing. The speed of price reversal is a natural measure for informational efficiency. The strength of the price reversal relative to the signal-to-noise ratio determines the signs of the return serial correlation and the bias in standard realized variance estimates. We derive the model’s properties and locally estimate it based on mid-quote returns of the NASDAQ 100 constituents. There is evidence of mildly persistent local regimes of positive and negative serial correlation, arising from lagged feedback effects and sluggish price adjustments. The model performance is decidedly superior to existing stylized microstructure models. Finally, we document intraday periodicities in the speed of price reversion and noise-to-signal ratios.
We analyze the market reaction to the sentiment of the CEO speech at the Annual General Meeting (AGM). As the AGM is typically preceded by several information disclosures, the CEO speech may be expected to contribute only marginally to investors’ decision-making. Surprisingly, however, we observe from the transcripts of 338 CEO speeches of German corporates between 2008 and 2016 that their sentiment is significantly related to abnormal stock returns and trading volumes following the AGM. Using a novel business-specific German dictionary based on Loughran and McDonald (2011), we find a negative association of the post-AGM returns with the speeches’ negativity and a positive association with the speeches’ relative positivity (i.e. positivity relative to negativity). Relative positivity moreover corresponds with a lower trading volume in a short time window surrounding the AGM. Investors hence seem to perceive the sentiment of CEO speeches at AGMs as a valuable indicator of future firm performance.
We analyze the market reaction to the sentiment of the CEO speech at the Annual General Meeting (AGM). As the AGM is typically preceded by several information disclosures, the CEO speech may be expected to contribute only marginally to investors’ decision making. Surprisingly, however, we observe from the transcripts of 338 CEO speeches of German corporates between 2008 and 2016 that their sentiment is significantly related to abnormal stock returns and trading volume around the AGM. By adapting a finance-specific German dictionary based on Loughran and McDonald (2011), we find a negative association of the post-AGM returns with the speeches’ negativity and a positive association with the speeches’ relative positivity (i.e. positivity relative to negativity). Relative positivity moreover corresponds with a lower trading volume around the AGM. Investors hence seem to perceive the sentiment of CEO speeches at AGMs as a valuable indicator of future firm performance. Our results are robust against different weighting schemes and our dictionary appears to be better suited to grasp the sentiment of German business documents compared to general dictionaries.
Public employees in many developing economies earn much higher wages than similar privatesector workers. These wage premia may reflect an efficient return to effort or unobserved skills, or an inefficient rent causing labor misallocation. To distinguish these explanations, we exploit the Kenyan government’s algorithm for hiring eighteen-thousand new teachers in 2010 in a regression discontinuity design. Fuzzy regression discontinuity estimates yield a civil-service wage premium of over 100 percent (not attributable to observed or unobserved skills), but no effect on motivation, suggesting rent-sharing as the most plausible explanation for the wage premium.
Since 2014 the ECB has implemented a massive expansion of monetary policy including large-scale asset purchases and negative policy rates. As the euro area economy has improved and inflation has risen, questions concerning the future normalization of monetary policy are starting to dominate the public debate.
The study argues that the ECB should develop a strategy for policy normalization and communicate it very soon to prepare the ground for subsequent steps towards tightening. It provides analysis and makes proposals concerning key aspects of this strategy. The aim is to facilitate the emergence of expectations among market participants that are consistent with a smooth process of policy normalization.
Coming early to the party
(2017)
We examine the strategic behavior of High Frequency Traders (HFTs) during the pre-opening phase and the opening auction of the NYSE-Euronext Paris exchange. HFTs actively participate, and profitably extract information from the order flow. They also post "flash crash" orders, to gain time priority. They make profits on their last-second orders; however, so do others, suggesting that there is no speed advantage. HFTs lead price discovery, and neither harm nor improve liquidity. They "come early to the party", and enjoy it (make profits); however, they also help others enjoy the party (improve market quality) and do not have privileges (their speed advantage is not crucial).
This paper investigates the effects of a rise in interest rate and lapse risk of endowment life insurance policies on the liquidity and solvency of life insurers. We model the book and market value balance sheet of an average German life insurer, subject to both GAAP and Solvency II regulation, featuring an existing back book of policies and an existing asset allocation calibrated by historical data. The balance sheet is then projected forward under stochastic financial markets. Lapse rates are modeled stochastically and depend on the granted guaranteed rate of return and prevailing level of interest rates. Our results suggest that in the case of a sharp increase in interest rates, policyholders sharply increase lapses and the solvency position of the insurer deteriorates in the short-run. This result is particularly driven by the interaction between a reduction in the market value of assets, large guarantees for existing policies, and a very slow adjustment of asset returns to interest rates. A sharp or gradual rise in interest rates is associated with substantial and persistent liquidity needs, that are particularly driven by lapse rates.
During the last IAIS Global Seminar in June 2017, IAIS disclosed the agenda for a gradual shift in the systemic risk assessment methodology from the current Entity Based Approach (EBA) to a new Activity Based Approach(ABA). The EBA, which was developed in the aftermath of the 2008/2009 financial crisis, defines a list of Global Systemically Important Insurers (G-SIIs) based on a pre-defined set of criteria related to the size of the institution. These G-SIIs are subject to additional regulatory requirements since their distress or disorderly failure would potentially cause significant disruption to the global financial system and economic activity. Even if size is still a needed element of a systemic risk assessment, the strong emphasis put on the too-big-to-fail approach in insurance, i.e. EBA, might be partially missing the underlying nature of systemic risk in insurance. Not only certain activities, including insurance activities such as life or non-life lines of business, but also common exposures or certain managerial practices such as leverage or funding structures, tend to contribute to systemic risk of insurers but are not covered by the current EBA (Berdin and Sottocornola, 2015). Therefore, we very much welcome the general development of the systemic risk assessment methodology, even if several important questions still need to be answered.
The currrent debate on monetary and fiscal policy is heavily influenced by estimates of the equilibrium real interest rate. Beyer and Wieland re-estimate the U.S. equilibrium rate with the methodology of Laubach and Williams and further modifications. They provide new estimates for the United States, the euro area and Germany and subject them to sensitivity tests. Beyer and Wieland conclude that due to the great uncertainty and sensitivity, the observed decline in the estimates is not a reliable indicator of a need for expansionary monetary and fiscal policy. Yet, if those estimates are employed to determine the appropriate monetary policy stance, such estimates are better used together with the consistent estimate of the level of potential output.
The impact of network connectivity on factor exposures, asset pricing and portfolio diversification
(2017)
This paper extends the classic factor-based asset pricing model by including network linkages in linear factor models. We assume that the network linkages are exogenously provided. This extension of the model allows a better understanding of the causes of systematic risk and shows that (i) network exposures act as an inflating factor for systematic exposure to common factors and (ii) the power of diversification is reduced by the presence of network connections. Moreover, we show that in the presence of network links a misspecified traditional linear factor model presents residuals that are correlated and heteroskedastic. We support our claims with an extensive simulation experiment.
For some time now, structural macroeconomic models used at central banks have been predominantly New Keynesian DSGE models featuring nominal rigidities and forwardlooking decision-making. While these features are widely deemed crucial for policy evaluation exercises, most central banks have added more detailed characterizations of the financial sector to these models following the Great Recession in order to improve their fit to the data and their forecasting performance. We employ a comparative approach to investigate the characteristics of this new generation of New Keynesian DSGE models and document an elevated degree of model uncertainty relative to earlier model generations. Policy transmission is highly heterogeneous across types of financial frictions and monetary policy causes larger effects, on average. The New Keynesian DSGE models we analyze suggest that a simple policy rule robust to model uncertainty involves a weaker response to inflation and the output gap in the presence of financial frictions as compared to earlier generations of such models. Leaning-against-the-wind policies in models of this class estimated for the Euro Area do not lead to substantial gains. With regard to forecasting performance, the inclusion of financial frictions can generate improvements, if conditioned on appropriate data. Looking forward, we argue that model-averaging and embracing alternative modelling paradigms is likely to yield a more robust framework for the conduct of monetary policy.
The purpose of the data presented in this article is to use it in ex post estimations of interest rate decisions by the European Central Bank (ECB), as it is done by Bletzinger and Wieland (2017) [1]. The data is of quarterly frequency from 1999 Q1 until 2013 Q2 and consists of the ECB's policy rate, inflation rate, real output growth and potential output growth in the euro area. To account for forward-looking decision making in the interest rate rule, the data consists of expectations about future inflation and output dynamics. While potential output is constructed based on data from the European Commission's annual macro-economic database, inflation and real output growth are taken from two different sources both provided by the ECB: the Survey of Professional Forecasters and projections made by ECB staff. Careful attention was given to the publication date of the collected data to ensure a real-time dataset only consisting of information which was available to the decision makers at the time of the decision.
Causality is a widely-used concept in theoretical and empirical economics. The recent financial economics literature has used Granger causality to detect the presence of contemporaneous links between financial institutions and, in turn, to obtain a network structure. Subsequent studies combined the estimated networks with traditional pricing or risk measurement models to improve their fit to empirical data. In this paper, we provide two contributions: we show how to use a linear factor model as a device for estimating a combination of several networks that monitor the links across variables from different viewpoints; and we demonstrate that Granger causality should be combined with quantile-based causality when the focus is on risk propagation. The empirical evidence supports the latter claim.
We propose a long-run risk model with stochastic volatility, a time-varying mean reversion level of volatility, and jumps in the state variables. The special feature of our model is that the jump intensity is not affine in the conditional variance but driven by a separate process. We show that this separation of jump risk from volatility risk is needed to match the empirically weak link between the level and the slope of the implied volatility smile for S&P 500 options.
Das Clearing von Euro-OTC-Derivaten post Brexit – eine Analyse der vorliegenden Kostenschätzungen
(2017)
Im Zusammenhang mit dem Brexit wird über die Kosten einer Relokation des Clearing des Euro-OTC-Derivate-Geschäftes auf ein EU-CCP diskutiert. Das vorliegende Papier zeigt, dass die bislang vorliegenden Kostenschätzungen, die von Kosten in Höhe von bis zu USD 100 Mrd. für einen Zeitraum von fünf Jahren ausgehen, viel zu hoch sind. Die erwarteten Kosten einer Relokation liegen vielmehr bei ca. USD 0,6 Mrd. p.a. bzw. ca. USD 3,2 Mrd. für eine Übergangsphase von fünf Jahren. Angesichts der hohen Bedeutung von systemrelevanten CCPs für die Stabilität der Eurozone sollten diese Kosten nicht entscheidungsrelevant für eine Relokation sein.
In the context of the upcoming Brexit, a relocation of the clearing of euro-OTC derivatives for EU-based firms is the subject of controversial discussion. The opponents of a relocation argue that a relocation would cause additional costs for market participants of up to USD 100 bn over a period of 5 years. This paper shows that this cost estimate is fairly unrealistic and that relocation costs would amount to approximately USD 0.6 bn p.a., which translates to cumulative costs of around USD 3.2 bn for a transition period of 5 years. In light of the strategic importance of systemically relevant CCPs for the financial stability of the eurozone, the potential relocation costs should not be a decision criterion.
Financial market interactions can lead to large and persistent booms and recessions. Instability is an inherent threat to economies with speculative financial markets. A central bank’s interest rate setting can amplify the expectation feedback in the financial market and this can lead to unstable dynamics and excess volatility. The paper suggests that policy institutions may be well-advised to handle tools like asset price targeting with care since such instruments might add a structural link between asset prices and macroeconomic aggregates. Neither stock prices nor indices are a good indicator to base decisions on.
The level of capital tax gains has high explanatory power regarding the question of what drives economic inequality. On this basis, the authors develop a simple, yet micro-founded portfolio selection model to explain the dynamics of wealth inequality given empirical tax series in the US. The results emphasize that the level and the transition of speed of wealth inequality depend crucially on the degree of capital taxation. The projections predict that – continuing on the present path of capital taxation in the US – the gap between rich and poor is expected to shrink whereas “massive” tax cuts will further increase the degree of wealth concentration.
Eine neuere Entscheidung des Bundesgerichtshofs zu den Anforderungen an die Mitteilung nach § 20 AktG über die Mitteilung eines Beteiligungserwerbs2 gibt Anlass zu Überlegungen zu den Rechtsfolgen einer Verletzung von Mitteilungspflichten durch mittelbar beteiligte Gesellschafter.
Der Bundesgerichthof hat, ohne auf abweichende Ansichten einzugehen, die h.M.3 bestätigt, nach der bei Verletzungen einer Mitteilungspflicht durch ein herrschendes Unternehmen die Rechtsfolge des Rechtsverlustes das unmittelbar beteiligte Tochterunternehmen selbst dann trifft, wenn dieses seine eigene Mitteilungspflicht ordnungsgemäß erfüllt hat.4 Im Hinblick auf den (zeitweiligen) Verlust von Dividendenansprüchen, um die es in dem vom BGH entschiedenen Fall ging, dürfte die in der Sache entscheidende Erwägung sein, dass anderenfalls dem herrschenden Unternehmen die mittelbaren Folgen der Gewinnausschüttung auch dann erhalten blieben, wenn es den eigenen Verstoß gegen die Mitteilungspflicht und den daraus folgenden temporären Wegfall des Gewinnbezugsrechts kannte oder kennen musste.
Asymmetric social norms
(2017)
Studies of cooperation in infinitely repeated matching games focus on homogeneous economies, where full cooperation is efficient and any defection is collectively sanctioned. Here we study heterogeneous economies where occasional defections are part of efficient play, and show how to support those outcomes through contagious punishments.
Monetary policy communication is particularly important during unconventional times, because high uncertainty about the economy, the introduction of new policy tools and possible limits to the central bank’s toolkit could hamper the predictability of policy actions. We study how monetary policy communication should and has worked under such circumstances. Our main results relate to announcements of asset purchase programmes and the use of forward guidance. We show that announcements of asset purchase programmes have lowered market uncertainty, particularly when accompanied by a contextual release of implementation details such as the envisaged size of the programme. We also show that forward guidance reduces uncertainty more effectively when it is state‐contingent or when it provides guidance about a long horizon than when it is open‐ended or covers only a short horizon, and that the credibility of forward guidance is strengthened if the central bank also has embarked on an asset purchase programme.
We propose a 2-country asset-pricing model where agents' preferences change endogenously as a function of the popularity of internationally traded goods. We determine the effect of the time-variation of preferences on equity markets, consumption and portfolio choices. When agents are more sensitive to the popularity of domestic consumption goods, the local stock market reacts more strongly to the preferences of local agents than to the preferences of foreign agents. Therefore, home bias arises because home-country stock represents a better investment opportunity for hedging against future fluctuations in preferences. We test our model and find that preference evolution is a plausible driver of key macroeconomic variables and stock returns.
The international diffusion of technology plays a key role in stimulating global growth and explaining co-movements of international equity returns. Existing empirical evidence suggests that countries are heterogeneous in their attitude toward innovation: Some countries rely more on technology adoption while other countries rely more on internal technology production. European countries that rely more on adoption are also typically characterized by lower fiscal policy exibility and higher labor market rigidity. We develop a two-country model – where both countries rely on R&D and adoption – to study the short-run and long-run effects of aggregate technology and adoption probability shocks on economic growth in the presence of the aforementioned asymmetries. Our framework suggests that an increase in the ability to adopt technology from abroad stimulates economic growth in the country that benefits from higher adoption rates but the beneficial effects also spread to the foreign country. Moreover, it helps explaining the differences in macro quantities and equity returns observed in the international data.
Commodity connectedness
(2017)
We use variance decompositions from high-dimensional vector autoregressions to characterize connectedness in 19 key commodity return volatilities, 2011-2016. We study both static (full-sample) and dynamic (rolling-sample) connectedness. We summarize and visualize the results using tools from network analysis. The results reveal clear clustering of commodities into groups that match traditional industry groupings, but with some notable differences. The energy sector is most important in terms of sending shocks to others, and energy, industrial metals, and precious metals are themselves tightly connected.
Recent work has analyzed the forecasting performance of standard dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models, but little attention has been given to DSGE models that incorporate nonlinearities in exogenous driving processes. Against that background, we explore whether incorporating stochastic volatility improves DSGE forecasts (point, interval, and density). We examine real-time forecast accuracy for key macroeconomic variables including output growth, inflation, and the policy rate. We find that incorporating stochastic volatility in DSGE models of macroeconomic fundamentals markedly improves their density forecasts, just as incorporating stochastic volatility in models of financial asset returns improves their density forecasts.
We study the general equilibrium implications of different fiscal policies on macroeconomic quantities, asset prices, and welfare by utilizing two endogenous growth models. The expanding variety model features only homogeneous innovations by entrants. The Schumpeterian growth model features heterogeneous innovations: "incremental" innovations by incumbents and "radical" innovations by entrants. The government levies taxes on labor income and corporate profits and supplies subsidies to consumption, capital investment, and investments in research and development by entrants and, if applicable, incumbents. With these models at hand, we provide new insights on the interplay of innovation dynamics and fiscal policy.
We shed new light on the macroeconomic effects of rising temperatures. In the data, a shock to global temperature dampens expenditures in research and development (R&D). We rationalize this empirical evidence within a stochastic endogenous growth model, featuring temperature risk and growth sustained through innovations. In line with the novel evidence in the data, temperature shocks undermine economic growth via a drop in R&D. Moreover, in our endogenous growth setting temperature risk generates non-negligible welfare costs (i.e., 11% of lifetime utility). An active government, which is committed to a zero fiscal deficit policy, can offset the welfare costs of global temperature risk by subsidizing the aggregate capital investment with one-fifth of total public spending.
This paper examines the welfare implications of rising temperatures. Using a standard VAR, we empirically show that a temperature shock has a sizable, negative and statistically significant impact on TFP, output, and labor productivity. We rationalize these findings within a production economy featuring long-run temperature risk. In the model, macro-aggregates drop in response to a temperature shock, consistent with the novel evidence in the data. Such adverse effects are long-lasting. Over a 50-year horizon, a one-standard deviation temperature shock lowers both cumulative output and labor productivity growth by 1.4 percentage points. Based on the model, we also show that temperature risk is associated with non-negligible welfare costs which amount to 18.4% of the agent's lifetime utility and grow exponentially with the size of the impact of temperature on TFP. Finally, we show that faster adaptation to temperature shocks results in lower welfare costs. These welfare benefits become substantially higher in the presence of permanent improvements in the speed of adaptation.
Fleckenstein et al. (2014) document that nominal Treasuries trade at higher prices than inflation-swapped indexed bonds, which exactly replicate the nominal cash flows. We study whether this mispricing arises from liquidity premiums in inflation-indexed bonds (TIPS) and inflation swaps. Using US data, we show that the level of liquidity affects TIPS, whereas swap yields include a liquidity risk premium. We also allow for liquidity effects in nominal bonds. These results are based on a model with a systematic liquidity risk factor and asset-specific liquidity characteristics. We show that these liquidity (risk) premiums explain a substantial part of the TIPS underpricing.
We establish a benchmark result for the relationship between the loanable funds and the money-creation approach to banking. In particular, we show that both processes yield the same allocations when there is no uncertainty and thus no bank default. In such cases, using the much simpler loanable funds approach as a shortcut does not imply any loss of generality.
SME funding without banks?
(2017)
The Capital Markets Union-project of the European Commission aims for an increase of marketbased debt financing of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), complementing bank lending. In this essay we argue that rather than focussing on pure non-bank lending, a reasonable mix of bankand market-based financing should be considered. Banks are said to have a comparative advantage in critical lending functions such as credit screening, debtor monitoring and debt renegotiation. All forms of lending require a persistent skin-in-the-game of critical players in order to be effective. The regulator should insist on full disclosure of skin-in-the-game, thereby improving capital allocation and reducing systemic risks.
One striking observation in Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the remarkable gender difference in incidence and prevalence of the disease. Data on gender differences with regard to disease onset, motor and non-motor symptoms, and dopaminergic medication are limited. Furthermore, whether estrogen status affects disease onset and progression of PD is controversially discussed. In this retrospective single center study, we extracted clinical data of 226 ambulatory PD patients and compared age of disease onset, disease stage, motor impairment, non-motor symptoms, and dopaminergic medication between genders. We applied a matched-pairs design to adjust for age and disease duration. To determine the effect of estrogen-related reproductive factors including number of children, age at menarche, and menopause on the age of onset, we applied a standardized questionnaire and performed a regression analysis. The male to female ratio in the present PD cohort was 1.9:1 (147 men vs. 79 women). Male patients showed increased motor impairment than female patients. The levodopa equivalent daily dose was increased by 18.9% in male patients compared to female patients. Matched-pairs analysis confirmed the increased dose of dopaminergic medication in male patients. No differences were observed in age of onset, type of medication, and non-motor symptoms between both groups. Female reproductive factors including number of children, age at menarche, and age at menopause were positively associated with a delay of disease onset up to 30 months. The disease-modifying role of estrogen-related outcome measures warrants further clinical and experimental studies targeting gender differences, specifically hormone-dependent pathways in PD.
We test two hypotheses, based on sexual selection theory, about gender differences in costly social interactions. Differential selectivity states that women invest less than men in interactions with new individuals. Differential opportunism states that women’s investment in social interactions is less responsive to information about the interaction’s payoffs. The hypotheses imply that women’s social networks are more stable and path dependent and composed of a greater proportion of strong relative to weak links. During their introductory week, we let new university students play an experimental trust game, first with one anonymous partner, then with the same and a new partner. Consistent with our hypotheses, we find that women invest less than men in new partners and that their investments are only half as responsive to information about the likely returns to the investment. Moreover, subsequent formation of students’ real social networks is consistent with the experimental results: being randomly assigned to the same introductory group has a much larger positive effect on women’s likelihood of reporting a subsequent friendship.
Low probability events are overweighted in the pricing of out-of the-money index puts and single stock calls. We find that this behavioral bias is strongly time-varying, linked to equity market sentiment, and higher moments of the risk-neutral density. An implied volatility (IV) sentiment measure that is jointly derived from index and single stock options explains investors' overweight of tail events the best. Our findings also suggest that IV-sentiment predicts equity markets reversals better than overweight of small probabilities itself. When employed in a trading strategy, IV-sentiment delivers economically significant results, which are more consistent than the ones produced by the market sentiment factor. The joint use of information from the single stock and index option markets seems to explain the forecasting power of IV-sentiment. Out-of-sample tests on reversal prediction show that our IV-sentiment measure adds value over and above traditional factors in the equity risk premium literature, especially as an equity-buying signal. This reversals prediction seems to improve time-series and cross-sectional momentum strategies.
Telemonitoring devices can be used to screen consumers' characteristics and mitigate information asymmetries that lead to adverse selection in insurance markets. However, some consumers value their privacy and dislike sharing private information with insurers. In the second-best efficient Wilson-Miyazaki-Spence framework, we allow for consumers to reveal their risk type for an individual subjective cost and show analytically how this affects insurance market equilibria as well as utilitarian social welfare. Our analysis shows that the choice of information disclosure with respect to revelation of their risk type can substitute deductibles for consumers whose transparency aversion is sufficiently low. This can lead to a Pareto improvement of social welfare and a Pareto efficient market allocation. However, if all consumers are offered cross-subsidizing contracts, the introduction of a transparency contract decreases or even eliminates cross-subsidies. Given the prior existence of a WMS equilibrium, utility is shifted from individuals who do not reveal their private information to those who choose to reveal. Our analysis provides a theoretical foundation for the discussion on consumer protection in the context of digitalization. It shows that new technologies bring new ways to challenge crosssubsidization in insurance markets and stresses the negative externalities that digitalization has on consumers who are not willing to take part in this development.
This paper analyzes the relationship between monetary policy and financial stability in the Banking Union. There is no uniform global model regarding the relationship between monetary policy-making on the one hand, and prudential supervision on the other. Before the crisis, EU Member States followed different approaches, some of them uniting monetary and supervisory functions in one institution, others assigning them to different, neatly separated institutions. The financial crisis has underlined that monetary policy and prudential supervision deeply affect each other, especially in case of systemic events. Even in normal times, monetary and supervisory decisions might conflict with each other. After the crisis, some jurisdictions have moved towards a more holistic approach under which monetary policy takes supervisory considerations into account, while supervisory decisions pay due regard to monetary policy.
The Banking Union puts prudential supervision in the hands of the European Central Bank (ECB), the institution responsible for monetary policy. Nevertheless, at its establishment there was the political understanding that the ECB should follow a policy of meticulous separation in the discharge of its different functions. This raises the question whether the ECB may pursue a holistic approach to monetary policy and supervisory decision-making, respectively. On the basis of a purposive reading of the monetary policy mandate and the SSM Regulation, the paper answers this question in the affirmative. Effective monetary policy (or supervision) requires financial stability (or smooth monetary policy transmission). Moreover, without a holistic approach, the SSM Regulation is more likely to provoke the adoption of mutually defeating decisions by the Governing Board. The reputation of the ECB would suffer considerably under such a situation – in a field where reputation is of paramount importance for effective policy.
As any meticulous separation between monetary and supervisory functions turns out to be infeasible, the paper explores the reasons. Parting from Katharina Pistor’s legal theory of finance, which puts the emphasis on exogenous factors to explain the (non)enforcement of legal rules, the paper suggests a legal instability theorem which focuses on endogenous reasons, such as law’s indeterminacy, contextuality, and responsiveness to democratic deliberation. This raises the question whether the holistic approach would be democratically legitimate under the current framework of the ESCB. The idea of technocratic legitimacy that exempts the ECB from representative structures is effectively called into question by the legal instability theorem. This does not imply that the independence of the ECB should be given up, as there are no viable alternatives to protect monetary policy against the time inconsistency problem. Rather, any solution might benefit from recognizing the ECB in its mixed technocratic and political shape as a centerpiece of European integration and improving.