Working paper series / Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Fachbereich Wirtschaftswissenschaften : Finance & Accounting
Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Working Paper (147) (remove)
Language
- English (147) (remove)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (147)
Keywords
- Deutschland (38)
- Schätzung (18)
- Corporate Governance (14)
- Bank (10)
- Portfoliomanagement (10)
- Börsenkurs (8)
- Europäische Union (8)
- corporate governance (7)
- Aktienmarkt (6)
- Großbritannien (6)
Institute
83
In this paper we have developed a financial model of the non-life insurer to provide assistance for the management of the insurance company in making decisions on product, investment and reinsurance mix. The model is based on portfolio theory and recognizes the stochastic nature of and the interaction between the underwriting and investment income of the insurance business. In the context of an empirical application we illustrate howa portfolio optimisation approach can be used for asset-liability management.
82
The present paper seeks to study the possible diversification potential by the integration of indirect real estate investments in international portfolios. To this end, monthly index-return time-series in the time-period from January 1985 till December 1998 from real estate investment companies as well as common stocks and bonds in Germany, France, Switzerland, Great Britain and the USA were used. We utilize, due to the critical normal distribution assumption, a mean/lower-partial-moment framework. In order to take into account the influence of the currency risk for international investments the analyses have been undertaken both with as well as without hedging the currency risk. We take the viewpoint of a German as well as that of a US-investor to gain insight into the dependency of the diversification potential on the reference currency of the investor.
079
Banking and markets
(2001)
This paper integrates a number of recent themes in the literature in banking and asset markets–optimal risk sharing, limited market participation, asset-price volatility, market liquidity, and financial crises–in a general-equilibrium theory of the financial system. A complex financial system comprises both financial markets financial institutions. Financial institutions can take the form of intermediaries or banks. Banks, inlike intermediaries, are subject to runs, but crises do not imply market failure. We show that a sophisticated financiel system–a system with complete markets for aggregate risk and limited market participation–is incentive-efficient, if the institutions take the form of intermediaries, or else constrained-efficient, of they take the form of banks. We also consider an economy in which the markets for aggregate risks are incomplete. In this context, there is a rolefpr prudential regulation: regulating liquidity can improve welfare.
78
We analyze exchange rates along with equity quotes for 3 German firms from New York (NYSE) and Frankfurt (XETRA) during overlapping trading hours to see where price discovery occurs and how stock prices adjust to an exchange rate shock. Findings include: (a) the exchange rate is exogenous with respect to the stock prices; (b) exchange rate innovations are more important in understanding the evolution of NYSE prices than XETRA prices; and (c) most (but not all) of the fundamental or random walk component of firm value is determined in Frankfurt.
075
Since the beginning of the 1990s, it has been widely expected that the implementation of the European Single Market would lead to a rapid convergence of Europe’s financial systems. In the present paper we will show that at least in the period prior to the introduction of the common currency this expected convergence did not materialise. Our empirical studies on the significance of various institutions within the financial sectors, on the financing patterns of firms in various countries and on the predominant mechanisms of corporate governance, which are summarised and placed in a broader context in this paper, point to few, if any, signs of a convergence at a fundamental or structural level between the German, British and French financial systems. The German financial system continues to appear to be bank-dominated, while the British system still appears to be capital market-dominated. During the period covered by the research, i.e. 1980 – 1998, the French system underwent the most far-reaching changes, and today it is difficult to classify. In our opinion, these findings can be attributed to the effects of strong path dependencies, which are in turn an outgrowth of relationships of complementarity between the individual system components. Projecting what we have observed into the future, the results of our research indicate that one of two alternative paths of development is most likely to materialise: either the differences between the national financial systems will persist, or – possibly as a result of systemic crises – one financial system type will become the dominant model internationally. And if this second path emerges, the Anglo-American, capital market-dominated system could turn out to be the “winner”, because it is better able to withstand and weather crises, but not necessarily because it is more efficient.
72
At least in the past, banking in continental Europe has been characterised by a number of features that are quite specific to the region. They include the following: (1) banks play a strong role in their respective financial systems; (2) universal banking is prevalent; (3) not strictly profit-oriented banks play a significant role; and (4) there are considerable differences between national banking systems. It can be safely assumed that the future of banking in Europe will be shaped by three major external developments: deregulation and liberalisation; advances in information technology; and economic, financial and monetary integration. The overall consequences of these developments would be much too vast a topic to be addressed in one short paper. Therefore the present paper concentrates on the following question: Are the traditional peculiarities of the banking and financial systems of continental Europe likely to disappear as a consequence of the aforementioned external developments or are they more likely to remain in spite of these developments? The external developments affect the features specific to banking in continental Europe only indirectly and only via the strategies selected and pursued by the various players in the financial systems, notably the banks themselves, and in ways which strongly depend on the structure of the banking industry and the level of competition between banks and other providers of financial services. The paper develops an informal model of the relationships between (1) external developments, (2) bank strategies and the structure of the banking industry, and (3) the peculiarities of banking in Europe, and derives a hypothesis predicting which of the traditional peculiarities are likely to disappear and which are likely to remain. It argues that, overall, the peculiarities are not likely to disappear in the short or the medium term. First version June 2000. This version March 2001.
69
In this paper, we estimate the demand for homeowner insurance in Florida. Since we are interested in a number of factors influencing demand, we approach the problem from two directions. We first estimate two hedonic equations representing the premium per contract and the price mark-up. We analyze how the contracts are bundled and how contract provisions, insurer characteristics and insured risk characteristics and demographics influence the premium per contract and the price mark-up. Second, we estimate the demand for homeowners insurance using two-stage least squares regression. We employ ISO's indicated loss costs as our proxy for real insurance services demanded. We assume that the demand for coverage is essentially a joint demand and thus we can estimate the demand for catastrophe coverage separately from the demand for noncatastrophe coverage. We determine that price elasticities are less elastic for catastrophic coverage than for non-catastrophic coverage. Further estimated income elasticities suggest that homeowners insurance is an inferior good. Finally, we conclude based on the results of a selection model that our sample of ISO reporting companies well represents the demand for insurance in the Florida market as a whole.
067
In this paper we study the benefits derived from international diversification of stock portfolios from German and Hungarian point of view. In contrast to the German capital market, which is one of the largest in the world, the Hungarian Stock Exchange is an emerging market. The Hungarian stock market is highly volatile, high returns are often accompanied by extremely large risk. Therefore, there is a good potential for Hungarian investors to realize substantial benefits in terms of risk reduction by creating multi-currency portfolios. The paper gives evidence on the above me ntioned benefits for both countries by examining the performance of several ex ante portfolio strategies. In order to control the currency risk, different types of hedging approaches are implemented.
66
Real options theory applies techniques known from finance theory to the valuation of capital investments. The present paper investigates further into this analogy, considering the case of a portfolio of real options. An implementation of real option models in practice will mostly be concerned with a portfolio of real options, so the analysis of portfolio aspects is of both academic and practical interest. Is a portfolio of real options special? In order to shed some light on this question, the present paper will outline the relevant features of a portfolio of real options. It will show that the analogy to financial options remains great if compound option models are applied. As a result, a portfolio of real options, and therefore the firm as such, generally is to be understood as one single compound, real option.
65a
At present, the question of how national pension or retirement payment systems should be organised is being hotly debated in various countries, and opinions vary widely as to what should be regarded as the optimal design for such systems. It appears to the authors of the present paper that in this entire discussion one aspect is largely overlooked: What relationships exist between the pension system and the financial system in a given country? As such relationships might prove to be important, the present paper investigates the following questions: (1) Are there differences between the national pension systems of three major European countries – Germany, France and the U.K. – and between the financial systems of these countries? (2) And if the existence of such differences can be demonstrated, is there a correspondence between the differences with respect to the various national pension systems and the differences as regards the countries’ financial systems? (3) And if such a correspondence exists, is there any kind of interrelationship between the national financial and pension systems of the individual countries which goes beyond a mere correspondence? Looking mainly at two aspects – namely, risk allocation and the incentives to create human capital – the authors of this paper argue (1) that there are indeed considerable differences between the financial and pension systems of the three countries; (2) that in both Germany and the U.K. there are also systematic correspondences between the respective pension systems and financial systems and their economic characteristics, but that such a correspondence cannot be identified in the case of France; and (3) that these parallels are, in the final analysis, based on complementarities and are therefore likely to contribute to the efficiency of the German and the British systems. The paper concludes with a brief look at policy implications which the existence of, or the lack of, consistency between national pension systems and national financial systems might have.
064
Competition for order flow can be characterized as a coordination game with multiple equilibria. Analyzing competition between dealer markets and a crossing network, we show that the crossing network is more stable for lower traders’ disutilities from unexecuted orders. By introducing private information, we prove existence of a unique equilibrium with market consolidation. Assets with low volatility and large volumes are traded on crossing networks, others on dealer markets. Efficiency requires more assets to be traded on crossing networks. If traders’ disutilities differ sufficiently, a unique equilibrium with market fragmentation exists. Low disutility traders use the crossing network while high disutility traders use the dealer market. The crossing network’s market share is inefficiently small.
60
Initiated by the seminal work of Diamond/Dybvig (1983) and Diamond (1984), advances in the theory of financial intermediation have sharpened our understanding of the theoretical foundations of banks as special financial institutions. What makes them "unique" is the combination of accepting deposits and issuing loans. However, in recent years the notion of "disintermediation" has gained tremendous popularity, especially among American observers. These observers argue that deregulation, globalisation and advances in information technology have been eroding the role of banks as intermediaries and thus their alleged uniqueness. It is even assumed that ever more efficiently organised capital markets and specialised financial institutions that take advantage of these markets, such as mutual funds or finance companies, will lead to the demise of banks. Using a novel measurement concept based on intermediation and securitisation ratios, the present article provides evidence which shows that banking disintermediation is indeed a reality for the US financial system. This seems to indicate that American banks are not all that "unique"; they can be replaced to a considerable extent. Moreover, many observers seem to believe that what has happened in the US reflects a universal trend. However, empirical results reported in this paper indicate that such a trend has not manifested itself in other financial systems, and in particular, not in Germany or Japan. Evidence on the enormous structural differences between financial systems and the lack of unequivocal signs of convergence render any inferences from the American experience to other financial systems very problematic.
58
Although the world of banking and finance is becoming more integrated every day, in most aspects the world of financial regulation continues to be narrowly defined by national boundaries. The main players here are still national governments and governmental agencies. And until recently, they tended to follow a policy of shielding their activities from scrutiny by their peers and members of the academic community rather than inviting critical assessments and an exchange of ideas. The turbulence in international financial markets in the 1980s, and its impact on U.S. banks, gave rise to the notion that academics working in the field of banking and financial regulation might be in a position to make a contribution to the improvement of regulation in the United States, and thus ultimately to the stability of the entire financial sector. This provided the impetus for the creation of the “U.S. Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee”. In the meantime, similar shadow committees have been founded in Europe and Japan. The specific problems associated with financial regulation in Europe, as well as the specific features which distinguish the European Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee from its counterparts in the U.S. and Japan, derive from the fact that while Europe has already made substantial progress towards economic and political integration, it is still primarily a collection of distinct nation-states with differing institutional set-ups and political and economic traditions. Therefore, any attempt to work towards a European approach to financial regulation must include an effort to promote the development of a European culture of co-operation in this area, and this is precisely what the European Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee (ESFRC) seeks to do. In this paper, Harald Benink, chairman of the ESFRC, and Reinhard H. Schmidt, one of the two German members, discuss the origin, the objectives and the functioning of the committee and the thrust of its recommendations.
57
We present an empirical study focusing on the estimation of a fundamental multi-factor model for a universe of European stocks. Following the approach of the BARRA model, we have adopted a cross-sectional methodology. The proportion of explained variance ranges from 7.3% to 66.3% in the weekly regressions with a mean of 32.9%. For the individual factors we give the percentage of the weeks when they yielded statistically significant influence on stock returns. The best explanatory power – apart from the dominant country factors – was found among the statistical constructs „success“ and „variability in markets“.
056
The use of catastrophe bonds (cat bonds) implies the problem of the so called basis risk, resulting from the fact that, in contrast to traditional reinsurance, this kind of coverage cannot be a perfect hedge for the primary’s insured portfolio. On the other hand cat bonds offer some very attractive economic features: Besides their usefulness as a solution to the problems of moral hazard and default risk, an important advantage of cat bonds can be seen in the presumably lower transaction costs compared to (re)insurance products. Insurance coverage usually incurs costs of acquisition, monitoring and loss adjustment, all of which can be reduced by making use of the financial markets. Additionally, cat bonds are only weakly correlated with market risk, implying that in perfect financial markets these securities could be traded at a price including just small risk premiums. Although these aspects have been identified in economic literature, to our knowledge there has been no publication so far that formally addresses the trade-off between basis risk and transaction cost. In this paper, therefore, we introduce a simple model that enables us to analyze cat bonds and reinsurance as substitutional risk management tools in a standard insurance demand theory environment. We concentrate on the problem of basis risk versus transaction cost, and show that the availability of cat bonds affects the structure of optimal reinsurance contract design in an interesting way, as it leads to an increase of indemnity for small losses and a decrease of indemnity for large losses.
55 3
The extension of long-term loans, e.g. to finance housing, is adversely affected by inflation. For one thing, the higher nominal interest rates charged by the banks in response to inflation mean that borrowers have to make (nominally) higher interest payments, which unnecessarily reduces their borrowing capacity. For another, long-term loans with variable interest rates increase the probability that borrowers will become unable to meet their payment obligations. The present paper examines these two assertions in detail. At the same time, it presents a concept for substantially reducing the weaknesses of conventional lending methodologies. We start by investigating the consequences of a stable inflation rate on the borrowing capacity of credit clients, then go on to analyze the impact of fluctuating inflation rates on the risk of default.
52
The purpose of this paper is to compare three different index construction methodologies of commercial property investments. We examine for different European countries (i) appraisal-based indices and methods of „unsmoothing“ the corresponding return series, (ii) indices that trace average ex-post transaction prices over time, and (iii) indices based on Real Estate Investment Trust share prices.