Working paper series / Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Fachbereich Wirtschaftswissenschaften : Finance & Accounting
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118
A financial system can only perform its function of channelling funds from savers to investors if it offers sufficient assurance to the providers of the funds that they will reap the rewards which have been promised to them. To the extent that this assurance is not provided by contracts alone, potential financiers will want to monitor and influence managerial decisions. This is why corporate governance is an essential part of any financial system. It is almost obvious that providers of equity have a genuine interest in the functioning of corporate governance. However, corporate governance encompasses more than investor protection. Similar considerations also apply to other stakeholders who invest their resources in a firm and whose expectations of later receiving an appropriate return on their investment also depend on decisions at the level of the individual firm which would be extremely difficult to anticipate and prescribe in a set of complete contingent contracts. Lenders, especially long-term lenders, are one such group of stakeholders who may also want to play a role in corporate governance; employees, especially those with high skill levels and firm-specific knowledge, are another. The German corporate governance system is different from that of the Anglo-Saxon countries because it foresees the possibility, and even the necessity, to integrate lenders and employees in the governance of large corporations. The German corporate governance system is generally regarded as the standard example of an insider-controlled and stakeholder-oriented system. Moreover, only a few years ago it was a consistent system in the sense of being composed of complementary elements which fit together well. The first objective of this paper is to show why and in which respect these characterisations were once appropriate. However, the past decade has seen a wave of developments in the German corporate governance system, which make it worthwhile and indeed necessary to investigate whether German corporate governance has recently changed in a fundamental way. More specifically one can ask which elements and features of German corporate governance have in fact changed, why they have changed and whether those changes which did occur constitute a structural change which would have converted the old insider-controlled system into an outsider-controlled and shareholder-oriented system and/or would have deprived it of its former consistency. It is the second purpose of this paper to answer these questions.
117
This paper studies a setting in which a risk averse agent must be motivated to work on two tasks: he (1) evaluates a new project and, if adopted, (2) manages it. While a performance measure which is informative of an agent´s action is typically valuable because it can be used to improve the risk sharing of the contract, this is not necessarily the case in this two-task setting. I provide a sufficient condition under which a performance measure that is informative of the second task is worthless for contracting despite the agent being risk averse. This shows that information content is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a performance measure to be valuable.
116
Capital rationing is an empirically well-documented phenomenon. This constraint requires managers to make investment decisions between mutually exclusive investment opportunities. In a multiperiod agency setting, this paper analyses accounting rules that provide managerial incentives for efficient project selection. In order to motivate a shortsighted manager to expend unobservable effort and to make efficient investment decisions, the principal sets up an incentive scheme based on residual income (e.g. EVATM). The paper shows that income smoothing generates a trade-off between agency costs resulting from differences in discount rates and the costs associated with the "congruity" of residual earnings.
115
Under a new Basel capital accord, bank regulators might use quantitative measures when evaluating the eligibility of internal credit rating systems for the internal ratings based approach. Based on data from Deutsche Bundesbank and using a simulation approach, we find that it is possible to identify strongly inferior rating systems out-of time based on statistics that measure either the quality of ranking borrowers from good to bad, or the quality of individual default probability forecasts. Banks do not significantly improve system quality if they use credit scores instead of ratings, or logistic regression default probability estimates instead of historical data. Banks that are not able to discriminate between high- and low-risk borrowers increase their average capital requirements due to the concavity of the capital requirements function.
114
Open-end real estate funds (so called “Offene Immobilienfonds”) play a major role in the German market for securitised real estate investments. Such funds are pools of money from many investors, which are invested in real estate by special investment management companies. This study seeks to identify the risk and return profile of this investment vehicle (before and after income taxes), to compare them with those of other major asset classes, and to provide implications for their appropriate role in a mixed-asset portfolio. Addition-ally, an overview of the institutional architecture and role of German open-end real estate funds is given. Empirical evidence suggests that the financial characteristics of open-end real estate funds are in many respects similar to those reported for direct real estate invest-ments. Accordingly, German open-end real estate funds qualify for medium and long-term investment horizons, rather than for shorter holding periods.
111
What constitutes a financial system in general and the German financial system in particular?
(2003)
This paper is one of the two introductory chapters of the book "The German Financial System". It first discusses two issues that have a general bearing on the entire book, and then provides a broad overview of the German financial system. The first general issue is that of clarifying what we mean by the key term "financial system" and, based on this definition, of showing why the financial system of a country is important and what it might be important for. Obviously, a definition of its subject matter and an explanation of its importance are required at the outset of any book. As we will explain in Section II, we use the term "financial system" in a broad sense which sets it clearly apart from the narrower concept of the "financial sector". The second general issue is that of how financial systems are described and analysed. Obviously, the definition of the object of analysis and the method by which the object is to be analysed are closely related to one another. The remainder of the paper provides a general overview of the German financial system. In addition, it is intended to provide a first indication of how the elements of the German financial system are related to each other, and thus to support our claim from Section II that there is indeed some merit in emphasising the systemic features of financial systems in general and of the German financial system in particular. The chapter concludes by briefly comparing the general characteristics of the German financial system with those of the financial systems of other advanced industrial countries, and taking a brief look at recent developments which might undermine the "systemic" character of the German financial system.
110
An economy in which deposit-taking banks of a Diamond/ Dybvig style and an asset market coexist is modelled. Firstly, within this framework we characterize distinct financial systems depending on the fraction of households with direct investment opportunities that are less efficient than those available to banks. With this fraction comparatively low, the evolving financial system can be interpreted as market-oriented. In this system, banks only provide efficient investment opportunities to households with inferior investment alternatives. Banks are not active in the secondary financial market nor do they provide any liquidity insurance to their depositors. Households participate to a large extent in the primary as well as in the secondary financial markets. In the other case of a relatively high fraction of households with inefficient direct investment opportunities, a bank-dominated financial system arises, in which banks provide liquidity transformation, are active in secondary financial markets and are the only player in primary markets, while households only participate in secondary financial markets. Secondly, we analyze the effect a run on a single bank has on the entire financial system. Interestingly, we can show that a bank run on a single bank causes contagion via the financial market neither in market-oriented nor in extremely bank-dominated financial systems. But in only moderately bank-dominated (or hybrid) financial systems fire sales of long-term financial claims by a distressed bank cause a sudden drop in asset prices that precipitates other banks into crisis.
109
As past research suggest, currency exposure risk is a main source of overall risk of international diversified portfolios. Thus, controlling the currency risk is an important instrument for controlling and improving investment performance of international investments. This study examines the effectiveness of controlling the currency risk for international diversified mixed asset portfolios via different hedge tools. Several hedging strategies, using currency forwards and currency options, were evaluated and compared with each other. Therefore, the stock and bond markets of the, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, and the U.S, in the time period of January 1985 till December 2002, are considered. This is done form the point of view of a German investor. Due to highly skewed return distributions of options, the application of the traditional mean-variance framework for portfolio optimization is doubtful when options are considered. To account for this problem, a mean-LPM model is employed. Currency trends are also taken into account to check for the general dependence of time trends of currency movements and the relative potential gains of risk controlling strategies.
108
Past research suggests that international real estate markets show return characteristics and interrelationships with other asset classes, which probably qualify them as an interesting component of national and international asset allocation decisions. However, the special characteristics of real estate assets are quite distinct from that of financial assets, such as stocks and bonds. This is also the case for real estate return distributions. Therefore, the proper integration of real estate markets into asset allocation decisions requires profound understanding of real estate returns' distributional characteristics .
Because of the particular characteristics of real estate, representing real estate markets through reliable a time-series is a complex task. Consequently, reliable real estate indices with a sufficiently long history in major international real estate markets are only scarcely available. Most of the research that has been done on real estate returns was done for the U.K. and U.S., where eligible indices exist. On the other hand, in other important real estate markets, such as Germany, either little or no research has been perfoimed.
In this analysis, the methodology of Maurer, Sebastian and Stephan (2000) for indirectly deriving an appraisal-based index for the German commercial real estate market will be applied. This approach is solely based on publicly available data from German open-ended real estate investment trusts. It could also provide a solution to deriving a reliable real estate time-series for other markets.
We will extend previous analyses for the U.K. and U.S. to provide additional fundamental insights into the return characteristics of the German commercial real estate market. Despite univariate considerations, the main focus is the interrelationships between various international real estate markets, as well as between those respective markets and the international stock and bond markets.
107
Intangible assets as goodwill, licenses, research and development or customer relations become in high technology and service orientated economies more and more important. But comparing the book values of listed companies and their market capitalization the financial reports seems to fail the information needs of market participants regarding the estimate of the proper firm value. Moreover, with the introduction of Anglo-American accounting systems in Europe and Asia we can observe even in the accounts of companies sited in the same jurisdiction diverging accounting practices for intangible assets caused by different accounting standards. To assess the relevance of intangible assets in Japanese and German accounts of listed companies we therefore measure certain balance sheet and profit and loss relations according to goodwill and self-developed software. We compare and analyze valuation rules for goodwill and software costs according to German GAAP, Japanese GAAP, US GAAP and IAS to determine the possible impact of diverging rules in the comparability of the accounts. Our results show that the comparability of the accounts is impaired because of different accounting practices. The recognition and valuation of goodwill and self-developed software varies significantly according to the accounting regime applied. However, for the recognition of self-developed software, the effect on the average impact on asset coefficients or profit is not that high. Moreover, an industry bias can only be found for the financial industry. In contrast, for goodwill accounting we found major differences especially between German and Japanese Blue Chips. The introduction of the new goodwill impairment only approach and the prohibition of the pooling method may have a major impact especially for Japanese companies’ accounts.
106
This paper is a draft for the chapter German banks and banking structure of the forthcoming book The German financial system . As such, the paper starts out with a description of past and present structural features of the German banking industry. Given the presented empirical evidence it then argues that great care has to be taken when generalising structural trends from one financial system to another. Whilst conventio nal commercial banking is clearly in decline in the US, it is far from clear whether the dominance of banks in the German financial system has been significantly eroded over the last decades. We interpret the immense stability in intermediation ratios and financing patterns of firms between 1970 and 2000 as strong evidence for our view that the way in which and the extent to which German banks fulfil the central functions for the financial system are still consistent with the overall logic of the German financial system. In spite of the current dire business environment for financial intermediaries we do not expect the German financial system and its banking industry as an integral part of this system to converge to the institutional arrangements typical for a market-oriented financial system. This Version: March 25, 2003
105
This paper analyses the long-term effects of improved small-scale lending, often provided by microfinance institutions set up with the support of development aid. The analysis shows that some common assumptions about microfinance are not true at all: First, it shows that the impact on income will accrue not to the microenterprises themselves, but rather to the consumers of their products. Second, microfinance will have a significant positive effect on the wage levels of employees in the informal sector. Third, microfinance will cause high growth rates in the informal production sector, whereas the trade sector will either contract or at best grow very little.
103
The theoretical derivation of credit market segmentation as the result of a free market process
(2003)
Information asymmetries make it difficult for banks to assess accurately whether specific entrepreneurs are able and/or willing to repay their loans. This leads to implicit interest rate ceilings, i.e. banks "refuse" to increase their interest rates beyond this ceiling as this would lower their net returns. Although the maximum interest rate increases as the size of enterprises decreases, such ceilings nonetheless constrain the banks’ ability to set interest rates at a level that would enable them to cover costs. If transaction costs are high, the total costs associated with granting small and medium-sized loans will exceed the maximum average return which the banks can earn by issuing such loans. For this reason, banks do not lend to small and medium-sized enterprises, and, as a consequence, these businesses have no access to formal sector loans. Because micro and small enterprises have a very high RoI, it is worthwhile for them to rely on expensive informal loans to finance their operations, at least until they reach a certain size. Once they have reached this size, however, it does not make economic sense for them to continue taking out informal credits, and thus they face a growth constraint imposed by the credit market. Medium-sized enterprises earn a lower RoI than small ones, which is why borrowing in the informal credit market is not a worthwhile option for them. Moreover, they do not have access to credit from formal financial institutions, and are thus excluded from obtaining any kind of financing in either of the two credit markets. As the result of free, unregulated market forces we get a stable equilibrium in which the credit market is segmented into an informal (small loan) segment, a formal (large loan) segment and, in between, a "non-market" (medium loan) segment.
102
Open source projects produce goods or standards that do not allow for the appropriation of private returns by those who contribute to their production. In this paper we analyze why programmers will nevertheless invest their time and effort to code open source software. We argue that the particular way in which open source projects are managed and especially how contributions are attributed to individual agents, allows the best programmers to create a signal that more mediocre programmers cannot achieve. Through setting themselves apart they can turn this signal into monetary rewards that correspond to their superior capabilities. With this incentive they will forgo the immediate rewards they could earn in software companies producing proprietary software by restricting the access to the source code of their product. Whenever institutional arrangements are in place that enable the acquisition of such a signal and the subsequent substitution into monetary rewards, the contribution to open source projects and the resulting public good is a feasible outcome that can be explained by standard economic theory.
102 r
Open source projects produce goods or standards that do not allow for the appropriation of private returns by those who contribute to their production. In this paper we analyze why programmers will nevertheless invest their time and effort to code open source software. We argue that the particular way in which open source projects are managed and especially how contributions are attributed to individual agents, allows the best programmers to create a signal that more mediocre programmers cannot achieve. Through setting themselves apart they can turn this signal into monetary rewards that correspond to their superior capabilities. With this incentive they will forgo the immediate rewards they could earn in software companies producing proprietary software by restricting the access to the source code of their product. Whenever institutional arrangements are in place that enable the acquisition of such a signal and the subsequent substitution into monetary rewards, the contribution to open source projects and the resulting public good is a feasible outcome that can be explained by standard economic theory.
101
Eine Beteiligung des Managements an Gewinngrößen spielt eine wichtige Rolle bei der Ausrichtung von Managemententscheidungen auf die Ziele der Unternehmenseigentümer. Dieser Beitrag zeigt auf, unter welchen Gewinnermittlungsregeln ein Agent zu optimalen Investitionsentscheidungen motiviert wird, wenn er an den Residualgewinnen beteiligt wird. Dieser Beitrag beschäftigt sich insbesondere mit der Frage, ob zum Zwecke einer optimalen Investitionssteuerung, Fertigerzeugnisse zu Vollkosten oder zu Teilkosten bewertet werden sollen. Vor diesem Hintergrund werden ebenfalls verschiedene Wertansätze für Forderungen auf ihre Anreizwirkungen untersucht.
99
This paper examines the provision of managerial investment incentives by an accounting based incentive scheme in a multiperiod agency setting in which an impatient manager has to choose between mutually exclusive investment projects. We study the properties of accounting rules that motivate an impatient manager to exert unobservable effort and to make optimal investment decisions. In this analysis, a realized cash flow constitutes a noisy signal that contains information about the unknown profitability of the investment project. By observing these signals a principal is able to revise his prior beliefs about the agent´s investment decision. The revision of the principal´s prior beliefs leads to a trade off between the provision of efficient investment incentives and intertemporalsharing of output.
97
Rating agencies state that they take a rating action only when it is unlikely to be reversed shortly afterwards. Based on a formal representation of the rating process, I show that such a policy provides a good explanation for the empirical evidence: Rating changes occur relatively seldom, exhibit serial dependence, and lag changes in the issuers’ default risk. In terms of informational losses, avoiding rating reversals can be more harmful than monitoring credit quality only twice per year.
95
Recent changes in accounting regulation for financial instruments (SFAS 133, IAS 39) have been heavily criticized by representatives from the banking industry. They argue for retaining a historical cost based "mixed model" where accounting for financial instruments depends on their designation to either trading or nontrading activities. In order to demonstrate the impact of different accounting models for financial instruments on the financial statements of banks, we develop a bank simulation model capturing the essential characteristics of a modern universal bank with investment banking and commercial banking activities. In our simulations we look at different scenarios with periods of increasing/decreasing interest rates using historical data and with different banking strategies (fully hedged; partially hedged). The financial statements of our model bank are prepared under different accounting rules ("Old" IAS before implementation of IAS 39; current IAS) with and without hedge accounting as offered by the respective sets of rules. The paper identifies critical issues of applying the different accounting rules for financial instruments to the activities of a universal bank. It demonstrates important shortcomings of the "Old" IAS rules (before IAS 39), and of the current IAS rules. Under the current IAS rules the results of a fully hedged bank may have to show volatility in income statements due to changes in market interest rates. Accounting results of a partially hedged bank in the same scenario may be less affected even though there are economic gains or losses.
94
Portfolio choice and estimation risk : a comparison of Bayesian approaches to resampled efficiency
(2002)
Estimation risk is known to have a huge impact on mean/variance (MV) optimized portfolios, which is one of the primary reasons to make standard Markowitz optimization unfeasible in practice. Several approaches to incorporate estimation risk into portfolio selection are suggested in the earlier literature. These papers regularly discuss heuristic approaches (e.g., placing restrictions on portfolio weights) and Bayesian estimators. Among the Bayesian class of estimators, we will focus in this paper on the Bayes/Stein estimator developed by Jorion (1985, 1986), which is probably the most popular estimator. We will show that optimal portfolios based on the Bayes/Stein estimator correspond to portfolios on the original mean-variance efficient frontier with a higher risk aversion. We quantify this increase in risk aversion. Furthermore, we review a relatively new approach introduced by Michaud (1998), resampling efficiency. Michaud argues that the limitations of MV efficiency in practice generally derive from a lack of statistical understanding of MV optimization. He advocates a statistical view of MV optimization that leads to new procedures that can reduce estimation risk. Resampling efficiency has been contrasted to standard Markowitz portfolios until now, but not to other approaches which explicitly incorporate estimation risk. This paper attempts to fill this gap. Optimal portfolios based on the Bayes/Stein estimator and resampling efficiency are compared in an empirical out-of-sample study in terms of their Sharpe ratio and in terms of stochastic dominance.
93
Substantial research attention has been devoted to the pension accumulation process, whereby employees and those advising them work to accumulate funds for retirement. Until recently, less analysis has been devoted to the pension decumulation process – the process by which retirees finance their consumption during retirement. This gap has recently begun to be filled by an active group of researchers examining key aspects of the pension payout market. One of the areas of most interesting investigation has been in the area of annuities, which are financial products intended to cover the risk of retirees outliving their assets. This paper reviews and extends recent research examining the role of annuities in helping finance retirement consumption. We also examine key market and regulatory factors.
92
The classical approaches to asset allocation give very different conclusions about how much foreign stocks a US investor should hold. US investors should either allocate a large portion of about 40% to foreign stocks (which is the result of mean/variance optimization and the international CAPM) or they should hold no foreign stocks at all (which is the conclusion of the domestic CAPM and mean/variance spanning tests). There is no way in between.
The idea of the Bayesian approach discussed in this article is to shrink the mean/variance efficient portfolio towards the market portfolio. The shrinkage effect is determined by the investor's prior belief in the efficiency of the market portfolio and by the degree of violation of the CAPM in the sample. Interestingly, this Bayesian approach leads to the same implications for asset allocation as the mean-variance/tracking error criterion. In both cases, the optimal portfolio is a combination of the market portfolio and the mean/variance efficient portfolio with the highest Sharpe ratio.
Applying both approaches to the subject of international diversification, we find that a substantial home bias is only justified when a US investor has a strong belief in the global mean/variance efficiency of the US market portfolio and when he has a high regret aversion of falling behind the US market portfolio. We also find that the current level of home bias can be justified whenever-regret aversion is significantly higher than risk aversion.
Finally, we compare the Bayesian approach of shrinking the mean/variance efficient portfolio towards the market portfolio to another Bayesian approach which shrinks the mean/variance efficient portfolio towards the minimum-variance portfolio. An empirical out-of-sample study shows that both Bayesian approaches lead to a clearly superior performance compared to the classical mean/variance efficient portfolio.
91
Who knows what when? : The information content of pre-IPO market prices : [Version March/June 2002]
(2002)
To resolve the IPO underpricing puzzle it is essential to analyze who knows what when during the issuing process. In Germany, broker-dealers make a market in IPOs during the subscription period. We examine these pre-issue prices and find that they are highly informative. They are closer to the first price subsequently established on the exchange than both the midpoint of the bookbuilding range and the offer price. The pre-issue prices explain a large part of the underpricing left unexplained by other variables. The results imply that information asymmetries are much lower than the observed variance of underpricing suggests.
90
We propose a new framework for modelling time dependence in duration processes on financial markets. The well known autoregressive conditional duration (ACD) approach introduced by Engle and Russell (1998) will be extended in a way that allows the conditional expectation of the duration process to depend on an unobservable stochastic process, which is modelled via a Markov chain. The Markov switching ACD model (MSACD) is a very flexible tool for description and forecasting of financial duration processes. In addition the introduction of an unobservable, discrete valued regime variable can be justified in the light of recent market microstructure theories. In an empirical application we show, that the MSACD approach is able to capture several specific characteristics of inter trade durations while alternative ACD models fail. Furthermore, we use the MSACD to test implications of a sequential trade model.
89
Executive Stock Option Programs (SOPs) have become the dominant compensation instrument for top-management in recent years. The incentive effects of an SOP both with respect to corporate investment and financing decisions critically depend on the design of the SOP. A specific problem in designing SOPs concerns dividend protection. Usually, SOPs are not dividend protected, i.e. any dividend payout decreases the value of a manager’s options. Empirical evidence shows that this results in a significant decrease in the level of corporate dividends and, at the same time, into an increase in share repurchases. Yet, few suggestions have been made on how to account for dividends in SOPs. This paper applies arguments from principal-agent-theory and from the theory of finance to analyze different forms of dividend protection, and to address the relevance of dividend protection in SOPs. Finally, the paper relates the theoretical analysis to empirical work on the link between share repurchases and SOPs.
88
For the Neuer Markt year 2001 is not considered as one of its best, compared to its prior performance. Investors who once piled into the Neuer Markt have now become wary of the exchange, which was launched in 1997 as Europe’s leading growth market and answer to the U.S.‘s Nasdaq Stock Market. The Neuer Markt’s reputation has been marred by the misleading information policy from several Neuer Markt companies, publishing false annual and quarterly data. Some of these companies are responsible for having misinformed investors of their pending bankruptcies. Under these circumstances, it is time to find an explanation for the dramatic loss of credibility in Neuer Markt enterprises. Finding an answer, two aspects come under consideration: • What type of information (annual versus quarterly reports) was available for investors and • of what quality were these provided data. Interim reports can be seen as important instrument in the reporting system to inform all kinds of investors. For this reason we examine the quality of Neuer Markt quarterly reports by concentrating on the disclosure level of 52 Neuer Markt companies‘ reports for the third quarter 1999 and 2000. To enable comparison we establish four disclosure indexes that measure the report’s compliance with the Neuer Markt Rules and Regulations as well as with IAS and US GAAP interim reporting standards. The results demonstrate that the level of disclosure has increased over time. Then we aim to find typical attributes of Neuer Markt enterprises that provide high or low level of accounting information in their quarterly reports. Nevertheless the study also shows that there is not any correlation between market capitalization and the quality of interim reports. However, it can be suggested that an additional enforcement mechanism could improve quality and lure investors back. A step towards this aim is the standardization project of quarterly reports of Deutsche Boerse AG.
87a
Access to loans and other financial services is extremely valuable for micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises in developing and transition countries as it enables their owners as well as their employees to exploit their economic potential and to increase their income. Although this insight has lead development aid institutions to undertake many attempts to create sustainable microfinance institutions, only a small fraction of these has been successful so far. This article analyses what determines the success of attempts to provide financial services in general, and credit in particular, to low income target groups in these countries. We argue that it is crucial to understand, and to mitigate or even eliminate in practice, the serious and numerous incentive problems at the level of the lending operations as well as those at the levels of the human resource management and the governance of microfinance institutions. We attempt to show moreover, that unsolved incentive problems at only one level will ultimately undermine any potential success at the other levels. In our paper, we first analyse information and incentive problems from a theoretical perspective, using and extending the well-known Stiglitz-Weiss model of credit rationing, and derive theoretical requirements for solutions of these problems. In the light of these considerations, we then discuss how problems are solved in practice. Section 3 deals with the credit relationship. Section 4 extends the argument by showing how incentive problems within the institution can be handled, and section 5 analyses corporate governance-related problems of development finance institutions as incentive problems. In section 6 it is demonstrated why, and how, the incentive problems at the different levels, as well as their solutions, are interrelated. From this we derive the proposition that, as the institutional devices for dealing with these problems constitute a complementary system, any sustainable solution requires consistent arrangements of all elements and at all levels of the system. In the last section we will show the potential of strategic networks to set up institutions which we consider to be consistent systems for successfully solving the problems at all three levels simultaneously.
85
Our study provides evidence on the share price reactions to the announcement of equity issues in Germany, where capital market is characterized by institutional features distinct from the U.S. market. German seasoned equity issues yield a positive market reaction which contrasts to the significant negative abnormal returns reported for the U.S. We provide evidence that these results are due to differences in both issuing characteristics and floatation methods, and in the corporate governance and ownership structures of the two countries. Our study explains much of the empirical puzzle of different market reactions to seemingly similar events across financial markets.
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.
51
Real estate is an important asset, but as a direct investment subject to several difficulties. Shares of public open end funds or of real estate stock corporations represent a possible way for an investor to avoid these problems. The focus of this paper is the analysis of inflation risk of European real estate securities. An overview of the institutional frameworks regarding these companies is given. The returns of real estate securities in France, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom are examined for the period 1980:1-1998:12. Besides the classical Fama/Schwert-approach, shortfall risk measurements have been used. In this context, transaction costs in particular have been taken into account.
48
This paper investigates whether firms employing IAS or US GAAP exhibit measurable differences in proxies for information asymmetry and market liquidity. Sample firms are drawn from the "New Market" at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. All firms listed in this market segment are required to provide financial statements in accordance with either IAS or US GAAP as part of the listing agreement. The sample choice provides a market-based comparison of the two standards holding disclosure requirements and standard enforcement constant. I find that differences in the bid-ask spread and trading volume are relatively small and more likely to be driven by firm characteristics than the choice of accounting standards. In contrast, New Market firms have lower spreads and higher turnover when compared with size-matched firms in other market segments following German GAAP. The results suggests that rigid disclosure regulation of the New Market matters in terms of information asymmetry and liquidity, but that the choice between IAS and US GAAP is of second order importance.
JEL Classification: D82, G30, M41
47
Traditional tests of the CAPM following the Fama / MacBeth (1973) procedure are tests of the joint hypotheses that there is a relationship between beta and realized return and that the market risk premium is positive. The conditional test procedure developed by Pettengill / Sundaram / Mathur (1995) allows to independently test the hypothesis of a relation between beta and realized returns. Monte Carlo simulations show that the conditional test reliably identifies this relation. In an empirical examination for the German stock market we find a significant relation between beta and return. Previous studies failed to identify this relationship probably because the average market risk premium in the sample period was close to zero. Our results provide a justification for the use of betas estimated from historical return data by portfolio managers.
46
The main argument in this paper is that new information and communication technologies (ICT) in the financial industry will increase specialisation and competition within the European financial centre system and thereby lead to a ‘re-bundling’ of functions of the various financial centres. Frankfurt plays an interesting role in this development as it is one of the main development centres for ‘financial technology’. With these technologies, remote access to the Frankfurt stock exchange and inter-bank payment system is now feasible from most European cities. This leads to a reduced need for physical presence, which opens up new possibilities for the financial sector’s spatial organisation. However, as financial production is information- and knowledge-intensive, spatial and other types of proximity between financial actors and clients are still essential in many stages. We examine the value chains of three different products (advisory, lending, trading) with regard to different proximities, in order to identify possible patterns of their spatial (re)organisation. From these findings, inferences are drawn for a ‘new’ role for Frankfurt in the European financial centre system.
045
Financial development and financial institution building are important prerequisites for economic growth. However, both the potential and the problems of institution building are still vastly underestimated by those who design and fund institution building projects. The paper first underlines the importance of financial development for economic growth, then describes the main elements of “serious” institution building: the lending technology, the methodological approaches, and the question of internal structure and corporate governance. Finally, it discusses three problems which institution building efforts have to cope with: inappropriate expectations on the part of donor and partner institutions regarding the problems and effects of institution building efforts, the lack of awareness of the importance of governance and ownership issues, and financial regulation that is too restrictive for microfinance operations. All three problems together explain why there are so few successful micro and small business institutions operating worldwide.
41
Economic theory suggests that a commitment by a firm to increased levels of disclosure should lower the information asymmetry component of the firm’s cost of capital. But whi le the theory is compelling, so far empirical results relating increased levels of disclosure to measurable economic benefits have been mixed. One explanation for the mixed results among studies using data from firms publicly registered in the US is that, under current US reporting standards, the disclosure environment is already rich. In this paper, we study German firms that have switched from the German to an international reporting regime (IAS or US -GAAP), thereby committing themselves to increased le vels of disclosure. We show that proxies for the information asymmetry component of the cost of capital for the switching firms, namely the bid-ask spread and trading volume, behave in the predicted direction compared to firms employing the German reporti ng regime.
40
This paper studies the incentives of German firms to voluntarily disclose cash flow statements over time. While cash flow statement are mandated under many GAAP regimes, its disclosure has not been mandatory in Germany until recently. Nevertheless, an increasing number of firms provides cash flow statements voluntarily. These firms are likely to be influenced by recommendations of the German accounting profession, IAS 7 as well as the respective standards of other countries. The idea of the paper is to study this influence by looking at the adoption pattern over time and the format of the cash flow statement. It documents the development of voluntary cash flow statement disclosures by German firms with respect to ”milestones” in the evolution of German professional recommendations and respective international standards. The cross-sectional determinants of voluntary and international cash flow statements are analyzed using probit regressions and factor analysis. The results are generally consistent with the idea that capital-market forces drive voluntary cash flow statements that are in line with international reporting practice.
35
Major differences between national financial systems might make a common monetary policy difficult. As within Europe, Germany and the United Kingdom differ most with respect to their financial systems, the present paper addresses its topic under the assumption that the United Kingdom is already a part of EMU. Employing a comprehensive concept of a financial system, the author shows that there are indeed profound differences between the national financial systems of Germany and the United Kingdom. But he argues that these differences are not likely to create great problems for a common monetary policy. In the context of the present paper, one important difference between the two financial systems refers to the structure of the respective financial sector and, as a consequence, to the strength with which a given monetary policy impulse set by the central bank is passed on to the financial sector. The other important difference refers to the typical relationship between the banks and the business sector in each country which determines to what extent the financial sectors and especially the banks pass on pressure exerted on them by a monetary policy authority to their clients in their national business sector. In Germany, the central bank has a stronger influence on the financial sector than in England, while, for systemic reasons, German banks tend to soften monetary policy pressures on their customers more than British banks do. As far as the transmission of a restrictive monetary policy of the ECB to the real economy is concerned, these two differences tend to offset each other. This is good news for the advocates of a monetary union as it eases the task of the ECB when it comes to determining the strength of its monetary policy measures.
33
A widely recognized paper by Colin Mayer (1988) has led to a profound revision of academic thinking about financing patterns of corporations in different countries. Using flow-of-funds data instead of balance sheet data, Mayer and others who followed his lead found that internal financing is the dominant mode of financing in all countries, that therefore financial patterns do not differ very much between countries and that those differences which still seem to exist are not at all consistent with the common conviction that financial systems can be classified as being either bank-based or capital market-based. This leads to a puzzle insofar as it calls into question the empirical foundation of the widely held belief that there is a correspondence between the financing patterns of corporations on the one side, and the structure of the financial sector and the prevailing corporate governance system in a given country on the other side. The present paper addresses this puzzle on a methodological and an empirical basis. It starts by demonstrating that the surprising empirical results found by Mayer et al. are due to a hidden assumption underlying their methodology. It then derives an alternative method of measuring financing patterns, which also uses flow-of-funds data, but avoids the questionable assumption. This measurement concept is then applied to patterns of corporate financing in Germany, Japan and the United States. The empirical results are very much in line with the commonly held belief prior to Mayer’s influential contribution and indicate that the financial systems of the three countries do indeed differ from one another in a substantial way.
32
We investigate the suggested substitutive relation between executive compensation and the disciplinary threat of takeover imposed by the market for corporate control. We complement other empirical studies on managerial compensation and corporate control mechanisms in three distinct ways. First, we concentrate on firms in the oil industry for which agency problems were especially severe in the 1980s. Due to the extensive generation of excess cash flow, product and factor market discipline was ineffective. Second, we obtain a unique data set drawn directly from proxy statements which accounts not only for salary and bonus but for the value of all stock-market based compensation held in the portfolio of a CEO. Our data set consists of 51 firms in the U.S. oil industry from 1977 to 1994. Third, we employ ex ante measures of the threat of takeover at the individual firm level which are superior to ex post measures like actual takeover occurrence or past incidence of takeovers in an industry. Results show that annual compensation and, to a much higher degree, stock-based managerial compensation increase after a firm becomes protected from a hostile takeover. However, clear-cut evidence that CEOs of protected firms receive higher compensation than those of firms considered susceptible to a takeover cannot be found.
30
We analyze incentives for loan officers in a model with hidden action, limited liability and truth-telling constraints under the assumption that the principal has private information from an automatic scoring system. First we show that the truth-telling problem reduces the bank’s expected profit whenever the loan officer cannot only conceal bad types, but can also falsely report bad types. Second, we investigate whether the bank should reveal her private information to the agent. We show that this depends on the percentage of good loans in the population and on the signal’s informativeness. Though we had to define different regions for different parameters, we concluded that it might often be favorable to not reveal the signal. This contradicts current practice.
28
This paper examines auditor liability rules under imperfect information, costly litigation and risk averse auditors. A negligence rule fails in such a setting, because in equilibrium auditors will deviate with positive probability from any given standard. It is shown that strict liability outperforms negligence with respect to risk allocation, and the probability that a desired level of care is met by the audi tor if competitive liability insurance markets exist. Furthermore, our model explains the existence of insurance contracts containing obligations - a type of contract often observed in liability insurance markets.
27
In a series of recent papers, Mark Roe and Lucian Bebchuk have developed further the concept of path dependence, combined it with concepts of evolution and used it to challenge the wide-spread view that the corporate governance systems of the major advanced economies are likely to converge towards the economically best system at a rapid pace. The present paper shares this skepticism, but adds several aspects which strengthen the point made by Roe and Bebchuk. The present paper argues that it is important for the topic under discussion to distinguish clearly between two arguments which can explain path dependence. One of them is based on the role of adjustment costs, and the other one uses concepts borrowed from evolutionary biology. Making this distinction is important because the two concepts of path dependence have different implications for the issue of rapid convergence to the best system. In addition, we introduce a formal concept of complementarity and demonstrate that national corporate governance systems are usefully regarded as – possibly consistent – systems of complementary elements. Complementarity is a reason for path dependence which supports the socio-biological argument. The dynamic properties of systems composed of complementary elements are such that a rapid convergence towards a universally best corporate governance systems is not likely to happen. We then proceed by showing for the case of corporate governance systems shaped by complementarity, that there even is the possibility of a convergence towards a common system which is economically inferior. And in the specific case of European integration, "inefficient convergence" of corporate governance systems is a possible future course of events. First version December 1998, this version March 2000.
24
Our article integrates the manager’s care in the literature on auditor’s liability. With unobservable efforts, we face a double moral hazard setting. It is well-known that efficient liability rules without punitive damages do not exist under these circumstances. However, we show that the problem can be solved through strict liability, contingent auditing fees, and fair insurance contracts. Neither punitive damages nor deductibles above the damages are required.
23
This paper provides a detailed empirical analysis of the call auction procedure on the German stock exchanges. The auction is conducted by the Makler whose position resembles that of a NYSE specialist. We use a dataset which contains information about all individual orders for a sample of stocks traded on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FSE). This sample allows us to calculate the cost of transacting in a call market and compare them to the costs of transacting in a continuous market. We find that transaction costs for small transactions in the call market are lower than the quoted spread in the order book of the continuous market whereas transaction costs for large transactions are higher than the spread in the continuous market.
We further address the question whether active participation of the Makler is advantageous. On the one hand he may accomodate order imbalances, increase the liquidity of the market and stabilize prices. On the other hand, the discretion in price setting gives him an incentive to manipulate prices. This may increase return volatility. Our dataset identifies the trades the Maklers make for their own accounts. We eliminate these trades and determine the price that would have obtained without their participation. Comparing this hypothetical price series to the actual transaction prices, we find that Makler participation tends to reduce return volatility. A further analysis shows that the actual prices are much closer to the surrounding prices of the continuous trading session than the hypothetical prices that would have obtained without Makler participation. These results indicate that the Maklers provide a valuable service to the market. We further calculate the profits associated with the positions taken by the Maklers and find that, on average, they do not earn profits on the positions they take. Their compensation is thus restricted to the commissions they receive.
22
It is the objective of this paper to determine the voting premium for French shares by comparing the values of voting and non-voting shares, and to analyze the value of the voting rights. The study uses data for 25 French companies which had both types of shares outstanding and traded on the stock exchange during the entire period from 1986 to 1996, or for some time during this interval. The average value of the voting premium is 51,35%.
The paper analyzes the reasons for this surprisingly high value by testing different hypotheses based on dividend differences, the revival) of the voting right, capitalization, shareholder structure, and the share of non-voting capital in total equity capital. The regressions show that the shareholder structure strongly influences the value of the voting premium.
A case study of the attempted takeover of Casino by Promodes shows that investors attach a much higher value to the voting right during relevant situations than at other tomes. Both companies involved had, at the time, two types of shares outstanding and listed. Furthermore the paper shows that non-voting shares have never played an important role in equity finance in France since the companies have different alternatives.
In an international cumparison, France is found to have the second highest voting premium, exceeded only by that of Italy. A probable reason is the low quality of the national accounting standards and the low level of minority shareholder protection.
21
Discretionary disclosure theory suggests that firms' incentives to provide proprietary versus nonproprietary information differ markedly. To test this conjecture, the paper investigates the incentives of German firms to voluntarily disclose business segment reports and cash flow statements in their annual financial reports. While the former is likely to reveal proprietary information to competitors, the latter is less proprietary in nature. Using these proxies for proprietary and non-proprietary disclosures, respectively, I find that the determinants or at least their relative magnitudes differ in a way consistent with the proprietary cost hypothesis. That is, cash flow statement disclosures appear to be governed primarily by capital-market considerations, whereas segment disclosures are more strongly associated with proxies for product-market and proprietary-cost considerations.
20
In international accounting literature there are various approaches to assess the quality of national accounting systems with respect to specific key functions, e.g. the intensity of capital market information. An empirical approach often used measures the quality of disclosure by ranking the national systems with the so-called "disclosure index" (e.g. Choi 1973, Barret 1975, Cooke 1992, Taylor/ Zarzeski 1996). Concentrating on disclosure regulation in contrast to accounting practices, Cooke/ Wallace 1990 construct an index which measures the "degree of financial regulation". They identify groups of countries which can be clearly classified in highly regulated, regulated and moderately regulated national accounting systems.
In our analysis, we want to enrich the idea of the degree of financial disclosure regulation to a concept for evaluating the degree of determination of financial measurement. Assuming that a high degree of determination of a national accounting system leads to more comparable accounts than a low degree, the index can be interpreted as a quality measure of national accounting systems according to the intensity of capital market information. The following hypothesis is to be proved: the degree of disclosure regulation equals the degree of measurement regulation in order to serve the information needs of the national capital markets.
Three groups of different degrees of determination for national accounting systems can be easily identified which are compared to the results of Cooke/ Wallace. For some of the national systems the above hypothesis seems to be appropriate whereas some opposing results can be shown. Possible explanations are presented which can be causally related to these diverging results. They are based on historical developments, the differentiation between rules for individual and group accounts, and on conditions where different degrees seem plausible.
17
Compliance with prevailing accounting standards is induced if the expected disadvantage due to sanctions imposed if non-compliance is detected outweighs the advantage of noncompliant accounting choices. The expected disadvantage materialises the threat potential of sanctions imposed by an enforcement agency. The capital market mechanism unfolds an important threat potential if companies expect an adverse share price reaction suite to enforcement actions. Enforcement agencies in turn can make use of this capital market related sanction by releasing information on defections to the market after the settlement of an investigation. The present contribution analyses the capital market reaction on accounting standards enforcement activities of the British Financial Reporting Review Panel (FRRP). After a brief introduction into the legal basis and working procedure of the Panel, the analysis of its activities will serve a dual purpose: firstly, the significance of capital market related sanctions for the overall enforcement regime will be elaborated upon. Secondly, the extent to which capital market related sanctions accomplish their function within the overall enforcement regime will be assessed empirically. The results of the empirical analysis suggest that the capital market related sanctioning by the FRRP may not unfold a sufficient threat potential which is a prerequisite for compliance enhancement.
12
During the last years the relationship between financial development and economic growth has received widespread attention in the literature on growth and development. This paper summarises in its first part the results of this research, stressing the growth-enhancing effects of an increased interpersonal re-allocation of resources promoted by financial development. The second part of the paper seeks to identify the determinants of financial development based on Diamond's theory of financial intermediation as delegated monitoring. The analysis shows that the quality of corporate governance of banks is the key factor in financial system development. Accordingly, financial sector reforms in developing countries will only succeed if they strengthen the corporate governance of financial institutions. In this area, financial institution building has an important contribution to make. Paper presented at the First Annual Seminar on New Development Finance held at the Goethe University of Frankfurt, September 22 - October 3, 1997
11
Individual financial systems can be understood as very specific configurations of certain key elements. Often these configurations remain unchanged for decades. We hypothesize that there is a specific relationship between key elements, namely that of complementarity. Thus, complementarity seems to be an essential feature of financial systems. Intuitively speaking, complementarity exists if the elements of a (financial) system reinforce each other in terms of contributing to the functioning of the system. It is the purpose of this paper to provide an analytical clarification of the concept of complementarity. This is done by modeling financial systems as combinations of four elements: firm-specific human capital of an entrepreneur, the ability of a bank to restructure the borrower's firm in the case of distress, the possibility to appropriate private benefits from running the firm, and the bankruptcy law. A specific configuration of these elements constitutes one financial system. The bankruptcy law and the potential private benefits are treated as exogenous. They determine the bargaining power of the contracting parties in the case that recontracting occurs. In a two-stage game, the optimal values for the other elements are determined by the agents individually - by investing in human capital and restructuring skills, respectively - and jointly by writing, executing and possibly renegotiating a financing contract for the firm. The paper discusses the equilibria for different types of bankruptcy law and demonstrates that equilibria exhibit the sought-after feature of complementarity. Three particularly significant equilibria correspond to stylized accounts of the British, German and the US-American financial system, respectively.
10
The paper presents an empirical analysis of the alledged transformation of the financial systems in the three major European economies, France, Germany and the UK. Based on a unified data set developed on the basis of national accounts statistics, and employing a new and consistent method of measurement, the following questions are addressed: Is there a common pattern of structural change; do banks lose importance in the process of change; and are the three financial systems becoming more similar? We find that there is neither a general trend towards disintermediation, nor towards a transformation from bank-based to capital market-based financial systems, nor for a loss of importance of banks. Only in the case of France strong signs of transformation as well as signs of a general decline in the role of banks could be found. Thus the three financial systems also do not seem to become more similar. However, there is also a common pattern of change: the intermediation chains are lengthening in all three countries. Nonbank financial intermediaries are taking over a more important role as mobilizers of capital from the non-financial sectors. In combination with the trend towards securitization of bank liabilites, this change increases the funding costs of banks and may put banks under pressure. In the case of France, this change is so pronounced that it might even threaten the stability of the financial system.
6
In the early 1990s, a consensus emerged among the leading experts in the field of small and micro business finance. It is based on three elements: The focus of projects should be on improving the entire financial sector of a given developing country; a commercial approach should be adopted, which implies covering costs and keeping costs as low as possible; and institutions should be created which are both able and willing to provide good financial services to the target group on a lasting basis. The starting point for this paper, which wholeheartedly endorses these three elements, is the proposition that putting these general principles into practice is much more difficult than some of their proponents seem to believe - and also more difficult than some of them have led donors to believe. The paper discusses the central issues of small and micro business financing in three areas: credit in general and the cost-effectiveness of lending methodologies in particular (Section II); savings in general and the role of deposit-taking in the growth of a target group-oriented financial institution in particular (Section III); and the process of creating viable target group-oriented financial institutions in developing countries (Section IV). We argue that donor institutions must be willing, and prepared, to play a role here which differs in important respects from their conventional role if they really wish to support sustainable financial sector development.
3
Paper Presented at the Conference on Workable Corporate Governance: Cross-Border Perspectives held in Paris, March 17-19, 1997 To appear in: A. Pezard/J.-M. Thiveaud: Workable Corporate Governance: Cross-Border Perspectives, Montchrestien, Paris 1997. The paper discusses the role of various constituencies in the corporate governance of a corporation from the perspective of incomplete contracts. A strict shareholder value orientation in the sense of a rule that at any time firm decisions should be made strictly in the interest of the present shareholders would make it difficult for the firm to establish long-term relationships as the potential partners would have to fear that, at a later stage of the co-operation, the shareholders or a management acting only on their behalf could exploit them because of the inevitable incompleteness of long-term contracts. One way of mitigating these problems is to put in place a corporate governance system which gives some active role to the other stakeholders or constituencies, or which makes their interests a well-defined element of the objective function of the firm. A commitment not to follow a policy of strict shareholder value maximization ex post can be efficient ex ante. Such a system would clearly differ from what is advocated by proponents of a "stakeholder approach", as it would limit the rights of the other constituencies to those which would have been agreed upon in a constitutional contract concluded between them and the founder of the firm at the time when long-term contracts are first established.
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During the last years issues of strategic management accounting have received widespread attention in the accounting literature. Yet the conceptual foundation of most proposals is not clear. This paper presents a theoretical analysis of one of the most prominent approaches of strategic management accounting, i.e., Target Costing. First, the relationship between Target Costing and Life-Cycle-Costing is shown. Secondly, a model based on a mechanism-design-approach is used to answer the question of whether the „Market-into-Company“-method of Target Costing can somehow be endogenized. The model captures problems of asymmetric information, price policy and cost structures (i.e. learning effects etc.). The analysis shows that the more „strategic“ is the firm´s cost function, the less valid is „strategic“ management accounting in terms of the usual way Target Costing is employed.
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Insider trading and portfolio structure in experimental asset markets with a long lived asset
(1997)
We report results of a series of nine market experiments with asymmetric information and a fundamental value process that is more "realistic" than those in previous experiments. Both a call market institution and a continuous double auction mechanism are employed. We find considerable pricing inefficiencies that are only partially exploited by insiders. The magnitude of insider gains is analyzed separately for each experiment. We find support for the hypothesis that the continuous double auction leads to more efficient outcomes. Finally, we present evidence of an endowment effect: the initial portfolio structure influences the final asset holdings of experimental subjects.