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This paper considers a trading game in which sequentially arriving liquidity traders either opt for a market order or for a limit order. One class of traders is considered to have an extended trading horizon, implying their impatience is linked to their trading orientation. More specifically, sellers are considered to have a trading horizon of two periods, whereas buyers only have a single-period trading scope (the extended buyer-horizon case is completely symmetric). Clearly, as the life span of their submitted limit orders is longer, this setting implies sellers are granted a natural advantage in supplying liquidity. This benefit is hampered, however, by the direct competition arising between consecutively arriving sellers. Closed-form characterizations for the order submission strategies are obtained when solving for the equilibrium of this dynamic game. These allow to examine how these forces affect traders´ order placement decisions. Further, the analysis yields insight into the dynamic process of price formation and into the market clearing process of a non-intermediated, order driven market.
Central counterparties (CCPs) have increasingly become a cornerstone of financial markets infrastructure. We present a model where trades are time-critical, liquidity is limited and there is limited enforcement of trades. We show a CCP novating trades implements efficient trading behaviour. It is optimal for the CCP to face default losses to achieve the efficient level of trade. To cover these losses, the CCP optimally uses margin calls, and, as the default problem becomes more severe, also requires default funds and then imposes position limits.
n the last few years, many of the world’s largest financial exchanges have converted from mutual, not-for-profit organizations to publicly-traded, for-profit firms. In most cases, these exchanges have substantial responsibilities with respect to enforcing various regulations that protect investors from dishonest agents. We examine how the incentives to enforce such regulations change as an exchange converts from mutual to for-profit status. In contrast to oft-stated concerns, we find that, in many circumstances, an exchange that maximizes shareholder (rather than member) income has a greater incentive to aggressively enforce these types of regulations.
The execution, clearing, and settlement of financial transactions are all subject to substantial scale and scope economies which make each of these complementary functions a natural monopoly. Integration of trade, execution, and settlement in an exchange improves efficiency by economizing on transactions costs. When scope economies in clearing are more extensive than those in execution, integration is more costly, and efficient organization involves a trade-off of scope economies and transactions costs. A properly organized clearing cooperative can eliminate double marginalization problems and exploit scope economies, but can result in opportunism and underinvestment. Moreover, a clearing cooperative may exercise market power. Vertical integration and tying can foreclose entry, but foreclosure can be efficient because market power rents attract excessive entry. Integration of trading and post-trade services is the modal form of organization in financial markets, which is consistent with the hypothesis that transactional efficiencies explain organizational arrangements in these markets.
Central counterparties
(2008)
Central counterparties (CCPs) have increasingly become a cornerstone of financial markets infrastructure. We present a model where trades are time-critical, liquidity is limited and there is limited enforcement of trades. We show a CCP novating trades implements efficient trading behaviour. It is optimal for the CCP to face default losses to achieve the efficient level of trade. To cover these losses, the CCP optimally uses margin calls, and, as the default problem becomes more severe, also requires default funds and then imposes position limits.
Algorithmic trading has sharply increased over the past decade. Equity market liquidity has improved as well. Are the two trends related? For a recent five-year panel of New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) stocks, we use a normalized measure of electronic message traffic (order submissions, cancellations, and executions) as a proxy for algorithmic trading, and we trace the associations between liquidity and message traffic. Based on within-stock variation, we find that algorithmic trading and liquidity are positively related. To sort out causality, we use the start of autoquoting on the NYSE as an exogenous instrument for algorithmic trading. Previously, specialists were responsible for manually disseminating the inside quote. As stocks were phased in gradually during early 2003, the manual quote was replaced by a new automated quote whenever there was a change to the NYSE limit order book. This market structure change provides quicker feedback to traders and algorithms and results in more message traffic. For large-cap stocks in particular, quoted and effective spreads narrow under autoquote and adverse selection declines, indicating that algorithmic trading does causally improve liquidity.
Opting out of the great inflation: German monetary policy after the break down of Bretton Woods
(2009)
During the turbulent 1970s and 1980s the Bundesbank established an outstanding reputation in the world of central banking. Germany achieved a high degree of domestic stability and provided safe haven for investors in times of turmoil in the international financial system. Eventually the Bundesbank provided the role model for the European Central Bank. Hence, we examine an episode of lasting importance in European monetary history. The purpose of this paper is to highlight how the Bundesbank monetary policy strategy contributed to this success. We analyze the strategy as it was conceived, communicated and refined by the Bundesbank itself. We propose a theoretical framework (following Söderström, 2005) where monetary targeting is interpreted, first and foremost, as a commitment device. In our setting, a monetary target helps anchoring inflation and inflation expectations. We derive an interest rate rule and show empirically that it approximates the way the Bundesbank conducted monetary policy over the period 1975-1998. We compare the Bundesbank´s monetary policy rule with those of the FED and of the Bank of England. We find that the Bundesbank´s policy reaction function was characterized by strong persistence of policy rates as well as a strong response to deviations of inflation from target and to the activity growth gap. In contrast, the response to the level of the output gap was not significant. In our empirical analysis we use real-time data, as available to policy-makers at the time. JEL Classification: E31, E32, E41, E52, E58
We find and describe four futures markets where the bid-ask spread is bid down to the fixed price tick size practically all the time, and which match counterparties using a pro-rata rule. These four markets´ offered depths at the quotes on average exceed mean market order size by two orders of magnitude, and their order cancellation rates (the probability of any given offered lot being cancelled) are significantly over 96 per cent. We develop a simple theoretical model to ex- plain these facts, where strategic complementarities in the choice of limit order size cause traders to risk overtrading by submitting over-sized limit orders, most of which they expect to cancel.
We consider a multi-period rational expectations model in which risk-averse investors differ in their information on past transaction prices (the ticker). Some investors (insiders) observe prices in real-time whereas other investors (outsiders) observe prices with a delay. As prices are informative about the asset payoff, insiders get a strictly larger expected utility than outsiders. Yet, information acquisition by one investor exerts a negative externality on other investors. Thus, investors’ average welfare is maximal when access to price information is rationed. We show that a market for price information can implement the fraction of insiders that maximizes investors’ average welfare. This market features a high price to curb excessive acquisition of ticker information. We also show that informational efficiency is greater when the dissemination of ticker information is broader and more timely.
We examine insurance markets with two types of customers: those who regret suboptimal decisions and those who don.t. In this setting, we characterize the equilibria under hidden information about the type of customers and hidden action. We show that both pooling and separating equilibria can exist. Furthermore, there exist separating equilibria that predict a positive correlation between the amount of insurance coverage and risk type, as in the standard economic models of adverse selection, but there also exist separating equilibria that predict a negative correlation between the amount of insurance coverage and risk type, i.e. advantageous selection. Since optimal choice of regretful customers depends on foregone alternatives, any equilibrium includes a contract which is o¤ered but not purchased.
When a spot market monopolist participates in a derivatives market, she has an incentive to deviate from the spot market monopoly optimum to make her derivatives market position more profitable. When contracts can only be written contingent on the spot price, a risk-averse monopolist chooses to participate in the derivatives market to hedge her risk, and she reduces expected profits by doing so. However, eliminating all risk is impossible. These results are independent of the shape of the demand function, the distribution of demand shocks, the nature of preferences or the set of derivatives contracts.
We study the relation between cognitive abilities and stockholding using the recent Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), which has detailed data on wealth and portfolio composition of individuals aged 50+ in 11 European countries and three indicators of cognitive abilities: mathematical, verbal fluency, and recall skills. We find that the propensity to invest in stocks is strongly associated with cognitive abilities, for both direct stock market participation and indirect participation through mutual funds and retirement accounts. Since the decision to invest in less information-intensive assets (such as bonds) is less strongly related to cognitive abilities, we conclude that the association between cognitive abilities and stockholding is driven by information constraints, rather than by features of preferences or psychological traits.
We investigate whether information sharing among banks has affected credit market performance in the transition countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, using a large sample of firm-level data. Our estimates show that information sharing is associated with improved availability and lower cost of credit to firms. This correlation is stronger for opaque firms than transparent ones and stronger in countries with weak legal environments than in those with strong legal environments. In cross-sectional estimates, we control for variation in country-level aggregate variables that may affect credit, by examining the differential impact of information sharing across firm types. In panel estimates, we also control for the presence of unobserved heterogeneity at the firm level, as well as for changes in macroeconomic variables and the legal environment.
The single most important policy-induced innovation in the international financial system since the collapse of the Bretton-Woods regime is the institution of the European Monetary Union. This paper provides an account of how the process of financial integration has promoted financial development in the euro area. It starts by defining financial integration and how to measure it, analyzes the barriers that can prevent it and the effects of their removal on financial markets, and assesses whether the euro area has actually become more integrated. It then explores to which extent these changes in financial markets have influenced the performance of the euro-area economy, that is, its growth and investment, as well as its ability to adjust to shocks and to allow risk-sharing. The paper concludes analyzing further steps that are required to consolidate financial integration and enhance the future stability of financial markets.
We argue for incorporating the financial economics of market microstructure into the financial econometrics of asset return volatility estimation. In particular, we use market microstructure theory to derive the cross-correlation function between latent returns and market microstructure noise, which feature prominently in the recent volatility literature. The cross-correlation at zero displacement is typically negative, and cross-correlations at nonzero displacements are positive and decay geometrically. If market makers are sufficiently risk averse, however, the cross-correlation pattern is inverted. Our results are useful for assessing the validity of the frequently-assumed independence of latent price and microstructure noise, for explaining observed cross-correlation patterns, for predicting as-yet undiscovered patterns, and for making informed conjectures as to improved volatility estimation methods.
The future of securitization
(2008)
Securitization is a financial innovation that experiences a boom-bust cycle, as many other innovations before. This paper analyzes possible reasons for the breakdown of primary and secondary securitization markets, and argues that misaligned incentives along the value chain are the primary cause of the problems. The illiquidity of asset and interbank markets, in this view, is a market failure derived from ill-designed mechanisms of coordinating financial intermediaries and investors. Thus, illiquidity is closely related to the design of the financial chains. Our policy conclusions emphasize crisis prevention rather than crisis management, and the objective is to restore a “comprehensive incentive alignment”. The toe-hold for strengthening regulation is surprisingly small. First, we emphasize the importance of equity piece retention for the long-term quality of the underlying asset pool. As a consequence, equity piece allocation needs to be publicly known, alleviating market pricing. Second, on a micro level, accountability of managers can be improved by compensation packages aiming at long term incentives, and penalizing policies with destabilizing effects on financial markets. Third, on a macro level, increased transparency relating to effective risk transfer, risk-related management compensation, and credible measurement of rating performance stabilizes the valuation of financial assets and, hence, improves the solvency of financial intermediaries. Fourth, financial intermediaries, whose risk is opaque, may be subjected to higher capital requirements.
In April 2002 the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Center for Financial Studies (CFS) launched the ECB-CFS Research Network to promote research on “Capital Markets and Financial Integration in Europe”. The ECB-CFS research network aims at stimulating top-level and policy-relevant research, significantly contributing to the understanding of the current and future structure and integration of the financial system in Europe and its international linkages with the United States and Japan. This report summarises the work done under the network after two years. Over time the network formed a coherent and growing group of researchers interested in the integration of European financial markets, while using light organisational structures and budgets. The members of this evolving group met repeatedly at the events organised by the network to present the latest results of their research and to share views on policy options. In this sense, the “network of people” intended at the start was created. Overall, the network aroused great interest, as leading academic researchers, researchers from the main policy institutions and high-level policy makers participated actively in it by presenting research results, through speeches and in policy panels. It also stimulated a new research field on securities settlement systems, an area of high policy relevance and interest to the ECB that had not attracted much interest in the research community beforehand. Also, the network seems to have triggered several related outside initiatives by international institutions, such as the IMF or the OECD. During its first two years the network was organised around three workshops and a final symposium on 10-11 May 2004. To focus research resources and to ensure medium-term policy relevance, a limited number of areas have been given top priority: bank competition and the geographical scope of banking; international portfolio choices and asset market linkages between Europe, the United States and Japan; European bond markets; European securities settlement systems; and the emergence and evolution of new markets in Europe (in particular start-up financing markets). In order to stimulate further research focused on the priority fields of the network, the ECB Lamfalussy research fellowships were established. These fellowships sponsor projects proposed by young researchers, both a dvanced doctoral students and younger professors. Five Lamfalussy fellowships were granted in 2003 and five more in 2004. The first papers from this program have already been issued in the ECB working paper series or are forthcoming. One of them won the prize for the best paper written by a Ph.D. student at the 2004 European Finance Association Meetings in Maastricht. Results of the network in the five top priority areas can be summarised as follows: Bank competition and the geographical scope of banking. First, integration does not appear to be very advanced in many retail banking markets. Second, some of the inherent characteristics of traditional loan and deposit business constrain the cross-border expansion of commercial banking, even in a common currency area. Hence, the implementation of some policies to foster cross-border integration in retail banking may be ineffective. Third, theoretical research suggests that supervisory structures may not be neutral towards further European banking integration. Finally, a stronger role of area-wide competition policies could be beneficial for further banking integration. This would also stimulate economic growth, as more competition in the banking sector induces financially dependent firms to grow more. European bond markets. While the government bond market has integrated rapidly with the EMU convergence process, its full integration has not yet been achieved. The introduction of a common electronic trading platform reduced transaction costs substantially, but yield spreads of long-term sovereign bonds of the euro area are still heterogeneous. This is largely explained by different sensitivities to an international risk factor, whereas liquidity differentials only play a role in conjunction with this latter factor. Somewhat surprisingly in this context, the dynamically developing corporate bond market exhibits a relatively high level of integration. There is also increasing evidence that the introduction of the euro has contributed to a reduction in the cost of capital in the euro area, in particular through the reduction of corporate bond underwriting fees. As a result, firms may wish to increase bond financing relative to equity financing. The development of a larger corporate bond market is also important for monetary policy. For example, US evidence suggests that the rating of corporate bonds may contribute to the persistence of recessions, as rating agencies´ policies affect firms asymmetrically in their access to the bond market over the business cycle. US evidence also suggests that liquidity conditions in stock and bond markets tend to be positively correlated. European securities settlement systems. European securities settlement infrastructures are highly fragmented and further integration and/or consolidation would exploit economies of scale that could greatly benefit investors. It is not clear, however, whether direct public intervention in favour of consolidation would lead to the highest level of efficiency, for example because of the existence of strong vertical integration between trading and securities platforms (“silos”). In contrast, promoting open access to clearing and settlement systems could lead to consolidation and the highest level of efficiency. Finally, regarding concerns about unfair practices by Central Securities Depositories (CSDs) toward custodian banks, regulatory interventions favouring custodian banks should be discouraged, as long as CSDs are not allowed to price discriminate between custodian banks and investor banks. The emergence and evolution of new markets in Europe (in particular start-up financing markets). While fairly well integrated, “new markets” and start-up financing are less developed and integrated in Europe than in the United States. However, new markets and venture capitalists are the most important intermediaries for the financing of projects with high risk but with potentially very high return. The analysis carried out within the network reveals that European start-up financiers are mostly institutional investors, while US venture capitalists are mostly rich individuals. Also, new markets are essential for the development of start-up finance in Europe, as they provide an exit strategy for start-up financiers who can then sell new successful projects using initial public offerings. Finally, the legal framework affects the development of venture capital firms. For example, very strict personal bankruptcy laws constrain early stage entrepreneurs, reducing demand for venture capital finance. International portfolio choices and asset market linkages between Europe, the United States and Japan. At a global scale, asset market linkages have increased recently. For example, major economies such as the United States and the euro area have become more financially interdependent. This phenomenon can be observed in stock and bond markets as well as in money markets, where the main direction of spillovers has recently been from the US to the euro area. Country-specific shocks now play a smaller role in explaining stock return variations of firms whose sales are internationally diversified. Increases in firmby-firm market linkages are a global phenomenon, but they are stronger within the euro area than in the rest of the world. Various other phenomena also increase market linkages and therefore the likelihood that financial shocks spread across countries. One example is the use of global bonds. Finally, the nowadays more direct access of unsophisticated investors to financial markets may increase volatility. Other areas. Financial integration affects financial structures, but it does not need to lead to their convergence across countries. Financial structures matter for growth, as market-oriented financial systems benefit all sectors and firms, whereas bank-based systems primarily benefit younger firms that depend on external finance. Moreover, good corporate governance increases firms’ value. In particular, the dual board system, where the monitoring and advising roles of the board of directors are separated, is found to dominate the single board structure. Therefore, the further development of the European single market should strongly require good corporate governance. In general, well designed institutions foster entrepreneurial activity, partly by relaxing capital constraints. The results of the network clearly illustrated the substantial effects the introduction of the euro had on euro area financial markets. In addition to the effects on bond markets, stock markets and the cost of capital summarised above, research produced showed that the single currency had its strongest effects on money markets, whose unsecured segment is now completely integrated. Without any doubt the euro generally enhanced the liquidity and efficiency of euro area financial markets, and ongoing initiatives such as the European Union’s Financial Services Action Plan will help to continue this process. In sum, in the first two years the network has established itself as the hub for the research debate on European financial integration. Some of the best papers produced by the network, leading to the conclusions mentioned above, are currently being considered for publication in two special issues of academic journals. An issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy on “European financial integration” is published contemporaneously with this report, and an issue of the Review of Finance is planned for next year. The current policy context, the gradual progress of integration as well as the creation of other related non-ECB or non-CFS initiatives on financial integration suggest that this topic will remain high on the agendas of policy makers and academics for the years to come. Therefore, the ECB Executive Board and the CFS decided to continue the network, refocusing its priorities. Three priority areas have been added: 1) The relationship between financial integration and financial stability, 2) EU accession, financial development and financial integration, and 3) financial system modernisation and economic growth in Europe. These three areas have become particularly important at the current juncture, but have not received particularly strong attention in the first two years of the network. For example, the area of financial stability research was highlighted by the ECB research evaluators as an area deserving further development. Moreover, despite the results found in the first two years of the network, new developments remain to be further explored in the earlier priority areas. A three-year extension is envisaged, running from after the May 2004 symposium until 2007, with two events to be held per year. The threeyear period is long enough to consider the first effects of the Financial Services Action Plan. It also constitutes a realistic horizon for the ambitious agenda implied by the three new priorities. The generally light organisational structure and working of the network will not be changed. In addition, given the value of the Lamfalussy fellowship research program in inducing further research in the areas of the network, the program has also been extended for all the research topics in the area of the network.
We study the responses of residential property and equity prices, inflation and economic activity to monetary policy shocks in 17 countries, using data spanning 1986-2006, using single-country VARs and panel VARs in which we distinguish between groups of countries depending on their financial systems. The effect of monetary policy on property prices is about three times as large as its impact on GDP. Using monetary policy to guard against financial instability by offsetting asset-price movements thus has sizable effects on economic activity. While the financial structure influences the impact of policy on asset prices, its importance appears limited.
This paper explores the role of trade integration—or openness—for monetary policy transmission in a medium-scale New Keynesian model. Allowing for strategic complementarities in price-setting, we highlight a new dimension of the exchange rate channel by which monetary policy directly impacts domestic inflation. Although the strength of this effect increases with economic openness, it also requires that import prices respond to exchange rate changes. In this case domestic producers find it optimal to adjust their prices to exchange rate changes which alter the domestic currency price of their foreign competitors. We pin down key parameters of the model by matching impulse responses obtained from a vector autoregression on U.S. time series relative to an aggregate of industrialized countries. While we find evidence for strong complementarities, exchange rate pass-through is limited. Openness has therefore little bearing on monetary transmission in the estimated model.
Bayesian learning provides the core concept of processing noisy information. In standard Bayesian frameworks, assessing the price impact of information requires perfect knowledge of news’ precision. In practice, however, precision is rarely dis- closed. Therefore, we extend standard Bayesian learning, suggesting traders infer news’ precision from magnitudes of surprises and from external sources. We show that interactions of the different precision signals may result in highly nonlinear price responses. Empirical tests based on intra-day T-bond futures price reactions to employment releases confirm the model’s predictions and show that the effects are statistically and economically significant.
The popular Nelson-Siegel (1987) yield curve is routinely fit to cross sections of intra-country bond yields, and Diebold and Li (2006) have recently proposed a dynamized version. In this paper we extend Diebold-Li to a global context, modeling a potentially large set of country yield curves in a framework that allows for both global and country-specific factors. In an empirical analysis of term structures of government bond yields for the Germany, Japan, the U.K. and the U.S., we find that global yield factors do indeed exist and are economically important, generally explaining significant fractions of country yield curve dynamics, with interesting differences across countries.
Measuring financial asset return and volatilty spillovers, with application to global equity markets
(2008)
We provide a simple and intuitive measure of interdependence of asset returns and/or volatilities. In particular, we formulate and examine precise and separate measures of return spillovers and volatility spillovers. Our framework facilitates study of both non-crisis and crisis episodes, including trends and bursts in spillovers, and both turn out to be empirically important. In particular, in an analysis of nineteen global equity markets from the early 1990s to the present, we find striking evidence of divergent behavior in the dynamics of return spillovers vs. volatility spillovers: Return spillovers display a gently increasing trend but no bursts, whereas volatility spillovers display no trend but clear bursts.
Research with Keynesian-style models has emphasized the importance of the output gap for policies aimed at controlling inflation while declaring monetary aggregates largely irrelevant. Critics, however, have argued that these models need to be modified to account for observed money growth and inflation trends, and that monetary trends may serve as a useful cross-check for monetary policy. We identify an important source of monetary trends in form of persistent central bank misperceptions regarding potential output. Simulations with historical output gap estimates indicate that such misperceptions may induce persistent errors in monetary policy and sustained trends in money growth and inflation. If interest rate prescriptions derived from Keynesian-style models are augmented with a cross-check against money-based estimates of trend inflation, inflation control is improved substantially.
Increasingly, individuals are in charge of their own financial security and are confronted with ever more complex financial instruments. However, there is evidence that many individuals are not well-equipped to make sound saving decisions. This paper demonstrates widespread financial illiteracy among the U.S. population, particularly among specific demographic groups. Those with low education, women, African-Americans, and Hispanics display particularly low levels of literacy. Financial literacy impacts financial decision-making. Failure to plan for retirement, lack of participation in the stock market, and poor borrowing behavior can all be linked to ignorance of basic financial concepts. While financial education programs can result in improved saving behavior and financial decision-making, much can be done to improve these programs’ effectiveness.
Traditionally, aggregate liquidity shocks are modelled as exogenous events. Extending our previous work (Cao & Illing, 2007), this paper analyses the adequate policy response to endogenous systemic liquidity risk. We analyse the feedback between lender of last resort policy and incentives of private banks, determining the aggregate amount of liquidity available. We show that imposing minimum liquidity standards for banks ex ante are a crucial requirement for sensible lender of last resort policy. In addition, we analyse the impact of equity requirements and narrow banking, in the sense that banks are required to hold sufficient liquid funds so as to pay out in all contingencies. We show that such a policy is strictly inferior to imposing minimum liquidity standards ex ante combined with lender of last resort policy.
Modern macroeconomics empirically addresses economy-wide incentives behind economic actions by using insights from the way a single representative household would behave. This analytical approach requires that incentives of the poor and the rich are strictly aligned. In empirical analysis a challenging complication is that consumer and income data are typically available at the household level, and individuals living in multimember households have the potential to share goods within the household. The analytical approach of modern macroeconomics would require that intra-household sharing is also strictly aligned across the rich and the poor. Here we have designed a survey method that allows the testing of this stringent property of intra-household sharing and find that it holds: once expenditures for basic needs are subtracted from disposable household income, household-size economies implied by the remainder household incomes are the same for the rich and the poor.
How do fiscal and technology shocks affect real exchange rates? : New evidence for the United States
(2008)
Using vector autoregressions on U.S. time series relative to an aggregate of industrialized countries, this paper provides new evidence on the dynamic effects of government spending and technology shocks on the real exchange rate and the terms of trade. To achieve identification, we derive robust restrictions on the sign of several impulse responses from a two-country general equilibrium model. We find that both the real exchange rate and the terms of trade – whose responses are left unrestricted – depreciate in response to expansionary government spending shocks and appreciate in response to positive technology shocks.
Motivated by the prominent role of electronic limit order book (LOB) markets in today’s stock market environment, this paper provides the basis for understanding, reconstructing and adopting Hollifield, Miller, Sandas, and Slive’s (2006) (henceforth HMSS) methodology for estimating the gains from trade to the Xetra LOB market at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FSE) in order to evaluate its performance in this respect. Therefore this paper looks deeply into HMSS’s base model and provides a structured recipe for the planned implementation with Xetra LOB data. The contribution of this paper lies in the modification of HMSS’s methodology with respect to the particularities of the Xetra trading system that are not yet considered in HMSS’s base model. The necessary modifications, as expressed in terms of empirical caveats, are substantial to derive unbiased market efficiency measures for Xetra in the end.
We explore the pattern of elderly homeownership using microeconomic surveys of 15 OECD countries, merging 60 national household surveys on about 300,000 individuals. In all countries the survey is repeated over time, permitting construction of an international dataset of repeated cross-sectional data. We find that ownership rates decline considerably after age 60 in all countries. However, a large part of the decline depends on cohort effects. Adjusting for them, we find that ownership rates start falling after age 70 and reach a percentage point per year decline after age 75. We find that differences across country ownership trajectories are correlated with indicators measuring the degree of market regulations.
This paper introduces adaptive learning and endogenous indexation in the New-Keynesian Phillips curve and studies disinflation under inflation targeting policies. The analysis is motivated by the disinflation performance of many inflation-targeting countries, in particular the gradual Chilean disinflation with temporary annual targets. At the start of the disinflation episode price-setting firms’ expect inflation to be highly persistent and opt for backward-looking indexation. As the central bank acts to bring inflation under control, price-setting firms revise their estimates of the degree of persistence. Such adaptive learning lowers the cost of disinflation. This reduction can be exploited by a gradual approach to disinflation. Firms that choose the rate for indexation also re-assess the likelihood that announced inflation targets determine steady-state inflation and adjust indexation of contracts accordingly. A strategy of announcing and pursuing short-term targets for inflation is found to influence the likelihood that firms switch from backward-looking indexation to the central bank’s targets. As firms abandon backward-looking indexation the costs of disinflation decline further. We show that an inflation targeting strategy that employs temporary targets can benefit from lower disinflation costs due to the reduction in backward-looking indexation.
Monetary policy analysts often rely on rules-of-thumb, such as the Taylor rule, to describe historical monetary policy decisions and to compare current policy to historical norms. Analysis along these lines also permits evaluation of episodes where policy may have deviated from a simple rule and examination of the reasons behind such deviations. One interesting question is whether such rules-of-thumb should draw on policymakers "forecasts of key variables such as inflation and unemployment or on observed outcomes. Importantly, deviations of the policy from the prescriptions of a Taylor rule that relies on outcomes may be due to systematic responses to information captured in policymakers" own projections. We investigate this proposition in the context of FOMC policy decisions over the past 20 years using publicly available FOMC projections from the biannual monetary policy reports to the Congress (Humphrey-Hawkins reports). Our results indicate that FOMC decisions can indeed be predominantly explained in terms of the FOMC´s own projections rather than observed outcomes. Thus, a forecast-based rule-of-thumb better characterizes FOMC decision-making. We also confirm that many of the apparent deviations of the federal funds rate from an outcome-based Taylor-style rule may be considered systematic responses to information contained in FOMC projections.
Risk transfer with CDOs
(2008)
Modern bank management comprises both classical lending business and transfer of asset risk to capital markets through securitization. Sound knowledge of the risks involved in securitization transactions is a prerequisite for solid risk management. This paper aims to resolve a part of the opaqueness surrounding credit-risk allocation to tranches that represent claims of different seniority on a reference portfolio. In particular, this paper analyzes the allocation of credit risk to different tranches of a CDO transaction when the underlying asset returns are driven by a common macro factor and an idiosyncratic component. Junior and senior tranches are found to be nearly orthogonal, motivating a search for the whereabout of systematic risk in CDO transactions. We propose a metric for capturing the allocation of systematic risk to tranches. First, in contrast to a widely-held claim, we show that (extreme) tail risk in standard CDO transactions is held by all tranches. While junior tranches take on all types of systematic risk, senior tranches take on almost no non-tail risk. This is in stark contrast to an untranched bond portfolio of the same rating quality, which on average suffers substantial losses for all realizations of the macro factor. Second, given tranching, a shock to the risk of the underlying asset portfolio (e.g. a rise in asset correlation or in mean portfolio loss) has the strongest impact, in relative terms, on the exposure of senior tranche CDO-investors. Our findings can be used to explain major stylized facts observed in credit markets.
We show that the use of correlations for modeling dependencies may lead to counterintuitive behavior of risk measures, such as Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Expected Short- fall (ES), when the risk of very rare events is assessed via Monte-Carlo techniques. The phenomenon is demonstrated for mixture models adapted from credit risk analysis as well as for common Poisson-shock models used in reliability theory. An obvious implication of this finding pertains to the analysis of operational risk. The alleged incentive suggested by the New Basel Capital Accord (Basel II), amely decreasing minimum capital requirements by allowing for less than perfect correlation, may not necessarily be attainable.
The paper proposes a panel cointegration analysis of the joint development of government expenditures and economic growth in 23 OECD countries. The empirical evidence provides indication of a structural positive correlation between public spending and per-capita GDP which is consistent with the so-called Wagner´s law. A long-run elasticity larger than one suggests a more than proportional increase of government expenditures with respect to economic activity. In addition, according to the spirit of the law, we found that the correlation is usually higher in countries with lower per-capita GDP, suggesting that the catching-up period is characterized by a stronger development of government activities with respect to economies in a more advanced state of development.
In this paper we consider the dynamics of spot and futures prices in the presence of arbitrage. We propose a partially linear error correction model where the adjustment coefficient is allowed to depend non-linearly on the lagged price difference. We estimate our model using data on the DAX index and the DAX futures contract. We find that the adjustment is indeed nonlinear. The linear alternative is rejected. The speed of price adjustment is increasing almost monotonically with the magnitude of the price difference.
This study develops a novel 2-step hedonic approach, which is used to construct a price index for German paintings. This approach enables the researcher to use every single auction record, instead of only those auction records that belong to a sub-sample of selected artists. This results in a substantially larger sample available for research and it lowers the selection bias that is inherent in the traditional hedonic and repeat sales methodologies. Using a unique sample of 61,135 auction records for German artworks created by 5,115 different artists over the period 1985 to 2007, we find that the geometric annual return on German art is just 3.8 percent, with a standard deviation of 17.87 percent. Although our results indicate that art underperforms the market portfolio and is not proportionally rewarded for downside risk, under some circumstances art should be included in an optimal portfolio for diversification purposes.
While companies have emerged as very proactive donors in the wake of recent major disasters like Hurricane Katrina, it remains unclear whether that corporate generosity generates benefits to firms themselves. The literature on strategic philanthropy suggests that such philanthropic behavior may be valuable because it can generate direct and indirect benefits to the firm, yet it is not known whether investors interpret donations in this way. We develop hypotheses linking the strategic character of donations to positive abnormal returns. Using event study methodology, we investigate stock market reactions to corporate donation announcements by 108 US firms made in response to Hurricane Katrina. We then use regression analysis to examine if our hypothesized predictors are associated with positive abnormal returns. Our results show that overall, corporate donations were linked to neither positive nor negative abnormal returns. We do, however, see that a number of factors moderate the relationship between donation announcements and abnormal stock returns. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
We estimate the degree of 'stickiness' in aggregate consumption growth (sometimes interpreted as reflecting consumption habits) for thirteen advanced economies. We find that, after controlling for measurement error, consumption growth has a high degree of autocorrelation, with a stickiness parameter of about 0.7 on average across countries. The sticky-consumption-growth model outperforms the random walk model of Hall (1978), and typically fits the data better than the popular Campbell and Mankiw (1989) model. In several countries, the sticky-consumption-growth and Campbell-Mankiw models work about equally well.
We develop a multivariate generalization of the Markov–switching GARCH model introduced by Haas, Mittnik, and Paolella (2004b) and derive its fourth–moment structure. An application to international stock markets illustrates the relevance of accounting for volatility regimes from both a statistical and economic perspective, including out–of–sample portfolio selection and computation of Value–at–Risk.
An asymmetric multivariate generalization of the recently proposed class of normal mixture GARCH models is developed. Issues of parametrization and estimation are discussed. Conditions for covariance stationarity and the existence of the fourth moment are derived, and expressions for the dynamic correlation structure of the process are provided. In an application to stock market returns, it is shown that the disaggregation of the conditional (co)variance process generated by the model provides substantial intuition. Moreover, the model exhibits a strong performance in calculating out–of–sample Value–at–Risk measures.
This paper documents and studies sources of international differences in participation and holdings in stocks, private businesses, and homes among households aged 50+ in the US, England, and eleven continental European countries, using new internationally comparable, household-level data. With greater integration of asset and labor markets and policies, households of given characteristics should be holding more similar portfolios for old age. We decompose observed differences across the Atlantic, within the US, and within Europe into those arising from differences: a) in the distribution of characteristics and b) in the influence of given characteristics. We find that US households are generally more likely to own these assets than their European counterparts. However, European asset owners tend to hold smaller real, PPP-adjusted amounts in stocks and larger in private businesses and primary residence than US owners at comparable points in the distribution of holdings, even controlling for differences in configuration of characteristics. Differences in characteristics often play minimal or no role. Differences in market conditions are much more pronounced among European countries than among US regions, suggesting significant potential for further integration.
Marginal income taxes may have an insurance effect by decreasing the effective fluctuations of after-tax individual income. By compressing the idiosyncratic component o personal income fluctuations, higher marginal taxes should be negatively correlated with the dispersion of consumption across households, a necessary implication of an insurance effect of taxation. Our study empirically examines this negative correlation, exploiting the ample variation of state taxes across US states. We show that taxes are negatively correlated with the consumption dispersion of the within-state distribution of non-durable consumption and that this correlation is robust.
Based on a unique dataset of legislative changes in industrial countries, we identify events that strengthen the competition control of mergers and acquisitions, analyze their impact on banks and non-financial firms and explain the different reactions observed with specific regulatory characteristics of the banking sector. Covering nineteen countries for the period 1987 to 2004, we find that more competition-oriented merger control increases the stock prices of banks and decreases the stock prices of non-financial firms. Bank targets become more profitable and larger, while those of non-financial firms remain mostly unaffected. A major determinant of the positive bank returns is the degree of opaqueness that characterizes the institutional setup for supervisory bank merger reviews. The legal design of the supervisory control of bank mergers may therefore have important implications for real activity.
This paper analyses the role of collateral in loan contracting when companies are financed by multiple bank lenders and relationship lending can be present. We conjecture and empirically validate that relationship lenders, who enjoy an informational advantage over arm’s-length banks, are more senior to strengthen their bargaining power in future renegotiation if borrower’s face financial distress. This deters costly conflicts between lenders and fosters workout decisions by the best informed party. Consistent with our conjecture, we find that relationship lender in general have a higher probability to be collateralized, and a higher degree of collateralization (i.e. seniority). Furthermore, we show that seniority and the status of relationship lending increases the likelihood that a bank invests in a risky workout of distressed borrowers. Both findings support the view that collateral is a strategic instrument intended to influence the bargaining position of banks. Our result further suggest that seniority and relationship lending are complementary to each other. JEL Classification: G21
Many older US households have done little or no planning for retirement, and there is a substantial population that seems to undersave for retirement. Of particular concern is the relative position of older women, who are more vulnerable to old-age poverty due to their longer longevity. This paper uses data from a special module we devised on planning and financial literacy in the 2004 Health and Retirement Study. It shows that women display much lower levels of financial literacy than the older population as a whole. In addition, women who are less financially literate are also less likely to plan for retirement and be successful planners. These findings have important implications for policy and for programs aimed at fostering financial security at older ages.
Generally, information provision and certification have been identified as the major economic functions of rating agencies. This paper analyzes whether the “watchlist" (rating review) instrument has extended the agencies' role towards a monitoring position, as proposed by Boot, Milbourn, and Schmeits (2006). Using a data set of Moody's rating history between 1982 and 2004, we find that the overall information content of rating action has indeed increased since the introduction of the watchlist procedure. Our findings suggest that rating reviews help to establish implicit monitoring contracts between agencies and borrowers and as such enable a finer partition of rating information, thereby contributing to a higher information quality.
The reaction of consumer spending and debt to tax rebates – evidence from consumer credit data
(2008)
We use a new panel dataset of credit card accounts to analyze how consumer responded to the 2001 Federal income tax rebates. We estimate the monthly response of credit card payments, spending, and debt, exploiting the unique, randomized timing of the rebate disbursement. We find that, on average, consumers initially saved some of the rebate, by increasing their credit card payments and thereby paying down debt. But soon afterwards their spending increased, counter to the canonical Permanent-Income model. Spending rose most for consumers who were initially most likely to be liquidity constrained, whereas debt declined most (so saving rose most) for unconstrained consumers. More generally, the results suggest that there can be important dynamics in consumers’ response to “lumpy” increases in income like tax rebates, working in part through balance sheet (liquidity) mechanisms.
This paper documents the trends in the life-cycle profiles of net worth and housing equity between 1983 and 2004. The net worth of older households significantly increased during the housing boom of recent years. However, net worth grew by more than housing equity, in part because other assets also appreciated at the same time. Moreover, the younger elderly offset rising house prices by increasing their housing debt, and used some of the proceeds to invest in other assets. We also consider how much of their housing equity older households can actually tap, using reverse mortgages. This fraction is lower at younger ages, such that young retirees can consume less than half of their housing equity. These results imply that ‘consumable’ net worth is smaller than standard calculations of net worth. JEL Classification: G11, E21