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The euro crisis was fueled by the diabolic loop between sovereign risk and bank risk, coupled with cross-border flight-to-safety capital flows. European Safe Bonds (ESBies), a union-wide safe asset without joint liability, would help to resolve these problems. We make three contributions. First, numerical simulations show that ESBies would be at least as safe as German bunds and approximately double the supply of euro safe assets when protected by a 30%-thick junior tranche. Second, a model shows how, when and why the two features of ESBies — diversification and seniority — can weaken the diabolic loop and its diffusion across countries. Third, we propose a step-by-step guide on how to create ESBies, starting with limited issuance by public or private-sector entities.
How do insiders trade?
(2016)
We characterize how informed investors trade in the options market ahead of corporate news when they receive private, but noisy, information about (i) the timing of the announcement and (ii) its impact on stock prices. Our theoretical framework generates a rich set of predictions about the insiders’ behavior and their maximum expected returns. Three different analyses offer empirical support for our approach. First, predicted trades resemble illegal insider trades documented in SEC litigation cases with insiders being more likely to trade in options that offer higher expected returns. Second, pre-announcement patterns in unusual activity in the options market ahead of significant corporate news are consistent with the predictions of our framework. We employ our approach to characterize informed trading ahead of twelve different types of news including the announcement of earnings, corporate guidance, M&As, product innovations, management changes, and analyst recommendations. Third, to address concerns that pre-announcement patterns are driven by speculation, we show that measures capturing trading activity in call (put) options with high expected returns predict significant positive (negative) corporate news in the aggregate cross-section.
Based on a unique data set of driving behavior we find direct evidence that private information has significant effects on contract choice and risk in automobile insurance. The number of car rides and the relative distance driven on weekends are significant risk factors. While the number of car rides and average speeding are negatively related to the level of liability coverage, the number of car rides and the relative distance driven at night are positively related to the level of first-party coverage. These results indicate multiple and counteracting effects of private information based on risk preferences and driving behavior.
Prestige and loan pricing
(2016)
We find that prestigious companies pay lower spreads and upfront fees on their loans despite the fact that prestige does not predict default risk over the life of the loan. Using survey data on firm-level prestige, we show that a one standard deviation increase in prestige reduces loan spreads by 6.18% per year and upfront fees by 22.86%. We identify causal effects (i) using fraud by industry peers as an instrument for borrower prestige and (ii) exploiting a regression discontinuity around rank 100 of the prestige survey. Banks that lend to prestigious firms attract more business afterwards compared to otherwise similar institutions. Moreover, the effect of prestige on upfront fees is particularly strong for new bank relationships. Our findings suggest that prestigious firms receive cheaper funding because the associated lending relationship helps banks establish valuable credentials they use to compete for future borrowers.
Data show that sovereign risk reduces liquidity, increases funding cost and risk of banks highly exposed to it. I build a model that rationalizes this fact. Banks act as delegated monitors and invest in risky projects and in risky sovereign bonds. As investors hear rumors of increased sovereign risk, they run the bank (via global games). Banks could rollover liquidity in repo market using government bonds as collateral, but as sovereign risk raises collateral values shrink. Overall banks’ liquidity falls (its cost increases) and so does banks’ credit. In this context noisy news (announcements with signal extraction) of consolidation policies are recessionary in the short run, as they contribute to investors and banks pessimism, and mildly expansionary in the medium run. The banks liquidity channel plays a major role in the fiscal transmission.
This paper uses recent legislation in Austria to establish a link between sovereign reputation and yield spreads. In 2009, Hypo Alpe Adria International, a bank previously co-owned by the regional government of Carinthia, had been nationalized by Austria’s central government in order to avoid a default triggering multi-billion Euro local government guarantees. In 2015, special legislation retroactively introduced collective action clauses allowing a haircut on both the bonds and the guarantees while avoiding formal default. We document that legislative and administrative action designed to partly abrogate the guarantees resulted in a loss of reputation, leading to higher yield spreads for sovereign debt. Our analysis of covered bonds uncovers an increase in yield spreads on the secondary market and a deterioration of primary market conditions.
Studies employing micro price data to examine the extent of international goods market integration tend to find that borders induce arbitrage-impeding transaction costs which contribute to segment national markets. Analyzing household scanner price data from the three euro area countries Belgium, Germany and Netherlands, we document that Belgian households living in the vicinity of the border to Netherlands pay almost 10% more for the same good as their Dutch counterparts. German consumers on the other hand face prices that are on average up to around 3% smaller than those in the neighboring Netherlands. Counterfactual evidence for within-country price discontinuities provides no evidence of any existing border effects. The induced costs of crossing national borders amount to at least 13%. We also find evidence on border discontinuities in various household preference characteristics (such as demand elasticities and goods valuation) and household shopping patterns such as shopping frequencies.
Studies employing micro price data suggest that price dispersion is larger between regions in different countries than between regions in the same country. To investigate the strength of this border effect, deviations from the law of one price are used in most studies to provide statistical evidence on the effect of borders on price dispersion. I propose an alternative measure of the economic costs of borders which has an explicit welfare-theoretic foundation. Employing a unique micro price data set from households in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands I provide evidence on the economic importance of price differences for households. I find that price dispersion within countries has only small economic importance, but that price dispersion between Belgium and Germany (and Belgium and the Netherlands) has considerable economic importance.
Microeconometric evidence on demand-side real rigidity and
implications for monetary non-neutrality
(2016)
To model the observed slow response of aggregate real variables to nominal shocks, most macroeconomic models incorporate real rigidities in addition to nominal rigidities. One popular way of modelling such a real rigidity is to assume a non-constant demand elasticity. By using a homescan data set for three European countries, including prices and quantities bought for a large number of goods, in addition to consumer characteristics, we provide estimates of price elasticities of demand and on the degree of demand-side real rigidities. We find that price elasticites of demand are about 4 in the median. Furthermore, we find evidence for demand-side real rigidities. These are, however, much smaller than what is often assumed in macroeconomic models. The median estimate for demand-side real rigidity, the super-elasticity, is in a range between 1 and 2. To quantitatively assess the implications of our empirical estimates, we calibrate a menu-cost model with the estimated super-elasticity. We find that the degree of monetary non-neutrality doubles in the model including demand-side real rigidity, compared to the model with only nominal rigidity, suggesting a multiplier effect of around two. However, the model can explain only up to 6% of the monetary non-neutrality observed in the data, implying that additional multipliers are necessary to match the behavior of aggregate variables.
Mis-selling by banks has occurred repeatedly in many nations over the last decade. While clients may benefit from competition – enabling them to choose financial services at lowest costs – economic frictions between banks and clients may give rise to mis-selling. Examples of mis-selling are mis-representation of information, overly complex product design and non-customized advice. European regulators address the problem of mis-selling in the "Markets in Financial Instruments Directive" (MiFID) I and II and the "Markets in Financial Instruments Regulation" (MiFIR), by setting behavioral requirements for banks, regulating the compensation of employees, and imposing re-quirements on offered financial products and disclosure rules.
This paper argues that MiFID II protects clients but is not as effective as it could be. (1) It does not differentiate between client groups with different levels of financial literacy. Effective advice requires different advice for different client groups. (2) MiFID II uses too many rules and too many instruments to achieve identical goals and thereby generates excessive compliance costs. High compliance costs and low revenues would drive banks out of some segments of retail business.
Das Ergebnis des Volksentscheids im Vereinigten Königreich ist ein Weckruf. Alle Entscheidungsträger der Europäischen Union und ihrer Mitgliedstaaten sind aufgerufen, grundlegende Reformen der Verfassung einer Europäischen Union, möglicherweise nur noch einer europäischen „Kontinentalunion“ unverzüglich in Angriff zu nehmen. Unverzüglich bedeutet, einen Reformprozess nicht erst dann zu beginnen, wenn die Verhandlungen über ein Austrittsabkommen beendet worden sind. Eine Rückentwicklung der Europäischen Union zu einer bloßen Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft dürfte dabei keine Lösung sein. Es ist jetzt angezeigt, offen und – notfalls kontrovers – zu diskutieren, wie ein künftiger Bundesstaat auf europäischer Ebene aussehen könnte.
From 1963 through 2015, idiosyncratic risk (IR) is high when market risk (MR) is high. We show that the positive relation between IR and MR is highly stable through time and is robust across exchanges, firm size, liquidity, and market-to-book groupings. Though stock liquidity affects the strength of the relation, the relation is strong for the most liquid stocks. The relation has roots in fundamentals as higher market risk predicts greater idiosyncratic earnings volatility and as firm characteristics related to the ability of firms to adjust to higher uncertainty help explain the strength of the relation. Consistent with the view that growth options provide a hedge against macroeconomic uncertainty, we find evidence that the relation is weaker for firms with more growth options.
This study looks at the interrelationship between fiscal policy and safe assets as there is surprisingly little analysis about this beyond fleeting references. The study argues that from a certain point more public debt will not “buy” more safety: countries face a kind of “safe-assets Laffer curve” with a maximum amount of safe assets at some level of indebtedness. The position and “stability” of this curve depend on a number of national and international factors, including the international risk appetite and, as a more recent factor, QE policies by central banks. The study also finds evidence of declining safe assets as reflected in government debt ratings.
Under ordinary circumstances, the fiscal implications of central bank policies tend to be seen as relatively minor and escape close scrutiny. The global financial crisis of 2008, however, demanded an extraordinary response by central banks which brought to light the immense power of central bank balance sheet policies as well as their major fiscal implications. Once the zero lower bound on interest rates is reached, expanding a central bank’s balance sheet becomes the central instrument for providing additional monetary policy accommodation. However, with interest rates near zero, the line separating fiscal and monetary policy is blurred. Furthermore, discretionary decisions associated with asset purchases and liquidity provision, as well as with lender-of-last-resort operations benefiting private entities, can have major distributional effects that are ordinarily associated with fiscal policy. In the euro area, discretionary central bank decisions can have immense distributional effects across member states. However, decisions of this nature are incompatible with the role of unelected officials in democratic societies. Drawing on the response to the crisis by the Federal Reserve and the ECB, this paper explores the tensions arising from central bank balance sheet policies and addresses pertinent questions about the governance and accountability of independent central banks in a democratic society.
We consider an infinitely repeated game in which a privately informed, long-lived manager raises funds from short-lived investors in order to finance a project. The manager can signal project quality to investors by making a (possibly costly) forward-looking disclosure about her project’s potential for success. We find that if the manager’s disclosures are costly, she will never release forward-looking statements that do not convey information to external investors. Furthermore, managers of firms that are transparent and face significant disclosure-related costs will refrain from forward-looking disclosures. In contrast, managers of opaque and profitable firms will follow a policy of accurate disclosures. To test our findings empirically, we devise an index that captures the quantity of forward-looking disclosures in public firms’ 10-K reports, and relate it to multiple firm characteristics. For opaque firms, our index is positively correlated with a firm’s profitability and financing needs. For transparent firms, there is only a weak relation between our index and firm fundamentals. Furthermore, the overall level of forward-looking disclosures declined significantly between 2001 and 2009, possibly as a result of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
We show that the net corporate payout yield predicts both the stock market index and house prices and that the log home rent-price ratio predicts both house prices and labor income growth. We incorporate the predictability in a rich life-cycle model of household decisions involving consumption of both perishable goods and housing services, stochastic and unspanned labor income, stochastic house prices, home renting and owning, stock investments, and portfolio constraints. We find that households can significantly improve their welfare by optimally conditioning decisions on the predictors. For a modestly risk-averse agent with a 35-year working period and a 15-year retirement period, the present value of the higher average life-time consumption amounts to roughly $179,000 (assuming both an initial wealth and an initial annual income of $20,000), and the certainty equivalent gain is around 5.5% of total wealth (financial wealth plus human capital). Furthermore, every cohort of agents in our model would have benefited from applying predictor-conditional strategies along the realized time series over our 1960-2010 data period.
Since the outbreak of the financial crisis, the macro-prudential policy paradigm has gained increasing prominence (Bank of England, 2009; Bernanke, 2011). The dynamics of this shift in the economic discourse, and the reasons this shift has not taken place prior to the crisis have not been addressed systemically. This paper investigates the evolution of the economic discourse on systemic risk and banking regulation to better understand these changes and their timing. Further, we use our sample to inquire whether, and if so, why the economic regulatory studies failed to recommend a reliable banking regulation prior to the crisis. By following a discourse analysis, we establish that the economic discourse on banking regulation has not been suitable for providing the knowledge basis required for a dynamically reliable banking regulation, and we identify the underlying reasons for such failure. These reasons include the obsession of economic discourse with optimization and particular forms of formalism, particularly, partial equilibrium analysis. Further, the economic discourse on banking regulation excludes historical and practitioners’ discourses and ignores weak signals. We point out that post-crisis, these epistemological failures of the economic discourse on banking regulation were not sufficiently recognized and that recent attempts to conceptualize systemic risk as a negative externality and to thus price it point to the persistence of formalism, equilibrium thinking and optimization, with their attending dangers.
Im Nachgang der Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise beobachten wir derzeit sehr niedrige Renditen im „sicheren“ Anlagebereich auf dem Geldmarkt und für Staatsanleihen. Gleichzeitig sind Aktienkurse massiv gestiegen und zeichnen sich seit Beginn 2015 durch eine Seitwärtsbewegung aus. Die Ursachen für diese Entwicklung sind teilweise bekannt: Niedrige Zinssätze aufgrund einer expansiven Geldpolitik gepaart mit hoher Unsicherheit an den Märkten reduzieren die Auswahl attraktiver Kapitalanlagemöglichkeiten erheblich. Doch wie wird sich die langfristige Entwicklung gestalten, wenn oder falls die Wirkungen der jüngsten Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise nachlassen? Gibt es einen langfristigen Trend? Spiegelt sich dieser Trend etwa bereits heute in den niedrigen Renditen wider?
Vor mehr als einem Jahrzehnt, also bereits einige Jahre vor der jüngsten Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise, wurde wiederholt die sogenannte „Asset Market Meltdown“-Hypothese postuliert. Nach dieser Hypothese würden in den dreißiger Jahren dieses Jahrhunderts die Kapitalrenditen stark sinken, wenn die „Babyboomer“-Generation in den Ruhestand gehe und infolgedessen Kapital aus dem Wertpapiermarkt abziehe. Heute wird eine ähnliche Debatte unter dem Stichwort „säkulare Stagnation“ geführt. Danach bestehe die Gefahr, dass die nächsten Jahrzehnte durch niedrige Wachstumsraten geprägt sein und negative Realzinsen gar zur Normalität werden könnten. Dieser Beitrag geht der Frage nach, inwiefern die demographische Entwicklung für eine solche Stagnation verantwortlich ist.
Steueroasen besitzen drei wichtige Merkmale, die aus der Sicht von Steuerhinterziehern und Steuervermeidern anderer Länder besondere Anziehungskraft haben. Sie bieten niedrige Steuersätze für alle oder für bestimmte Kapitaleinkommen. Sie weisen eine hohe politische Stabilität und funktionierende Institutionen auf. Schließlich verbinden sie dies mit einem hohen Maß an faktischer Intransparenz in den Besitzstrukturen von Briefkastenfirmen sowie einer ausgeprägten Vertraulichkeit von Bankdaten. Unter Führung der OECD hat sich in den letzten Jahren der politische Druck auf die internationalen Steueroasen erhöht und zu einer Reihe von bilateralen und multilateralen Abkommen zum Informationsaustausch geführt. Da diese Abkommen nicht alle Steueroasen umfassen, haben sie die Gesamtanlagen in den Steueroasen allerdings bisher nur in sehr geringem Umfang reduzieren können. In Deutschland werden die internationalen Abkommen der letzten Jahre von Seiten der Steuerpolitik aber bereits als Erfolg verbucht und eine stärker progressive Besteuerung von Kapitaleinkünften diskutiert. Falls weiterhin ein Teil der einschlägigen Steueroasen dem Informationsaustausch fernbleibt, bietet es sich an, auf bilateralem Wege Verhandlungen aufzunehmen oder den Druck über multilaterale Verfahren und Sanktionen zu erhöhen.
A stochastic forward-looking model to assess the profitability and solvency of european insurers
(2016)
In this paper, we develop an analytical framework for conducting forward-looking assessments of profitability and solvency of the main euro area insurance sectors. We model the balance sheet of an insurance company encompassing both life and non-life business and we calibrate it using country level data to make it representative of the major euro area insurance markets. Then, we project this representative balance sheet forward under stochastic capital markets, stochastic mortality developments and stochastic claims. The model highlights the potential threats to insurers solvency and profitability stemming from a sustained period of low interest rates particularly in those markets which are largely exposed to reinvestment risks due to the relatively high guarantees and generous profit participation schemes. The model also proves how the resilience of insurers to adverse financial developments heavily depends on the diversification of their business mix. Finally, the model identifies potential negative spillovers between life and non-life business thorugh the redistribution of capital within groups.
SAFE Newsletter : 2016, Q2
(2016)
Understanding the shift from micro to macro-prudential thinking: a discursive network analysis
(2016)
While some economists argued for macro-prudential regulation pre-crisis, the macro-prudential approach and its emphasis on endogenously created systemic risk have only gained prominence post-crisis. Employing discourse and network analysis on samples of the most cited scholarly works on banking regulation as well as on systemic risk (60 sources each) from 1985 to 2014, we analyze the shift from micro to macro-prudential thinking in the shift to the post crisis period. Our analysis demonstrates that the predominance of formalism, particularly, partial equilibrium analysis along with the exclusion of historical and practitioners’ styles of reasoning from banking regulatory studies impeded economists from engaging seriously with the endogenous sources of systemic risk prior to the crisis. Post-crisis, these topics became important in this discourse, but the epistemological failures of banking regulatory studies pre-crisis were not sufficiently recognized. Recent attempts to conceptualize and price systemic risk as a negative externality point to the persistence of formalism and equilibrium thinking, with its attending dangers of incremental innovation due to epistemological barriers constrains theoretical progress, by excluding observed phenomena, which cannot yet be accommodated in mathematical models.
We argue two alternative routes that lead entrepreneurial start-ups to acquisition outcomes instead of liquidation. On one hand, acquisitions can come about through the control route with external financers such as venture capitalists (VCs). VCs take control through their board seats along with other contractual rights that can bring about changes in a start-up necessary to successfully attract a strategic acquirer. Consistent with this view, we show that VCs often replace the founding entrepreneur as CEO long before an acquisition exit. On the other hand, acquisitions can come about through advice and support provided to the start-up, such as that provided by an incubator or technology park. Based on a sample of 251 Crunchbase companies in the U.S. over the years 2007 to 2014, we present evidence that is strongly consistent with these propositions. Further, we show that the data indicate a tension between VC-backing of start-ups resident in technology parks insofar as such start-ups are slower to become, and less likely to be, acquired.
Intrinsic motivation for honesty is perceived as an important determinant of large and persistent variation in cheating behavior. However, little is known about its actual role due to challenges in obtaining precise measures of motivation for honesty, as well as field outcomes on cheating. We fill these gaps using a unique setting of informal milk markets in India. A novel behavioral experiment, which combines a standard die roll task with Bluetooth technology, is used to measure motivation for honesty of milkmen at both extensive and intensive margins. We then buy milk from the same milkmen and show that cheating in the field, measured by the amount of water added to milk, widens significantly with a milkman’s degree of dishonesty. Additional analyses show that conventional binary measure of motivation for honesty suffers from measurement errors, resulting in underestimation of this association.
In this paper, we examine how the institutional design affects the outcome of bank bailout decisions. In the German savings bank sector, distress events can be resolved by local politicians or a state-level association. We show that decisions by local politicians with close links to the bank are distorted by personal considerations: While distress events per se are not related to the electoral cycle, the probability of local politicians injecting taxpayers’ money into a bank in distress is 30 percent lower in the year directly preceding an election. Using the electoral cycle as an instrument, we show that banks that are bailed out by local politicians experience less restructuring and perform considerably worse than banks that are supported by the savings bank association. Our findings illustrate that larger distance between banks and decision makers reduces distortions in the decision making process, which has implications for the design of bank regulation and supervision.
We employ a unique dataset on members of an elite service club in Germany to investigate how elite networks affect the allocation of resources. Specifically, we investigate credit allocation decisions of banks to firms inside the network. Using a quasi-experimental research design, we document misallocation of bank credit inside the network, with state-owned banks engaging most actively in crony lending. The aggregate cost of credit misallocation amounts to 0.13 percent of annual GDP. Our findings, thus, resonate with existing theories of elite networks as rent extractive coalitions that stifle economic prosperity.
The term 'financialization' describes the phenomenon that commodity contracts are traded for purely financial reasons and not for motives rooted in the real economy. Recently, financialization has been made responsible for causing adverse welfare effects especially for low-income and low-wealth agents, who have to spend a large share of their income for commodity consumption and cannot participate in financial markets. In this paper we study the effect of financial speculation on commodity prices in a heterogeneous agent production economy with an agricultural and an industrial producer, a financial speculator, and a commodity consumer. While access to financial markets is always beneficial for the participating agents, since it allows them to reduce their consumption volatility, it has a decisive effect with respect to overall welfare effects who can trade with whom (but not so much what types of instruments can be traded).
The eurozone remains in a deep, largely macro-economic crisis. A robust global economy and falling oil prices have supported Europe’s economy for some time, but by now it is clear that the eurozone will only be able to pull itself out of this crisis by means of more decisive action. One response, the recent easing of monetary policy by the European Central Bank (ECB), has, for the most part, been sharply and one-sidedly criticised in Germany. Monetary policy inaction seems to be the preferred option of many in Germany.
The authors discuss the following question: What would happen if the ECB failed to respond to the excessively low inflation and the weak economy? And what economic policy would be suitable under the current circumstances, if not monetary policy?
Euro area shadow banking activities in a low-interest-rate environment: a flow-of-funds perspective
(2016)
Very low policy rates as well as the substantial redesign of rules and supervisory institutions have changed background conditions for the Euro Area’s financial intermediary sector substantially. Both policy initiatives have been targeted at improving societal welfare. And their potential side effects (or costs) have been discussed intensively, in academic as well as policy circles. Very low policy rates (and correspondingly low market rates) are likely to whet investors’ risk taking incentives. Concurrently, the tightened regulatory framework, in particular for banks, increases the comparative attractiveness of the less regulated, so-called shadow banking sector. Employing flow-of-funds data for the Euro Area’s non-bank banking sector we take stock of recent developments in this part of the financial sector. In addition, we examine to which extent low interest rates have had an impact on investment behavior. Our results reveal a declining role of banks (and, simultaneously, an increase in non-bank banking). Overall intermediation activity, hence, has remained roughly at the same level. Moreover, our findings also suggest that non-bank banks have tended to take positions in riskier assets (particularly in equities). In line with this observation, balance-sheet based risk measures indicate a rise in sector-specific risks in the non-bank banking sector (when narrowly defined).
Non-bank (-balance sheet) based financial intermediation has become considerably more important over the last couple of decades. For the U.S., this trend has been discussed ever since the mid-1990s. As a consequence, traditional monetary transmission mechanisms, mainly operating through bank balance sheets, have apparently become less relevant. This in particular applies to the bank lending channel. Concurrently, recent theoretical and empirical work uncovered a "risk-taking channel" of monetary policy. This mechanism is not confined to traditional banks but has been found to operate also across the spectrum of financial intermediaries and intermediation devices, including securitization and collateralized lending/borrowing. In addition, recent empirical evidence suggests that the increasing importance of shadow-banking activities might have given rise to a so-called "waterbed effect". This is a mediating mechanisms, dampening or counteracting typically to be expected reactions to monetary policy impulses. Employing flow-of-funds data, we can document also for the Euro Area that a trend towards non-bank (not necessarily more 'market'-based) intermediation has occurred. This is, however, a fairly recent development, substantially weaker than in the U.S. Nonetheless, analyzing the response of Euro Area bank and nonbank financial intermediaries to monetary policy impulses, we find some notable behavioral differences between mainly deposit-funded and more 'market'-based financial intermediaries. We also detect, inter alia, the existence of a (still) fairly weak, but potentially policyrelevant, "waterbed" effect.
SAFE Newsletter : 2014, Q4
(2014)
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(2015)
SAFE Newsletter : 2015, Q1
(2015)
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(2015)
SAFE Newsletter : 2015, Q4
(2015)
SAFE Newsletter : 2016, Q1
(2016)
his paper analyses the consumption-investment problem of a loss averse investor equipped with s-shaped utility over consumption relative to a time-varying reference level. Optimal consumption exceeds the reference level in good times and descend to the subsistence level in bad times. Accordingly, the optimal portfolio is dominated by a mean-variance component in good times and rebalanced more aggressively toward stocks in bad times. This consumption-investment strategy contrasts with customary portfolio theory and is consistent with several recent stylized facts about investors' behaviour. I also analyse the joint effect of loss aversion and persistence of the reference level on optimal choices. Finally, the strategy of the loss averse investor outperforms the conventional Merton-style strategies in bad times, but tend to be dominated by the conventional strategies in good times.
We introduce long-run investment productivity risk in a two-sector production economy to explain the joint behavior of macroeconomic quantities and asset prices. Long-run productivity risk in both sectors, for which we provide economic and empirical justification, acts as a substitute for shocks to the marginal efficiency of investments in explaining the equity premium and the stock return volatility differential between the consumption and the investment sector. Moreover, adding moderate wage rigidities allows the model to reproduce the empirically observed positive co-movement between consumption and investment growth.
This paper introduces endogenous preference evolution into a Lucas-type economy and explores its consequences for investors' trading strategy and the dynamics of asset prices. In equilibrium, investors herd and hold the same portfolio of risky assets which is biased toward stocks of sectors that produce a socially preferred good. Price-dividend ratios, expected returns and return volatility are all time varying. In this way, preference evolution helps rationalize the observed under-performance and local biases of investors' portfolios and many empirical regularities of stock returns such a time variation, the value-growth effect and stochastic volatility.
Keywords: Asset pricing, general equilibrium, heterogeneous investors, interdependent preferences, portfolio choice
JEL Classification: D51, D91, E20, G12
We investigate the role of competition on the outcome of Austrian Treasury auctions. Austria's EU accession led to an increase in the number of banks participating in treasury auctions. We use structural estimates of bidders' private values to examine the effect of increased competition on auction performance: We find that increased competition reduced bidder surplus substantially, but less than reduced form estimates would suggest. A significant component of the surplus reduction is due to more aggressive bidding. Counterfactuals establish that as competition increases, concerns regarding auction format play a smaller role.
Private equity fund managers are typically required to invest their own money alongside the fund. We examine how this coinvestment affects the acquisition strategy of leveraged buyout funds. In a simple model, where the investment and capital structure decisions are made simultaneously, we show that a higher coinvestment induces managers to chose less risky firms and use more leverage. We test these predictions in a unique sample of private equity investments in Norway, where the fund manager's taxable wealth is publicly available. Consistent with the model, portfolio company risk decreases and leverage ratios increase with the coinvestment fraction of the manager's wealth. Moreover, funds requiring a relatively high coinvestment tend to spread its capital over a larger number of portfolio firms, consistent with a more conservative investment policy.
This paper describes cash equity markets in Germany and their evolution against the background of technological and regulatory transformation. The development of these secondary markets in the largest economy in Europe is first briefly outlined from a historical perspective. This serves as the basis for the description of the most important trading system for German equities, the Xetra trading system of Deutsche Börse AG. Then, the most important regulatory change for European and German equity markets in the last ten years is illustrated: the introduction of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) in 2007. Its implications on equity trading in Germany are analyzed against the background of the current status of competition in Europe. Recent developments in European equity markets like the emergence of dark pools and algorithmic / high frequency trading are portrayed, before an outlook on new regulations (MiFID II, MiFIR) that will likely come into force in early 2018 will close the paper.
In the wake of the recent financial crisis, significant regulatory actions have been taken aimed at limiting risks emanating from trading in bank business models. Prominent reform proposals are the Volcker Rule in the U.S., the Vickers Report in the UK, and, based on the Liikanen proposal, the Barnier proposal in the EU. A major element of these reforms is to separate “classical” commercial banking activities from securities trading activities, notably from proprietary trading. While the reforms are at different stages of implementation, there is a strong ongoing discussion on what possible economic consequences are to be expected. The goal of this paper is to look at the alternative approaches of these reform proposals and to assess their likely consequences for bank business models, risk-taking and financial stability. Our conclusions can be summarized as follows: First, the focus on a prohibition of only proprietary trading, as envisaged in the current EU proposal, is inadequate. It does not necessarily reduce risk-taking and it likely crowds out desired trading activities, thereby negatively affecting financial stability. Second, there is potentially a better solution to limit excessive trading risk at banks in terms of potential welfare consequences: Trading separation into legally distinct or ring-fenced entities within the existing banking organizations. This kind of separation limits cross-subsidies between banking and proprietary trading and diminishes contagion risk, while still allowing for synergies across banking, non-proprietary trading and proprietary trading.
An important prerequisite for the efficiency of bail-in as a regulatory tool is that debt holders are able to bear the cost of a bail-in. Examining European banks’ subordinated debt we caution that households may be investors in bail-in able bonds. Since households do not fulfil the aforementioned prerequisite, we argue that European bank supervisors need to ensure that banks’ bail-in bonds are held by sophisticated investors. Existing EU market regulation insufficiently addresses mis-selling of bail-in instruments.
A number of contributions to research on monetary policy have suggested that policy should be asymmetric near the lower bound on nominal interest rates. As inflation and economic activity decline, policy should ease more aggressively than it would in the absence of the lower bound. As activity recovers and inflation picks up, the central bank should act to keep interest rates lower for longer than without the bound. In this note, we investigate to what extent the policy easing implemented by the ECB since summer 2013 mirrors the rate recommendations of a simple policy rule or deviates from it in a way that indicates a “lower for longer” approach to policy near zero interest rates.