Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe (SAFE)
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SAFE Update February 2024
(2024)
This paper empirically analyses whether post-global financial crisis regulatory reforms have created appropriate incentives to voluntarily centrally clear over-the-counter (OTC) derivative contracts. We use confidential European trade repository data on single-name sovereign credit default swap (CDS) transactions and show that both seller and buyer manage counterparty exposures and capital costs, strategically choosing to clear when the counterparty is riskier. The clearing incentives seem particularly responsive to seller credit risk, which is in line with the notion that counterparty credit risk (CCR) is asymmetric in CDS contracts. The riskiness of the underlying reference entity also impacts the decision to clear as it affects both CCR capital charges for OTC contracts and central counterparty clearing house (CCP) margins for cleared contracts. Lastly, we find evidence that when a transaction helps netting positions with the CCP and hence lower margins, the likelihood of clearing is higher.
In its first ten years (2014-2023), the banking union was successful in its prudential agenda but failed spectacularly in its underlying objective: establishing a single banking market in the euro area. This goal is now more important than ever, and easier to attain than at any time in the last decade. To make progress, cross-border banks should receive a specific treatment within general banking union legislation. Suggestions are made on how to make such regulatory carve-out effective and legally sound.
We study the many implications of the Eurosystem collateral framework for corporate bonds. Using data on the evolving collateral eligibility list, we identify the first inclusion dates of bonds and issuers and use these events to find that the increased supply and demand for pledgeable collateral following eligibility (a) increases activity in the corporate securities lending market, (b) lowers eligible bond yields, and (c) affects bond liquidity. Thus, corporate bond lending relaxes the constraint of limited collateral supply and thereby improves market functioning.
The Federal Reserve has been publishing federal funds rate prescriptions from Taylor rules in its Monetary Policy Report since 2017. The signals from the rules aligned with Fed action on many occasions, but in some cases the Fed opted for a different route. This paper reviews the implications of the rules during the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent inflation surge and derives projections for the future.
In 2020, the Fed took the negative prescribed rates, which were far below the effective lower bound on the nominal interest rate, as support for extensive and long-lasting quantitative easing. Yet, the calculations overstate the extent of the constraint, because they neglect the supply side effects of the pandemic.
The paper proposes a simple model-based adjustment to the resource gap used by the rules for 2020. In 2021, the rules clearly signaled the need for tightening because of the rise of inflation, yet the Fed waited until spring 2022 to raise the federal funds rate. With the decline of inflation over the course of 2023, the rules’ prescriptions have also come down. They fall below the actual federal funds rate target range in 2024. Several caveats concerning the projections of the interest rate prescriptions are discussed.
Almost ten years after the European Commission action plan on building a capital markets union (CMU) and despite incremental progress, e.g. in the form of the EU Listing Act, the picture looks dire. Stock exchanges, securities markets, and supervisory authorities remain largely national, and, in many cases, European companies have decided to exclusively list overseas. Notwithstanding the economic and financial benefits of market integration, CMU has become a geopolitical necessity. A unified capital market can bolster resilience, strategic autonomy, and economic sovereignty, reduce dependence on external funding, and may foster economic cooperation between member states.
The reason for the persistent stand-still in Europe’s CMU development is not so much the conflict between market- and state-based integration, but rather the hesitancy of national regulatory and supervisory bodies to relinquish powers. If EU member states wanted to get real about CMU (as they say, and as they should), they need to openly accept the loss of sovereignty that follows from a true unified capital market. Building on economic as well as historical evidence, the paper offers viable proposals on how to design competent institutions within the current European framework.
This note outlines the case for speedy capital market integration and for the adoption of a common regulatory framework and single supervisory authority from a political economy perspective. We also show the alternative case for harmonization and centralization via regulatory competition, elaborating how competition between EU jurisdictions by way of full mutual recognition may lead to a (cost-)efficient and standardized legal framework for capital markets. Lastly, the note addresses the political economy conflict that underpins the implementation of both models for integrating capital markets. We point out that, in both cases, national authorities experience a loss of legislative and jurisdictional competence at the national level. We predict that any plan to foster a stronger capital market union, following an institution based or a market-based strategy, will face opposition from powerful national stakeholders.
SAFE Update April 2024
(2024)
We document the individual willingness to act against climate change and study the role of social norms in a large sample of US adults. Individual beliefs about social norms positively predict pro-climate donations, comparable in strength to universal moral values and economic preferences such as patience and reciprocity. However, we document systematic misperceptions of social norms. Respondents vastly underestimate the prevalence of climate-friendly behaviors and norms. Correcting these misperceptions in an experiment causally raises individual willingness to act against climate change as well as individual support for climate policies. The effects are strongest for individuals who are skeptical about the existence and threat of global warming.
This paper studies whether Eurosystem collateral eligibility played a role in the portfolio choices of euro area asset managers during the “dash-for-cash” episode of 2020. We find that asset managers reduced their allocation to ECB-eligible corporate bonds, selling them in order to finance redemptions, while simultaneously increasing their cash holdings. These findings add nuance to previous studies of liquidity strains and price dislocations in the corporate bond market during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, indicating a greater willingness of dealers to increase their inventories of corporate bonds pledgeable with the ECB. Analysing the price impact of these portfolio choices, we also find evidence pointing to price pressure for both ECB-eligible and ineligible corporate bonds. Bonds that were held to a larger extent by investment funds in our sample experienced higher price pressure, although the impact was lower for ECB-eligible bonds. We also discuss broader implications for the related policy debate about how central banks could mitigate similar types of liquidity shocks.
When estimating misspecified linear factor models for the cross-section of expected returns using GMM, the explanatory power of these models can be spuriously high when the estimated factor means are allowed to deviate substantially from the sample averages. In fact, by shifting the weights on the moment conditions, any level of cross-sectional fit can be attained. The mathematically correct global minimum of the GMM objective function can be obtained at a parameter vector that is far from the true parameters of the data-generating process. This property is not restricted to small samples, but rather holds in population. It is a feature of the GMM estimation design and applies to both strong and weak factors, as well as to all types of test assets.