Showing papers on "Financial market published in 2011"

Credit Constraints, Heterogeneous Firms and International Trade

Abstract: This paper examines the detrimental consequences of financial market imperfections for international trade. I develop a heterogeneous-firm model with countries at different levels of financial development and sectors of varying financial vulnerability. Applying this model to aggregate trade data, I study the mechanisms through which credit constraints operate. First, financial development increases countries' exports above and beyond its impact on overall production. Firm selection into exporting accounts for a third of the trade-specific effect, while two thirds are due to reductions in firm-level exports. Second, financially advanced economies export a wider range of products and their exports experience less product turnover. Finally, while all countries service large destinations, exporters with superior financial institutions have more trading partners and also enter smaller markets. All of these effects are magnified in financially vulnerable sectors. These results have important policy implications for less developed economies that rely on exports for economic growth but suffer from poor financial contractibility.

The network of global corporate control

Abstract: The structure of the control network of transnational corporations affects global market competition and financial stability. So far, only small national samples were studied and there was no appropriate methodology to assess control globally. We present the first investigation of the architecture of the international ownership network, along with the computation of the control held by each global player. We find that transnational corporations form a giant bow-tie structure and that a large portion of control flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions. This core can be seen as an economic “super-entity” that raises new important issues both for researchers and policy makers.

Capitalizing on Crisis: The Political Origins of the Rise of Finance

Abstract: In the context of the recent financial crisis, the extent to which the U.S. economy has become dependent on financial activities has been made abundantly clear. In "Capitalizing on Crisis", Greta Krippner traces the longer-term historical evolution that made the rise of finance possible, arguing that this development rested on a broader transformation of the U.S. economy than is suggested by the current preoccupation with financial speculation. Krippner argues that state policies that created conditions conducive to financialization allowed the state to avoid a series of economic, social, and political dilemmas that confronted policymakers as postwar prosperity stalled beginning in the late 1960s and 1970s. In this regard, the financialization of the economy was not a deliberate outcome sought by policymakers, but rather an inadvertent result of the state's attempts to solve other problems. The book focuses on deregulation of financial markets during the 1970s and 1980s, encouragement of foreign capital into the U.S. economy in the context of large fiscal imbalances in the early 1980s, and changes in monetary policy following the shift to high interest rates in 1979. Exhaustively researched, the book brings extensive new empirical evidence to bear on debates regarding recent developments in financial markets and the broader turn to the market that has characterized U.S. society over the last several decades.

The Causal Impact of Media in Financial Markets

Abstract: Disentangling the causal impact of media reporting from the impact of the events being reported is challenging. We solve this problem by comparing the behaviors of investors with access to different media coverage of the same information event. We use zip codes to identify 19 mutually exclusive trading regions corresponding with large U.S. cities. For all earnings announcements of S&P 500 Index firms, we find that local media coverage strongly predicts local trading, after controlling for earnings, investor, and newspaper characteristics. Moreover, local trading is strongly related to the timing of local reporting, a particular challenge to nonmedia explanations.

Investor Flows and the 2008 Boom/Bust in Oil Prices

Abstract: This paper explores the impact of investor flows and financial market conditions on returns in crude-oil futures markets. I begin with a review of the economic mechanisms by which informational frictions and the associated speculative activity may induce prices to drift away from fundamental" values and show increased volatility. This is followed by a discussion of the interplay between imperfect information about real economic activity, including supply, demand, and inventory accumulation, and speculative activity. Finally, I present new evidence that there was an economically and statistically significant effect of investor flows on futures prices, after controlling for returns in US and emerging-economy stock markets, a measure of the balance-sheet flexibility of large financial institutions, open interest, the futures/spot basis, and lagged returns on oil futures. The intermediate-term growth rates of index positions and managed-money spread positions had the largest impacts on futures prices.

Religious Beliefs, Gambling Attitudes, and Financial Market Outcomes

Abstract: We use religious background as a proxy for gambling propensity and investigate whether geographical variation in religion-induced gambling norms affects aggregate market outcomes. We examine four economic settings in which the recent literature has suggested a role for gambling and speculation. Our key conjecture is that gambling propensity would be stronger in regions with higher concentration of Catholics relative to Protestants. Consistent with our conjecture, we find that religion-induced gambling preferences influence the portfolio decisions of institutional investors. Investors located in regions with high Catholic-Protestant ratio (CPRATIO) exhibit a stronger propensity to hold stocks with lottery features. Further, in a corporate setting, we show that broad-based employee stock option plans, which are likely to appeal more to employees with stronger gambling preferences, are more popular in high CPRATIO regions. Examining the aggregate impact of gambling on stock returns, we find that the initial day return following an initial public offering is higher for firms located in high CPRATIO regions where local speculative demand is expected to be stronger. In a broader market setting, we find that the magnitude of the negative lottery-stock premium is larger in high CPRATIO regions. Collectively, our results indicate that religious beliefs, through their influence on gambling attitudes, impact investors' portfolio choices, corporate decisions, and stock returns.

The Real Effects of Financial Markets: The Impact of Prices on Takeovers

Abstract: Using mutual fund redemptions as an instrument for price changes, we identify a strong effect of market prices on takeover activity (the "trigger effect"). An inter-quartile decrease in valuation leads to a 7 percentage point increase in acquisition likelihood, relative to a 6% unconditional takeover probability. Instrumentation addresses the fact that prices are endogenous and increase in anticipation of a takeover (the "anticipation effect.") Our results overturn prior literature which found a weak relation between prices and takeovers without instrumentation. These findings imply that financial markets have real effects: they impose discipline on managers by triggering takeover threats.

What's Vol Got to Do with It

Abstract: Uncertainty plays a key role in economics, finance, and decision sciences. Financial markets, in particular derivative markets, provide fertile ground for understanding how perceptions of economic uncertainty and cash-flow risk manifest themselves in asset prices. We demonstrate that the variance premium, defined as the difference between the squared VIX index and expected realized variance, captures attitudes toward uncertainty. We show conditions under which the variance premium displays significant time variation and return predictability. A calibrated, generalized long-run risks model generates a variance premium with time variation and return predictability that is consistent with the data, while simultaneously matching the levels and volatilities of the market return and risk-free rate. Our evidence indicates an important role for transient non-Gaussian shocks to fundamentals that affect agents' views of economic uncertainty and prices. The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org., Oxford University Press.

Fire Sales in Finance and Macroeconomics

Abstract: Analysts of the recent financial crisis often refer to the role of asset "fire sales" in depleting the balance sheets of financial institutions and aggravating the fragility of the financial system. The term "fire sale" has been around since the nineteenth century to describe firms selling smoke-damaged merchandise at cut-rate prices in the aftermath of a fire. But what are fire sales in broad financial markets with hundreds of participants? As we suggested in a 1992 paper, a fire sale is essentially a forced sale of an asset at a dislocated price. The asset sale is forced in the sense that the seller cannot pay creditors without selling assets. The price is dislocated because the highest potential bidders are typically involved in a similar activity as the seller, and are therefore themselves indebted and cannot borrow more to buy the asset. Indeed, rather than bidding for the asset, they might be selling similar assets themselves. Assets are then bought by nonspecialists who, knowing that they have less expertise with the assets in question, are only willing to buy at valuations that are much lower. In this paper, we selectively review some of the research on fire sales, emphasizing both concepts and supporting evidence. We begin by describing our 1992 model of fire sales and the related findings in empirical corporate finance. We then show that models of fire sales can account for several related phenomena during the recent financial crisis, including the contraction of the banking system and the failures of arbitrage in financial markets exemplified by historically unprecedented differences in prices of very similar securities. We then link fire sales to macroeconomics by discussing how such dislocations of security prices and the reduction in balance sheets of banks can reduce investment and output. Finally, we consider how the concept of fire sales can help us think about government interventions in financial markets, including the evidently successful Federal Reserve interventions in 2009. Fire sales are surely not the whole story of the financial crisis, but they are a phenomenon that binds together many elements of the crisis.

What is happening to the impact of financial deepening on economic growth

Abstract: I. INTRODUCTION Among the strongest elements of the modern economists' canon is that financial sector development has a significant impact on economic growth. A generation ago, economists like Goldsmith (1969) (1) and McKinnon (1973) began to draw attention to the benefits of financial structure development and financial liberalization. By the early 1990s, McKinnon (1991, 12) could write with confidence that: "Now, however, there is widespread agreement that flows of saving and investment should be voluntary and significantly decentralized in an open capital market at close to equilibrium interest rates." Since the 1990s, a burgeoning empirical literature has illustrated the importance of financial sector development for economic growth. Despite the growing consensus, however, we find that the link between finance and growth in cross-country panel data has weakened considerably over time. At the very time that financial sector liberalization spread around the world, the influence of financial sector development on economic growth has diminished. The seminal empirical work that established the growth-finance link is King and Levine (1993), which extended the cross-country framework introduced in Barro (1991) by adding financial variables such as the ratios of liquid liabilities or claims on the private sector to gross domestic product (GDP) to the standard growth regression. They found a robust, positive, and statistically significant relationship between initial financial conditions and subsequent growth in real per capita incomes for a cross-section of about 80 countries. In the subsequent decade numerous empirical studies expanded upon this, using both cross-country and panel data sets for the post-1960 period. (2) In this paper we reexamine the core cross-country panel result and find that the impact of financial deepening on growth is not as strong with more recent data as it appeared in the original panel studies with data for the period from 1960 to 1989. We consider various explanations for this clear shift. First, we suggest that financial deepening has a positive effect on growth if not done to excess. Rapid and excessive deepening, as manifested in a credit boom, can be problematic even in the most developed markets because it can both weaken the banking system and bring inflationary pressures. We test this hypothesis by looking at the finance-growth nexus among countries that have or have not experienced financial sector crises. We find that once crisis episodes are removed, the finance-growth relationship remains intact. Its weakening over time thus seems to be a result of an increased incidence of crises in later years. Our second and related hypothesis is that the widespread liberalization of financial markets that occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s made financial deepening less effective. This is reminiscent of Robert Lucas's (1975) critique of econometric policy evaluation advanced three decades ago. Policies that have promoted and/or forced increases in financial depth over the past two decades may have altered the basic structural relationship between finance and growth. This could occur if the observed benefits of financial deepening led many countries to liberalize before the associated legal and regulatory institutions were sufficiently well developed. As a consequence, the impact of financial deepening on growth would become smaller. Our evidence does not indicate that recent liberalizations are responsible for the breakdown of the finance-growth link. However, there may be an indirect link as premature financial development can lead to financial crises that have real effects. Third, we examine the role of global equity markets that have grown in importance and prominence in the years over which the finance-growth relationship disappeared. However, we do not find any evidence to suggest that equity market growth has substituted for the role of credit markets and banks in particular. …

The Real Effects of Financial Markets

Abstract: A large amount of activity in the financial sector occurs in secondary financial markets, where securities are traded among investors without capital flowing to firms. The stock market is the archetypal example, which in most developed economies captures a lot of attention and resources. Is the stock market just a side show or does it affect real economic activity? In this article, we discuss the potential real effects of financial markets that stem from the informational role of market prices. We review the theoretical literature and show that accounting for the feedback effect from market prices to the real economy significantly changes our understanding of the price formation process, the informativeness of the price, and speculators' trading behavior. We make two main points. First, we argue that a new definition of price efficiency is needed to account for the extent to which prices reflect information useful for the efficiency of real decisions (rather than the extent to which they forecast future cash flows). Second, incorporating the feedback effect into models of financial markets can explain various market phenomena that otherwise seem puzzling. Finally, we review empirical evidence on the real effects of secondary financial markets.

The Financial Market Effects of the Federal Reserve's Large-Scale Asset Purchases

Abstract: Since December 2008, the Federal Reserve’s traditional policy instrument, the target federal funds rate, has been effectively at its lower bound of zero. In order to further ease the stance of monetary policy as the economic outlook deteriorated, the Federal Reserve purchased substantial quantities of assets with medium and long maturities. In this paper, we explain how these purchases were implemented and discuss the mechanisms through which they can affect the economy. We present evidence that the purchases led to economically meaningful and long-lasting reductions in longer-term interest rates on a range of securities, including securities that were not included in the purchase programs. These reductions in interest rates primarily reflect lower risk premiums, including term premiums, rather than lower expectations of future short-term interest rates.

Systemic Sovereign Credit Risk: Lessons from the U.S. and Europe

Abstract: We study the nature of systemic sovereign credit risk using CDS spreads for the U.S. Treasury, individual U.S. states, and major Eurozone countries. Using a multifactor affine framework that allows for both systemic and sovereign-specific credit shocks, we find that there is much less systemic risk among U.S. sovereigns than among Eurozone sovereigns. Thus, systemic sovereign risk is not directly caused by macroeconomic integration. We also find that both U.S and Eurozone systemic sovereign risk is strongly related to financial market returns. These results provide strong support for the view that systemic sovereign risk has its roots in financial markets rather than in macroeconomic fundamentals.

Consumer Financial Protection.

Abstract: The recent financial crisis has led many to question how well businesses deliver services and how well regulatory institutions address problems in consumer financial markets. This paper discusses consumer financial regulation, emphasizing the full range of arguments for regulation that derive from market failure and from limited consumer rationality in financial decision making. We present three case studies--of mortgage markets, payday lending, and financing retirement consumption--to illustrate the need for, and limits of, regulation. We argue that if regulation is to be beneficial, it must be tailored to specific problems and must be accompanied by research to measure the effectiveness of regulatory interventions.

Firm Exports and Multinational Activity Under Credit Constraints

Abstract: This paper provides firm-level evidence that credit constraints restrict international trade flows and affect the sectoral pattern of multinational activity Using detailed customs data from China, we show that foreign affiliates and joint ventures have better export performance than private domestic firms in financially more vulnerable sectors These results are stronger for destinations with higher trade costs and not driven by variation in firm size or by other sector determinants of FDI Our findings are consistent with multinational subsidiaries being less liquidity constrained because they can tap additional funding from their parent company and/or access foreign capital markets More broadly, they suggest that FDI can alleviate the impact of domestic financial market imperfections on aggregate growth, trade and private sector development

Regime Changes and Financial Markets

Abstract: Regime switching models can match the tendency of financial markets to often change their behavior abruptly and the phenomenon that the new behavior of financial variables often persists for several periods after such a change. While the regimes captured by regime switching models are identified by an econometric procedure, they often correspond to different periods in regulation, policy, and other secular changes. In empirical estimates, the regime switching means, volatilities, autocorrelations, and cross-covariances of asset returns often differ across regimes, which allow regime switching models to capture the stylized behavior of many financial series including fat tails, heteroskedasticity, skewness, and time-varying correlations. In equilibrium models, regimes in fundamental processes, like consumption or dividend growth, strongly affect the dynamic properties of equilibrium asset prices and can induce non-linear risk-return trade-offs. Regime switches also lead to potentially large consequences for investors' optimal portfolio choice.

Inside and Outside Liquidity

Abstract: Two leading economists develop a theory explaining the demand for and supply of liquid assets.Why do financial institutions, industrial companies, and households hold low-yielding money balances, Treasury bills, and other liquid assets? When and to what extent can the state and international financial markets make up for a shortage of liquid assets, allowing agents to save and share risk more effectively? These questions are at the center of all financial crises, including the current global one.In Inside and Outside Liquidity, leading economists Bengt Holmstrom and Jean Tirole offer an original, unified perspective on these questions. In a slight, but important, departure from the standard theory of finance, they show how imperfect pledgeability of corporate income leads to a demand for as well as a shortage of liquidity with interesting implications for the pricing of assets, investment decisions, and liquidity management. The government has an active role to play in improving risk-sharing between consumers with limited commitment power and firms dealing with the high costs of potential liquidity shortages. In this perspective, private risk-sharing is always imperfect and may lead to financial crises that can be alleviated through government interventions.

The impact of sovereign credit risk on bank funding conditions

Abstract: The financial crisis and the ensuing recession have caused a sharp deterioration in public finances across advanced economies, raising investor concerns about sovereign risk. The concerns have so far mainly affected the euro area, where some countries have seen their credit ratings downgraded during 2009−11 and their funding costs rise sharply. Other countries have also been affected, but to a much lesser extent. Greater sovereign risk is already having adverse effects on banks and financial markets. Looking forward, sovereign risk concerns may affect a broad range of countries. In advanced economies, government debt levels are expected to rise over coming years, due to high fiscal deficits and rising pension and health care costs. In emerging economies, vulnerability to external shocks and political instability may have periodic adverse effects on sovereign risk. Overall, risk premia on government debt will likely be higher and more volatile than in the past. In some countries, sovereign debt has already lost its risk-free status; in others, it may do so in the future. The challenge for authorities is to minimise the negative consequences for bank funding and the flow-on effects on the real economy. This report outlines the impact of sovereign risk concerns on the cost and availability of bank funding over recent years. It then describes the channels through which sovereign risk affects bank funding. The last section summarises the main conclusions and discusses some implications for banks and the official sector. Two caveats are necessary before discussing the main findings. First, the analysis focuses on causality going from sovereigns to banks, as is already the case in some countries, and, looking forward, is a possible scenario for other economies. But causality may clearly also go from banks to sovereigns. However, even in this second case, sovereign risk eventually acquires its own dynamics and compounds the problems of the banking sector. Second, the report examines the link between sovereign risk and bank funding in general terms, based on recent experience and research. It does not assess actual sovereign risk and its impact on bank stability in individual countries at the present juncture.

Sovereign rating news and financial markets spillovers: Evidence from the European debt crisis

Abstract: This paper examines the spillover effects of sovereign rating news on European financial markets during the period 2007-2010. Our main finding is that sovereign rating downgrades have statistically and economically significant spillover effects both across countries and financial markets. The sign and magnitude of the spillover effects depend both on the type of announcements, the source country experiencing the downgrade and the rating agency from which the announcements originates. However, we also find evidence that downgrades to near speculative grade ratings for relatively large economies such as Greece have a systematic spillover effects across Euro zone countries. Rating-based triggers used in banking regulation, CDS contracts, and investment mandates may help explain these results.

Collateral knowledge : legal reasoning in the global financial markets

Abstract: Who are the agents of financial regulation? Is good (or bad) financial governance merely the work of legislators and regulators? Here Annelise Riles argues that financial governance is made not just through top-down laws and policies but also through the daily use of mundane legal techniques such as collateral by a variety of secondary agents, from legal technicians and retail investors to financiers and academics and even computerized trading programs. Drawing upon her ten years of ethnographic fieldwork in the Japanese derivatives market, Riles explores the uses of collateral in the financial markets as a regulatory device for stabilizing market transactions. How collateral operates, Riles suggests, is paradigmatic of a class of low-profile, mundane, but indispensable activities and practices that are all too often ignored as we think about how markets should work and be governed. Riles seeks to democratize our understanding of legal techniques and demonstrate how these day-to-day private actions can be reformed to produce more effective forms of market regulation.

Automation, Speed, and Stock Market Quality: The NYSE’s Hybrid

Abstract: Automation and trading speed are increasingly important aspects of competition among financial markets. Yet we know little about how changing a market’s automation and speed affects the cost of immediacy and price discovery, two key dimensions of market quality. At the end of 2006 the New York Stock Exchange introduced its Hybrid market, increasing automation and reducing the execution time for market orders from 10 seconds to less than one second. We find that the change raises the cost of immediacy (bid-ask spreads) because of increased adverse selection and reduces the noise in prices, making prices more efficient.

Stocks, bonds, money markets and exchange rates: measuring international financial transmission

Abstract: Understanding the complexity of the financial transmission process across various assets—domestically as well as within and across asset classes—requires the simultaneous modeling of the various transmission channels in a single, comprehensive empirical framework. The paper estimates the financial transmission between money, bond and equity markets and exchange rates within and between the USA and the euro area. We find that asset prices react strongest to other domestic asset price shocks, but that there are also substantial international spillovers, both within and across asset classes. The results underline the dominance of US markets as the main driver of global financial markets: US financial markets explain, on average, around 30% of movements in euro area financial markets, whereas euro area markets account only for about 6% of US asset price changes. Moreover, the methodology allows us to identify indirect spillovers through other asset prices, which are found to increase substantially the international transmission of shocks within asset classes. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The United Kingdom's quantitative easing policy: design, operation and

Abstract: In response to the intensification of the financial crisis in Autumn 2008, the Bank of England, in common with other central banks, loosened monetary policy using both conventional and unconventional policy measures. In the United Kingdom, the principal element of these unconventional measures was the policy of asset purchases financed by central bank money, so-called quantitative easing (QE). Over the period March 2009 to January 2010, £200 billion of assets were purchased, overwhelmingly made up of government securities, representing around 14% of annual GDP. This article reviews the motivation for these central bank asset purchases and describes how they were implemented. It goes on to review a range of evidence for the impact of the asset purchases made to date, both on financial markets and more widely on the economy. While there is considerable uncertainty about the magnitudes, the evidence suggests that QE asset purchases have had economically significant effects.

The New Economics of Prudential Capital Controls: A Research Agenda

Abstract: This paper provides an introduction to the new economics of prudential capital controls in emerging economies. This literature is based on the notion that there are externalities associated with financial crises because individual market participants do not internalize their contribution to aggregate financial instability. We describe financial crises as situations in which an emerging economy loses access to international financial markets and experiences a feedback loop in which declining aggregate demand, falling exchange rates and asset prices, and deteriorating balance sheets mutually reinforce each other—a common phenomenon in recent emerging market crises. Individual market participants take aggregate prices and financial conditions as given and do not internalize their contribution to financial instability when they choose their actions. As a result they impose externalities in the form of greater financial instability on each other, and the private financing decisions of individuals are distorted toward excessive risk-taking. Prudential capital controls can induce private agents to internalize their externalities and thereby increase macroeconomic stability and enhance welfare.

The impact of terrorism on financial markets: An empirical study

Abstract: The main focus of this paper is to previous termstudynext term empirically the previous termimpact of terrorismnext term on the behavior of stock, bond and commodity previous termmarkets.next term We consider terrorist events that took place in 25 countries over an 11-year time period and implement our analysis using different methods: an event-previous termstudynext term approach, a non-parametric methodology, and a filtered GARCH–EVT approach. In addition, we compare the effect of terrorist attacks on previous termfinancial markets with the impactnext term of other extreme events such as previous termfinancialnext term crashes and natural catastrophes. The results of our analysis show that a non-parametric approach is the most appropriate method among the three for analyzing the previous termimpact of terrorism on financial markets.next term We demonstrate the robustness of this method when interest rates, equity previous termmarketnext term integration, spillover and contemporaneous effects are controlled. We show how the results of this approach can be used for investors’ portfolio diversification strategies against previous termterrorismnext term risk.

Principal Components as a Measure of Systemic Risk

Abstract: The U. S. government’s failure to provide adequate oversight and prudent regulation of the financial markets, together with excessive risk taking by some financial institutions, pushed the world financial system to the brink of systemic failure in 2008. As a consequence of this near catastrophe, both regulators and investors have become keenly interested in developing tools for monitoring systemic risk. But this is easier said than done. Securitization, private transacting, complexity, and “flexible accounting” prevent us from directly observing the many explicit linkages of financial institutions. As an alternative, the authors introduce a measure of implied systemic risk, the absorption ratio, which equals the fraction of the total variance of a set of asset returns explained or “absorbed” by a fixed number of eigenvectors. The absorption ratio captures the extent to which markets are unified or tightly coupled. When markets are tightly coupled, they are more fragile in the sense that negative shocks propagate more quickly and broadly than when markets are loosely linked.