infonet-economy

According to F. A. Hayek, Keynes' General Theory neglects an analysis of the production structure. As a contribution to this research gap, we look at companies' decisions to finance investments and at their agility to adjust their capital structure. We thus study the relationship between capital structure to finance corporate production and shifts in aggregate demand.…

We study the exposure of mortgage borrowers in Switzerland to interest rate, income and house price risks and examine how the households' choice of risky mortgages is related to individual interest rate expectations and risk-aversion. Our analysis is based on a unique data set of household mortgage applications from September 2012 until January 2014. Our assessment of risk…

In this paper, I examine the role of culture for households' saving decisions. Exploiting historical language borders within Switzerland, I isolate the effect of culture from economic, institutional, demographic and geographic factors for a homogeneous and representative sample of households. The analysis is based on the Swiss Household Panel that I complement with geographic…

This paper proposes an empirical framework that is based on pre-trade transparency to test for information-based return co-movements among international commercial real estate markets. We introduce a benchmark portfolio that includes property markets with a higher pre-trade transparency to assess expected returns in less transparent markets. Investors can earn abnormal returns in…

This paper analyzes the decision of firms to sell assets to fund investments (financing asset sales). For a sample of U.S. manufacturing firms during the 1971-2010 period, we document new stylized facts about financing asset sales that cannot be explained by traditional motives for selling assets, such as financial distress or financing constraints. Using a structural model of…

The allocation of authority affects the communication of information about clients within banks. We document that in small business lending internal control leads loan officers to propose inflated credit ratings for their clients. Inflated ratings are, however, anticipated and partly reversed by the credit officers responsible for approving credit assessments. More experienced loan…

This note is aimed at familiarizing the reader with state space geometry, a useful tool in teaching asset pricing concepts. Building on the analogy between expectation and dot product, I visualize basic notions using Euclidean geometry in 2D and 3D. Numerical examples are given such that the reader could easily follow the explanations.

In Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe a substantial share of bank deposits
are denominated in foreign currency. Deposit euroization poses key challenges for
monetary policy and financial sector supervision. On the one hand, it limits the effectiveness of monetary policy interventions. On the other hand, it increases financial sector fragility by exposing banks to…

The optimum scope of bank activities is central to many proposals for banking system reform. For example, a core component of the Dodd-Frank Act (2010) and regulatory proposals in the UK and the EU has been the concept of “ring-fencing” – i.e., restricting banks’ activities to their core retail and wholesale financial intermediation functions. It is argued that limiting the scope of…