infonet-economy

We assess the quantitative implications of the re-use of collateral on financial market leverage, volatility, and welfare within an infinite-horizon asset-pricing model with heterogeneous agents. In our model, the ability of agents to re-use frees up collateral that can be used to back more transactions. Re-use thus contributes to the build-up of leverage and significantly increases volatility in financial markets. When introducing limits on re-use, we find that volatility is strictly decreasing as these limits become tighter, yet the impact on welfare is non-monotone. In the model, allowing for some re-use can improve welfare as it enables agents to share risk more effectively. Allowing reuse beyond intermediate levels, however, can lead to excessive leverage and lower welfare. So the analysis in this paper provides a rationale for limiting, yet not banning, re-use in financial markets.

We demonstrate that investor satisfaction and investment behavior are influenced substantially by the price path by which the final investor return is achieved. In a series of experiments, we analyze various different price paths. Investors are most satisfied if their assets first fall in value and then recover, and they are least satisfied with the opposite pattern, independent of whether the final return is positive or negative. Price paths systematically influence risk preferences, return beliefs, and ultimately trading decisions. Our results enable a much more holistic perspective on a wide range of topics in finance, such as the disposition effect, risk-taking behavior after previous gains and losses, and behavioral asset pricing.

Mitigation and adaptation represent two solutions to the issue of global warming. While mitigation aims at reducing CO2 emissions and preventing climate change, adaptation encompasses a broad scope of techniques used to reduce the impacts of climate change once they have occurred. Both have direct costs on a country’s Gross Domestic Product, but costs also arise from temperature increases due to inaction. This paper introduces a tipping point in a real options model and analyzes optimal investment choices in mitigation and their timing.

We explain the number of bank relationships a firm maintains by the number of industries it operates in, analyzing 13,570 listed firms in 18 Eastern European countries. We estimate a variety of stylized models including OLS, Tobit and negative binomial that directly accounts at once for the number of bank relationships. Controlling for many firm characteristics and accounting for all observed and unobserved time-invariant heterogeneity across firms, we find that the number of industries the firm operates in corresponds to a higher number of bank relationships, possibly because banks specialize in certain industries.

Does market power of banks affect firm performance? To answer this question we examine 25,236 syndicated loan facilities granted between 2000 and 2010 by 296 banks to 9,029 US non-financial firms. Accounting for both observed and unobserved bank and firm heterogeneity, we find that firms that were recently poorly performing obtain loans from banks with more market power. However, in the year after loan origination market power positively affects firm performance, but only if it is not too high. Our estimates thus suggest that bank market power can facilitate access to credit by poorly-performing firms, yet at the same time also boosts the performance of the firms that obtain credit.

Növeli-e az alacsony kamatláb a banki hitelkínálatot? Tanulmányunkban egy magyar, vállalati szintű hiteladatbázis panelstruktúrában történő elemzésével keressük a választ a kérdésre. Kashyap–Stein [2000] identifikációs módszerét vállalati és idő fix hatásokkal kiegészítve teszteljük a feltételezést, hogy a kamatok csökkenése különbözőképpen befolyásolja-e az alacsony és a magas sajáttőke-­hányaddal rendelkező bankok hitelkínálatát. Azt találjuk, hogy a kamatláb csökkenését követően az alacsony tőkehányadú bankok nagyobb valószínűséggel nyújtanak hitelt új felvevőknek, és növelik kihelyezett hitelösszegeiket már meglévő adósaik számára, mint a magas tőkehányadú bankok. Robusztussági becsléseink azt tanúsítják, hogy valóban a bankok sajáttőke-hányada, nem pedig likviditási hányada, teljes eszközértéke vagy tulajdonosi szerkezete korrelál a hitelkínálati reakció erősségével. Megmutatjuk, hogy ezek az eredményeink fennálltak a válság előtti időszakban is, és függetlenek a mintánkban szereplő cégek méretétől. Elemzéseinkből arra következtetünk, hogy Magyarországon a vizsgált időszakban (2005–2011) a kamatláb befolyásolta a hitelkínálat mértékét. Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) Kód: E51, E52, G21.

Building on critical literature on corporate sustainability, we add a perspective thus far only scarcely addressed: The toxicity of financial products imposing systemic risk. We start with various illustrative cases from the financial sector which have also been discussed colorfully in the media. This sets the stage for toxic assets and practices as revealed after the onset of the financial crisis precipitated by the collapse of Lehman Brothers. To illustrate corporate toxicity we use the “Global 100 Index” from “Corporate Knights” to show which (financial) scandals or bailouts cases were detected at corporations awarded a position in the prestigious sustainability rating. Subsequently we develop the concept of ‘toxicity’ adopted from pharmacology as a meta-criterion, which, as we argue, should be added to the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and the ESG (environment, society, governance) universe. We discuss implications for theory development and the overall credibility of corporate sustainability ratings.

The central role played by deforestation in the increase in global CO2 emissions has recently justified the development of new schemes which offer compensation in exchange for reductions in emissions from deforestation (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, REDD). The design of REDD projects can be based on market prices to set how deforesters are compensated for avoiding deforestation. With limited experiments involving a true market integration of REDD, it remains however difficult to assess the potential impact market price uncertainties may have on the targets of the protective scheme. The goal of this article is to assess the optimal choices of a forest owner, in terms of his combined decision of choosing when to protect his forest, and the deforestation rate prior to it, given his option to enter an irreversible REDD scheme that provides him with uncertain cash flows under different risk aversion scenarios.

In classical contagion models, default systems are Markovian conditionally on the observation of their stochastic environment, with interacting intensities. This necessitates that the environment evolves autonomously and is not influenced by the history of the default events. We extend the classical literature and allow a default system to have a contagious impact on its environment. In our framework, contagion can either be contained within the default system (i.e., direct contagion from a counterparty to another) or spill from the default system over its environment (indirect contagion).
This type of model is of interest whenever one wants to capture within a model possible impacts of the defaults of a class of debtors on the more global economy and vice versa.