In this paper, we investigate competition in banking systems in the EU27 as a whole for the period 2004-2010, but also for old members' banking systems compared with new members' banking systems and for banking systems from countries member of euro zone compares with banking systems from countries non-member of euro zone. In order to investigate this issue, we estimate a non-structural indicator of banking competition, using the H-statistic indicator that is estimated using bank-level data. Also, we apply two tests of convergence, ?- and ?-convergence, for assessing competition evolution during the specified period. We want to fill the gap in the banking literature testing the validity of the Competition-Efficiency Hypothesis, analysing the impact of the banking competition measures on two alternative measures of efficiency, cost and profit efficiency, in the European banking systems in a Granger-causality manner. The results confirm us that in the EU the convergence process occur from the banking systems with higher competition level than the mean score of all countries. The evidence for all groups of countries, except non-euro zone group, where results are not statistically significant, confirm the Competition-Efficiency Hypothesis in terms of cost and profit efficiency.
This study analyses Granger-causality between the return series of CPI and PPI (i.e., inflation measured by CPI and PPI) for Romania, by using monthly data covering the period of 1991m1 to 2011m11. To analyse the issue in depth, this study decomposes the time-frequency relationship between CPI- and PPI-based inflation through a continuous wavelet approach. Our results provide strong evidence that there are cyclical effects from variables (as variables are observed in phase), while anti-cyclical effects are not observed.
In this paper, we investigate the relation between firm-level corporate governance and firm value based on a large and previously unused dataset from Governance Metrics International (GMI) comprising 6,663 firm-year observations from 22 developed countries over the period from 2003 to 2007. Based on a set of 64 individual governance attributes we construct two alternative additive corporate governance indices with equal weights attributed to the governance attributes and one index derived from a principal component analysis. For all three indices we find a strong and positive relation between firm-level corporate governance and firm valuation. In addition, we investigate the value relevance of governance attributes that document the companies' social behavior. Regardless of whether these attributes are considered individually or aggregated into indices, and even when "standard" corporate governance attributes are controlled for, they exhibit a positive and significant effect on firm value. Our findings are robust to alternative calculation procedures for the corporate governance indices and to alternative estimation techniques.
In this paper, we construct the three-factor model introduced by Chen et al. (2010) for a European sample covering 10 countries from the European Monetary Union and the period from 1990 to 2006. Two key findings result. First, we show that the properties of the European factors are comparable to those of the U.S. factors. Second, we show that the alternative three-factor model's explanatory power is either equal or superior to the explanatory power of traditional models when applied to five commonly known stock market anomalies.
Our results thus suggest the use of international versions of the Chen et al. (2010) factor model in addition to traditional factor models in international empirical finance research.
We investigate the relationship between pension fund governance and investment performance. For this purpose, we develop the Swiss Pension Fund Governance Index (SPGI) which is a standard metric for the governance quality of Swiss pension funds. The empirical analysis is based on a sample of 96 pension funds with total assets of more than CHF 190 billion. We find evidence for governance issues in the area organization and target setting. Our results support the widespread hypothesis of a positive relationship between pension fund governance and investment performance.
We investigate the performance of domestic and international bond and equity portfolios of Swiss pension funds and investment foundations over the period of 1996 to 2006. Our sample consists of 73 pension funds and 13 investment foundations with total assets of more than CHF 200 billion. We find some indications for superior skills of security selection and timing by pension funds in international bond management even net of costs for asset management and fund administration. In contrast, we find a significant net underperformance for domestic bonds, domestic equities and international equities. For investment foundations, we find a significant net underperformance for domestic bonds and international equities, whereas for international bonds and domestic equities the null hypothesis of neither significant out- or underperformance cannot be rejected. Finally, we find no evidence of persistence in the performance of Swiss pension funds and investment foundations.
