Search results for "Monetary economics"
showing 10 items of 361 documents
Microfinance
2013
This chapter gives the reader an introduction to microfinance and reports how the industry has moved from generally being praised to increasingly being criticized. Particularly, the chapter addresses the concern that microfinance institutions chase profits and are moving away from the poor-customer segments. The authors' findings indicate that rather than being an industry with high profits, the industry struggles with high costs and low earnings. They also find that the focus on serving poor customers did not change over time. Thus, the ‘mission drift’ claim cannot be confirmed.
Going Public – Going Private: The Case of VC-Backed Firms
2012
We investigate the decisions of listed firms to go private once again. We start by revealing that while a significant number of firms which go public is VC-backed, an overproportional share of these VC-backed firms go private later on (they stay on the exchange for an average of 8.5 years). We interpret this very robust pattern such that IPOs of VC-backed firms are to a large extent a temporary rather than a permanent feature of the corporate governance of these firms.We investigate various potential hypotheses why VCs actually seem to be able to bring marginal firms to the exchange by relating the going-private decisions to various characteristics of the IPO market as well as to VC charact…
The Effect of Credit Rating Events on the Emerging CDS Market
2017
We document the cross-border spillover impact of S&P sovereign credit rating events on sovereign CDS using an extensive sample of emerging economies. First, we find on average a competition (imitation) effect of downgrades (upgrades) among emerging portfolios. Results confirms that non-event portfolios responds positively to credit deteriorations in terms of an improvement in sovereign credit risk. Second, the sovereign credit risk of non-event countries within the same portfolio benefit (suffer) from downgrades (upgrades). As expected, this implies a competition effect in terms of sovereign credit risk. Moreover, we find that downgrades are more likely to spill over into other emerging mar…
Credit risk and efficiency in the European banking system: A three-stage analysis
2002
Increased competition and the attempts of European banks to increase their presence in other markets may have affected the efficiency and credit risk in the banking system. The first aspect is the incentive in reducing costs in order to gain in competitiveness. The second is associated with their lack of knowledge of such markets and/ or acceptance of a higher risk in order to increase their market share. Despite the importance of these aspects, banking literature has usually analysed the effects of competition on the efficiency of banking systems without considering these aspects. The few studies that attempt to obtain risk adjusted efficiency measures do not consider that part of the risk…
Will Basel II Affect International Capital Flows To Emerging Markets?
2004
This paper investigates the consequences of Basel II for international capital flows to emerging markets. The paper shows that the magnitude of effects critically depends on a number of assumptions, including: the mapping of risk weights to ratings, assumptions about required return on capital, assumptions about competition and diversion effects and the assumption that minimum capital requirements are binding constraints. The paper provides evidence on each of these assumptions and estimates their effect on interest margins and bank flows.Overall the results suggest that Basel II - taking into account the "Potential Modifications" of November 2001 - will have only a moderate impact on inter…
Empirical Evidence on the Relationship between Mobile Termination Rates and Firms' Profits
2015
The theoretical literature on mobile termination rates (MTRs) is inconclusive on how the level of MTRs affects overall consumer charges and firms' profits. We show that when firms offer bundles with fixed included usage – a tariff structure that has become more common in recent years – an identical change in all MTRs does not affect firms' retail prices or profits. We use a panel dataset from saturated European markets to estimate the effect of MTRs on mobile operators' profits. As predicted by the theoretical model, we cannot reject the fact that firms' profits are unaffected by an identical change in all MTRs.
SOCIAL CAPITAL AND BANK PERFORMANCE: AN INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON FOR OECD COUNTRIES
2008
Over the last few years the literature on social capital and bank efficiency analysis has expanded rapidly. We merge them by analysing how social capital affects bank efficiency in OECD countries. We use activity analysis techniques to measure efficiency, and social capital, which is related to the concept of generalized trust, is considered an environmental variable. Results suggest that the effect of social capital is more relevant for those financial institutions operating in low-social-capital environments. In these cases, inefficiencies are biased upwards, and controlling for social capital enables these banks to move up in the efficiency rankings.
Banking Competition, Housing Prices and Macroeconomic Stability
2012
We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model with an imperfectly competitive bank-loans market and collateral constraints that tie investors credit capacity to the value of their real estate holdings. Banks set optimal lending rates taking into account the effects of their price policies on their market share and on the volume of funds demanded by each customer. Lending margins have a significant effect on aggregate variables. Over the long run, fostering banking competition increases total consumption and output by triggering a reallocation of available collateral towards investors. However, as regards the short-run dynamics, we find that most macroeconomic variables are more responsive …
Government consumption volatility and the size of nations
2016
This paper analyzes the relation between government consumption volatility and country size. Using an unbalanced sample of 160 countries from 1960 to 2010, it finds that smaller countries have more volatile government consumption. Moreover, while this relation is more negative for more volatile economies, there is also evidence that smaller countries have more volatile government consumption even controlling for the level of volatility in the economy.
Money in an Estimated Business Cycle Model of the Euro Area
2006
We present maximum likelihood estimates of a small scale dynamic general equilibrium model for the Eurozone. We pay special attention to the role of money, both through its direct effect upon private agents’ decisions and as a component of the monetary policy rule. Our results can be summarized as follows. First, we find no direct effect of money upon inflation and output but money growth plays a significant role in the interest rate rule. Second, money demand shocks mainly help to forecast real balances while real shocks explain the bulk of price, output and interest rates fluctuations. Third, the estimated model predicts sensible conditional correlations among those variables both to dema…