cross border auction cycle effects of sovereign bond issuance in the euro area we provide evidence for the euro area of spillovers from foreign public debt auctions into domestic secondary market auction cycles we also confirm existing evidence of such spillovers from domestic issues into the domestic secondary market consistent with a theory of primary dealers limited risk bearing capacity we find that auction cycles from domestic issues are stronger during the recent crisis period whereas cross border effects are stronger in the precrisis period but this evidence is not strong this finding likely reflects the opposing effects of reduced sovereign bond market integration during the crisis and higher yield covariances caused by more market volatility

advertising and pricing policies in the equine breeding industry or sex and the single stallion a unique aspect of the equine breeding industry is the way in which the current year s demand for stud services depends on the previous year s production levels in a monopolistically competitive market product differentiation and product promotion and advertisement are important aspects of industry conduct a stallion s reputation and therefore demand for his services depend on the stallion owner s ability to differentiate the product the price a stallion owner charges depends on the quality of the stud himself and also on the quality of his offspring the producer s output foals become advertisements for the stallion when they are raced shown etc they also can become substitutes for the stallion since they are an alternative source of the stallion s genes stallion owners are in the special position that they need to prove their stallion s ability to sire quality offspring while bearing in mind they are producing possible substitutes outstanding offspring will generate demand for the parent s

banking panics information and rational expectations equilibrium this paper shows that bank runs can be modeled as an equilibrium phenomenon we demonstrate that some aspects of the intuitive story that bank runs start with fears of insolvency of banks can be rigorously modeled if individuals observe long lines at the bank they correctly infer that there is a possibility that the bank is about to fail and precipitate a bank run however bank runs occur even when no one has any adverse information extra market constraints such as suspension of convertibility can prevent bank runs and result in superior allocations banking panics were a recurrent phenomenon in the united states until the 1930s they have re emerged as a source of public concern and much theoretical research recently in this paper we provide an information theoretic rationale for bank runs the traditional story is that contagion is an important aspect of bank runs the idea seems to be that when the general public observes large withdrawals from the banking system fears of insolvency grow resulting in even larger withdrawals of deposits in our model some individuals withdraw because they get information that future returns are likely to be low uninformed individuals observing this also have an incentive to liquidate their investments in addition some individuals need to withdraw deposits for other than informationally based reasons thus if the random realization of such a group of individuals is unusually large then the uninformed individuals will be misled and will precipitate a run on the bank the technology is such that a large volume of withdrawals involves liquidation costs consequently runs on the bank do impose social costs a mechanism that may reduce these costs in our model is to suspend convertibility if withdrawals are high however those individuals who need to withdraw their assets for liquidity reasons are worse off ex post our model provides a rationalization for restrictions in demand deposits that were widespread prior to 1929 friedman and schwartz 7 suggest that restrictions of payments ensured

the impact of sovereign rating changes on the activity of european banks abstract we verify the effects of sovereign rating revisions on the activity of european banks in terms of their regulatory capital ratio profitability liquidity and lending supply first we find that a sovereign downgrade has a significant impact primarily on capital ratios and lending supply in contrast upgrades do not have a significant impact indicating an asymmetric effect of sovereign rating changes second we find that three transmission channels assets channel funding channel and rating channel explain a relevant part of the impact of a sovereign downgrade finally we find strong evidence that the rating based regulation affects all measures of the activity of domestic banks causing negative externalities for financial institutions our results hold also controlling for sovereign risk estimating a gmm system and employing an instrumental variable approach

corporate governance and the systemic risk a test of bundling hypothesis abstract we provide new evidence that the systemic risk of large banks is higher when the external and internal corporate governance mechanisms complement each other using a sample of large european banks from 2000 to 2016 we examine the relationship between various internal and external corporate governance mechanisms and the level of systemic risk specifically we analyze how monitoring by institutional investors complements or substitutes various board level governance mechanisms in determining systemic risk of a bank our empirical findings show that external institutional ownership and internal board level governance mechanisms complement each other to determine the level of systemic risk of a sample of domestic systemically important banks our results are robust to the alternative systemic risk measures and additional controls we conclude that banks have strategic flexibility in terms of configuring their corporate governance structures to attain similar levels of systemic risk

buyer behaviour in a regional thoroughbred yearling market this paper reports the results of an hedonic pricing analysis of a regional thoroughbred auction market adding to a literature which has been built mainly on data from elite auction markets the main contribution of the paper is the finding that the role of the dam in affecting yearling price elusive in the existing literature is shown to depend primarily on information about progeny performance rather than dam performance additional results confirm existing knowledge about the roles of the sire yearling sex and yearling age and support suspicions that race horses are consumer rather than investment goods

a real options approach to bankruptcy costs evidence from failed commercial banks during the 1990s literature identifies three main aspects of liquidation costs firm size asset specificity and industry concentration this paper unifies the theory behind these aspects of bankruptcy costs by treating them as components of a broader option valuation problem faced by the liquidating trustee testing the hypothesized asset price relationships on fdic failed bank liquidation data yields the appropriate results furthermore it appears that liquidation time alone can be used as an effective second order proxy for asset value growth where market value estimates are unavailable

contagion and banking crisis international evidence for 2007 2009 abstract policy makers aim to avoid banking crises and although they can to some extent control domestic conditions internationally transmitted crises are difficult to tackle this paper identifies international contagion in banking during the 2007 2009 crisis for 54 economies we identify three channels of contagion systematic idiosyncratic and volatility and find evidence for these in 45 countries banking crises are overwhelmingly associated with the presence of both systematic and idiosyncratic contagion the results reveal that crisis shocks transmitted from a foreign jurisdiction via idiosyncratic contagion increase the likelihood of a systemic crisis in the domestic banking system by almost 37 percent whereas increased exposure via systematic contagion does not necessarily destabilize the domestic banking system thus while policy makers and regulatory authorities are rightly concerned with the systematic transmission of banking crises reducing the potential for idiosyncratic contagion can importantly reduce the consequences for the domestic economy

diversification in banking is noninterest income the answer this paper assesses potential diversification benefits in the u s banking industry from the steady shift toward activities that generate fee income trading revenue and other types of noninterest income in the aggregate declining volatility of net operating revenue reflects reduced volatility of net interest income not diversification benefits from noninterest income which is quite volatile and increasingly correlated with net interest income at the bank level greater reliance on noninterest income particularly trading revenue is associated with lower risk adjusted profits and higher risk this suggests few obvious diversification benefits from the ongoing shift toward noninterest income

econometric issues in the analysis of contagion this paper presents a canonical econometric model of contagion and investigates the conditions under which contagion can be distinguished from inter dependence in a two country market set up it is shown that for a range of fundamentals the solution is not unique and for sufficiently large values of the contagion coefficients it has interesting bifurcation properties with bimodal density functions the extension of the model to herding behaviour is also briefly discussed to identify contagion effects in the presence of inter dependencies the equations for the individual markets or countries must contain country market specific forcing variables this sheds doubt on the general validity of the correlation based tests of contagions recently proposed in the literature which do not involve any country market specific fundamentals finally we show that ignoring inter dependence can introduce an upward bias in the estimate of the contagion coefficient and using monte carlo experiments we further show that this bias could be substantial

shipping the good horses out this paper formalizes the alchian allen 1964 theorem within a vertically differentiated goods general equilibrium model in contrast to the existing literature equilibrium prices depends on the transportation cost it shows that the eect of a xed transportation cost regardless of quality tilts the importing region s demand towards the consumption of higher quality goods the model extends the alchian allen theorem by showing that the strength of this eect depends on the importing region s endowment specically if the importing region is endowed with the imported goods of similar quality mix the eect is even stronger we also show that the importing region s market size and preferences matter to the strength of the eect using auction data of australian thoroughbred yearlings we conrm that better horses are shipped out further furthermore consistent with the model s prediction the strength of the alchian allen eect depends on the endowment of the importing regions

policy burdens accountability and the soft budget constraint in a socialist economy when a state owned enterprise soe incurs losses the government often provides it with additional funding cuts its taxes and offers other compensations coincidentally the managers of an soe also expect to receive financial assistance from the state such a phenomenon is called the soft budget constraint sbc a term coined by janos kornai 1986 kornai attributes many problems in a socialist economy to the existence of the sbc to achieve successful reform of both the soe s and socialist economies it is imperative to eliminate the sbc however the sbc phenomenon continues to exist in transitional economies even after soe s are privatized world bank 1996 p 45 there is a large literature on the sbc mathias dewatripont et al 1996 and eric maskin 1996 provide surveys on the recent literature according to kornai 1998 there are two types of explanations for the existence of the sbc the exogenous and endogenous explanations of the first type attribute the existence of the sbc to various exogenous reasons including the paternalism of a socialist state and the government s aims for job creation or for gaining political support kornai 1986 explanations of the second type view the sbc as an endogenous phenomenon arising from a time inconsistency problem dewatripont and maskin 1995 for an inefficient uncompleted investment project the state or creditor may have incentives to refinance the investment because the marginal benefit of refinancing exceeds the marginal cost of abandoning it yingyi qian 1994 attributed the shortage of goods in socialist economies to the sbc based on such a timeinconsistency argument in this paper we provide another explanation for the prevalence of the sbc in socialist and transitional economies we will argue that the sbc is rooted in the state s accountability problem the traditional stalinist system was designed to facilitate the establishment of certain strategic soe s which were not viable in a market system to establish the nonviable soe s a socialist government distorted the prices of all kinds of inputs and of outputs and used administrative measures to allocate these inputs and outputs according to plans however due to information and coordination problems the state could make wrong decisions regarding investment production and fail to deliver necessary materials and inputs in time consequently the state instead of soe s was accountable for the failures and needed to allocate additional credits and other assistance to the soe s in order to complete the investment and production as such the sbc arose after the transition to a market economy many strategic firms still remain nonviable in a market economy for strategic purposes the state needs to support these finns moreover most firms in a transitional economy carry many types of policy burdens inherited from the pretransition system lin et al 1998 because the state is accountable for the losses arising from policy burdens the sbc phenomenon persists in a market economy the state s attempts to build nonviable industry and the state s policy burdens on enterprises will also lead to sbc

the impact and the spillover effect of a sovereign rating announcement on the euro area cds market abstract this paper analyzes the impact and the spillover effect of a sovereign rating announcement on the euro area cds market through the event study technique we demonstrate that downgrades and upgrades considerably affect financial markets the relevance of the impact is due to the introduction of new information after a rating change announcement information discovery effect and to the role of rating in the current financial regulation certification effect conversely the cds market does not seem to react significantly to rating warning outlook and review announcements furthermore we find evidence of a spillover effect only after a downgrade announcement our results show that the size of the spillover effect is influenced by economic and financial conditions of analyzed countries and that international bank flows between emu members represent an important transmission channel of the spillover effect

realized co variances of eurozone sovereign yields during the crisis the impact of news and the securities markets programme we use realized variances and covariances based on intraday data to measure the dependence structure of eurozone sovereign yields our analysis focuses on the impact of news obtained from the eurointelligence newsflash on the dependence structure more news tends to raise the volatility of yields of financially distressed countries and to decrease the covariance of distressed countries yields with german bond yields suggesting a potential flight to quality effect common news about the euro crisis and news about specific countries tend to raise the covariance of yields between distressed countries indicating potential crisis spill over effects however we do not detect spillover effects from news about third countries to the covariance between other country pairs bond purchases by the ecb under its securities markets programme smp mitigate the negative crisis spillovers among the distressed countries and reduce the potential flight to quality from the distressed countries to germany

exotic betting opportunities pricing policies and the demand for parimutuel horse race wagering parimutuel horse race wagering has been declining steadily for the past several decades this has resulted in lower revenues to state governments recetracks adn horseman to retard or reverse this trend attempts have been made to implement a number of pricing and marketing strategies among these has been the introduction of a variety of exotic wagering opportunities over the years the number and type of exotic wagers offered has been increased furthermore the prices of both straight and exotic wagers have been increased and in addition the price of exotic wagers has generally been set at a higher rate than that for straight wagers the paper examines the effectiveness of these policies

what determines the price of a racing horse this article uses the data of 10 auctions from the two largest australian auction houses to study how a racing horse is priced we ask whether bloodline is indeed a determining factor we find that the track record of its parents and siblings are important factors in determining the price of a yearling moreover more mature horses and those purchased by foreign buyers are generally more expensive we also show that racing horses sold in the flagship auctions are associated with a significant premium

2002 lawrence r klein lecture liquidity and asset prices we broadly define liquid assets or monetary assets as any asset that can be readily sold in the market and can be held by a number of people in succession before maturity we ask in what environment is the circulation of liquid assets essential for the smooth running of the economy by developing a canonical model of a monetary economy i e where the circulation of liquid assets is essential we are able to examine the interaction between liquidity asset prices and aggregate economic activity

breeding to sell a hedonic price analysis of leading thoroughbred sire stud fees this article utilizes panel data on leading thoroughbred sires from 1999 until 2008 and estimates the determinants of their stud fees or the price paid for the rights to one breeding season and the marginal value of those characteristics using a fixed effects fe estimation procedure we find strong evidence of breeding to sell stud fees for established sires are determined primarily by the sales prices of their progeny other determinants include a sire s ability to produce sons who go on to become sires themselves current year progeny racing performance and cumulative racing performance of a sire s progeny

emerging market spreads then versus now we analyze yield spreads on sovereign bonds issued by emerging markets using modern data from the 1990s and newly collected historical data on bonds traded in london during 1870 1913 a previous era of global capital market integration we show that spreads today comove across emerging markets to a significantly higher degree than they did in the historical sample moreover sharp changes in spreads in the 1990s tend to be mostly related to global events whereas they were primarily related to country specific events in 1870 1913 although we find that fundamentals comove somewhat more strongly today than they did in the past we conjecture that today s investors pay less attention to country specific events than their predecessors did

the state dependent impact of bank exposure on sovereign risk abstract the theoretical literature remains inconclusive on whether changes in bank exposure to the domestic sovereign have an adverse effect on the sovereign risk position through a diabolic loop in the sovereign bank nexus or reduce perceived default risk by acting as a disciplinary device for the sovereign in this paper we empirically analyze the impact of exogenous changes in bank exposure on the risk position of the sovereign within a markov switching structural vector autoregressive in heteroscedasticity msh svar framework for a set of emu countries we add to the methodological literature by allowing for regime dependent shock transmissions according to the volatility state of the financial system finding support for both a stabilizing and a destabilizing effect we document a clear clustering among the country sample rising bank exposure increased default risk for the emu periphery but decreased credit risk for the core emu countries during times of financial stress

spillovers across european sovereign credit markets and role of surprise and uncertainty we identify the network structure of spillovers and time varying spillover intensities across european sovereign credit markets proposing a novel copula granger causality based structural vector au

transportation costs and product demand wagering on parimutuel horse racing parimutuel horse race wagering is in many respects like any other economic good but it differs in one important way from a vast majority of them given the present market arrangement this good cannot be transported to the consumer instead the consumer must travel to the production site where the good is consumed as it is produced thus transportation costs must play a crucial role in the demand decision for horse race wagering the consumers incur not only out of pocket expenses for travelling but also the cost of the time required to travel to and to consume the product moreover consumers incur differential costs in obtaining the same product because of their locational differences wagering demands are theorized to be the consequence of the choice of utility maximizing consumers which incorporates this special characteristic of the product models for parimutuel horse race wagering are then estimated both for thoroughbred and for harness horse racing in the state of new jersey it is found that bot

distinguishing panics and information based bank runs welfare and policy implications in this paper we contrast panics and information based bank runs in an effort to provide a robust and empirically plausible model of how bank runs are triggered the model of information based runs is characterized by two sided asymmetric information the bank cannot observe the true liquidity needs of the depositors while depositors are asymmetrically informed about bank asset quality we also examine the relative degrees of risk sharing provided by bank deposit contracts and traded equity contracts we show that the choice of deposit or equity depends on the attributes of and information about the underlying investment returns

the relative impact of macroeconomic and yearling specific variables in determining thoroughbred yearling price the present study is the first to examine the relative importance of macroeconomic and yearling specific variables on the price of thoroughbred yearlings regression results indicated that it is the yearling specific variables that are more influential in explaining yearling price yet both types of variables are important the main explanatory variables are the stud fee of the yearlingan s sire and the annual gross total dollar purchases of thoroughbred yearlings by foreign investors

the fragile capital structure of hedge funds and the limits to arbitrage abstract during a financial crisis when investors are most in need of liquidity and accurate prices hedge funds cut their arbitrage positions and hoard cash the paper explains this phenomenon we argue that the fragile nature of the capital structure of hedge funds combined with low market liquidity creates a risk of coordination in redemptions among hedge fund investors that severely limits hedge funds arbitrage capabilities we present a model of hedge funds optimal asset allocation in the presence of coordination risk among investors we show that hedge fund managers behave conservatively and even abstain from participating in the market once coordination risk is factored into their investment decisions the model suggests a new source of limits to arbitrage

do banks have a future abstract are banks special intermediaries do they play any unique role in the economy and if so will they retain their specialness in the ever faster changing world of finance the rapid evolution of finance over the last two decades and the breathtaking e age revolution have persuaded many that eventually banks will be indistinguishable from other financial intermediaries since all their functions can at least as efficiently be carried out by nonbanks this study re explores the issue of the specialness of banks in light of the large existing literature on the subject and presents an approach which identifies the banks specialness with their unique capacity to lend out claims on their own debt which the public accepts and uses as money the study discusses various structural and policy implications deriving from the approach and draws on it to point to the continuing relevance of banking in a world where nonbanks are taking business away from banks lending to production has become relatively less important and the use of e money may soon be dominating financial transactions

breeding incentive programmes and demand for california thoroughbred racing is there a quality quantity tradeoff both quantity of horses and quality stimulate demand for horse race gambling this paper addresses the potential for a quantity quality tradeoff due to breeding incentives for california thoroughbreds econometric analysis is used to assess the demand for quality and quantity of horses and results suggest the likely net benefit of breeding incentives on the industry at large

what factors drive systemic risk during international financial crises abstract we analyze the determinants of the contribution of international banks to both global and local systemic risk during prominent financial crises we find no empirical evidence supporting conjectures that bank size leverage non interest income or the quality of the bank s credit portfolio are persistent determinants of systemic risk across financial crises in contrast our results show that global systemic risk in particular is predominantly driven by characteristics of the regulatory regime we also confirm for the subprime crisis that the banks contribution to moderately bad tail events in the past predicts the financial sector s crash risk

financial intermediation and delegated monitoring this paper develops a theory of financial intermediation based on minimizing the cost of monitoring information which is useful for resolving incentive problems between borrowers and lenders it presents a characterization of the costs of providing incentives for delegated monitoring by a financial intermediary diversification within an intermediary serves to reduce these costs even in a risk neutral economy the paper presents some more general analysis of the effect of diversification on resolving incentive problems in the environment assumed in the model debt contracts with costly bankruptcy are shown to be optimal the analysis has implications for the portfolio structure and capital structure of intermediaries

price setting in the euro area some stylized facts from individual producer price data this paper summarizes the microevidence on the setting of producer prices in the euro area the main findings are i 21 of producer prices are adjusted each month ii producer prices are changed more frequently and by smaller amounts than consumer prices even after controlling for product characteristics iii price decreases are relatively frequent iv inflation correlates positively with the difference between the frequency of price increases and decreases and v there is substantial variation in price flexibility across sectors which can be explained in part by differences in the cost structure the degree of competition and the level of sectoral inflation

delegated monitors large and small germany s banking system 1800 1914 banks play a greater role in the german financial system than in those of the united states or britain germany s large universal banks are admired by those who advocate bank deregulation in the united states others admire the universal banks for their supposed role in corporate governance and industrial finance many discussions distort the german banking system by overstressing one of several types of banks and ignore the competition and cooperation between the famous universal banks and other banking groups tracing the historical development of the german banking system from the early nineteenth century places the large universal banks in context

sovereign risk premiums in the european government bond market this paper provides a study of bond yield differentials among eu government bonds issued between 1993 and 2005 on the basis of a unique dataset of issue spreads in the us and dm euro bond market interest differentials between bonds issued by eu countries and germany or the usa contain risk premiums which increase with fiscal imbalances and depend negatively on the issuer s relative bond market size the start of the european monetary union has shifted market attention to debt service payments as the key measure of indebtedness and eliminated liquidity premiums in the euro area

the role of demandable debt in structuring optimal banking arrangements demandable debt finance by banks warrants explanation because it entails costs of bank suspension liquidation and idle reserve holdings an explanation is developed in which demandable debt provides incentive compatible intermediation where the banker has comparative advantage in allocating investment funds but may act against the interests of uninformed depositors demandable debt attracts funds by giving depositors an option to force liquidation its usefulness in transacting follows from information sharing between monitors and nonmonitors copyright 1991 by american economic association

risk financial stability and fdi all foreign direct investment fdi involves risk augmenting the international finance literature we assess the effects of financial system risk on fdi trends through considering both origin and host country effects motivated by the sovereign debt crisis and based on a dataset including bilateral fdi holdings this paper investigates the implications of sovereign and bank related risk on fdi in the eurozone strikingly we find that in terms of banking risk it is only that encountered in the country of origin that has an impact on fdi choices however we find that sovereign risk in both origin and host countries have effects as a corollary we suggest that although poor financial discipline by host governments has been widely blamed as the primary factor likely to frighten off overseas investors it is amongst fdi supplying nations that the effects of sovereign yields seem most pronounced policymakers in countries seeking to attract fdi should not only be attentive to domestic conditions but also be aware of the financing environment that multinational enterprises mnes encounter in their home countries and how this might impact on their choices

a state space approach to measuring the impact of sovereign and credit risk on interest rate convergence in the euro area this paper employs a time varying parameter state space model to explore the impact of the crisis on bank retail rates in the euro area we show that convergence in interest rates has been adversely affected by the crisis and quantify the role of sovereign and credit risk as two alternative explanations for the increase in financial fragmentation a key finding is that the heterogeneity in sovereign risk across member states accounts for a sizable part of the increase in the cross sectional dispersion of various lending and deposit rates in contrast the impact of the increased heterogeneity in credit risk on bank retail rates is negligible our results suggest that efforts to reduce sovereign tensions as exemplified by the ecb s omt program may help to reduce financial fragmentation we compare the impact of sovereign and credit risk measures on bank retail rates in the euro area during the crisis to this end we use a time varying parameter state space model we investigate both lending and deposit rates we find that heterogeneity in sovereign risk accounts for a sizable part of the increase in the dispersion of retail rates in contrast the impact of heterogeneity in credit risk is negligible

the impact of monetary policy announcements on the stock price of large european banks during the financial crisis abstract since 2007 the european central bank responded decisively to the challenges posed by the global financial crisis reducing key policy interest rates to unprecedented low levels and intervening with non standard policy measures i e monetary easing and liquidity provision this paper aims to assess the impact of ecb monetary policy announcements on the stock price of large european banks as a first step an event study is conducted in order to measure cumulated abnormal returns cars around the announcements over june 2007 june 2013 the second step is a regression analysis aimed at identifying the determinants of cars results show that banks were more sensitive to non conventional measures than to interest rate decisions and that the same type of intervention may have a different impact depending on the stage of the crisis in addition banks with weaker balance sheets and operating with high risk were more sensitive to monetary policy interventions

the shadow costs of repos and bank liability structure making use of a structural model that allows for optimal liquidity management we study the role that repos play in a bank s financing structure in our model the bank s assets consist of illiquid loans and liquid reserves and are financed by a combination of repos long term debt deposits and equity repos are a cheap source of funding but they are subject to an exogenous rollover risk we show that the use of repos inflicts two types of indirect shadow costs on the bank s shareholders first it induces the bank to maintain higher liquid reserves in order to alleviate the additional default risk second it adds to the cost of long term debt financing these shadow costs limit the bank s appetite for cheap but unstable repo funding this effect is however weakened under poor returns on risky assets access to deposit funding and the depositor preference rule we also analyze the impact of a liquidity coverage ratio payout restrictions and a leverage ratio on the bank s financing choices and show that all these tools are able to curb the bank s reliance on repos

ready to run price determinants of thoroughbreds from 2 year olds in training sales abstractthis article utilizes data from the complete set of u s thoroughbred 2 year old in training sales held in 2013 and estimates the determinants of prices for 1806 two year old thoroughbreds the results reveal that the time in which these prospective racehorses run a standardized distance is the most statistically significant determinant of market price other individual horse characteristics pedigree quality variables and sale quality are also found to be price determinants an additional result of interest is the significant premium buyers are willing to pay for horses by sires of unknown quality

a dynamic model of soft budget constraint abstract we study the soft budget constraint by dynamic models and conclude that the soft budget constraint originated in the investment activities do not match the profit function and policy burdens will intensify the soft budget constraint

crash risk of the euro in the sovereign debt crisis of 2009 2010 the economic political instability of a country which is tied to its credit risk often leads to sharp depreciation and heightened volatility in its currency this paper shows that not only the creditworthiness of the euro area countries with weaker fiscal positions but also that of the member countries with more sound fiscal positions are important determinants of the deep out of the money euro put option prices which embedded information on the euro crash risk during the sovereign debt crisis of 2009 2010 we also find evidence of information flow from the sovereign credit default swap market to the currency option market during the crisis

credit and efficiency in centralized and decentralized economies we study a credit model where because of adverse selection unprofitable projects may nevertheless be financed indeed they may continue to be financed even when shown to be low quality if sunk costs have already been incurred we show that credit decentralization offers a way for creditors to commit not to refinance such projects thereby discouraging entrepreneurs from undertaking them initially thus decentralization provides financial discipline nevertheless we argue that it puts too high a premium on short term returns the model seems pertinent to two issues soft budget constraint problems in centralized economies and differences between anglo saxon and german japanese financing practices

a primer on financial contagion abstract this paper presents a theoretical framework to highlight possible channels for the international transmission of financial shocks we first review the different definitions and measures of contagion adopted by the literature we then use a simple multi country asset pricing model to classify the main elements of the current debate on contagion and provide a stylized account of how a crisis in one country can spread to the world economy in particular the model shows how crises can be transmitted across countries without assuming ad hoc portfolio management rules or market imperfections finally tracking our classification we survey the results of the empirical literature on contagion

free banking and information asymmetry a traditional argument against free banking is that it will collapse because of information externalities it is impossible for depositors to tell whether a high deposit rate offered by a bank is due to its high efficiency or risky lending strategy this paper shows that in a separating equilibrium a higher quality bank offers a lower deposit rate and holds a smaller proportion of risky loans than a lower quality bank to signal its underlying quality hence free banking is not inherently unstable the empirical results for the hong kong banking system during 1964 65 are consistent with the hypothesis of a separating equilibrium

systemic risk in european sovereign debt markets a covar copula approach abstract we studied systemic risk in european sovereign debt markets before and after the onset of the greek debt crisis taking the conditional value at risk covar as a systemic risk measure characterized and computed using copulas we found that before the debt crisis sovereign debt markets were all coupled and systemic risk was similar for all countries however with the onset of the greek crisis debt markets decoupled and the systemic risk of the countries in crisis excepting spain for the european debt market as a whole decreased whereas that of the non crisis countries increased to a small degree the systemic risk of the greek debt market for other countries in difficulties increased especially for portugal where systemic risk tripled after the onset of the crisis whereas the systemic impact on the non crisis countries decreased

building an incentive compatible safety net abstract bank safety nets originally proposed as a means of stabilizing financial systems have become an important destabilizing influence government protection of bank debts encourages banks to undertake excessive risk particularly in response to adverse shocks to asset values reforms that would remove the destabilizing moral hazard consequences of government protection are considered both from the perspective of economic desirability and political feasibility requiring banks to maintain a minimal proportion of subordinated debt finance and restricting the means by which government recapitalization of insolvent banks occurs are the central features of promising reforms to the safety net

the role of interbank markets in monetary policy a model with rationing the empirical research on monetary transmission has reported a number of puzzles challenging extant theoretical models of the transmission mechanism in this paper we argue that asymmetric information in the interbank market may be important to have a better understanding of the mechanisms at work in the transmission process we show that asymmetric information may induce an equilibrium with rationing this in turn has two major implications first it reconciles the apparent irresponsiveness of business investment to the user cost of capital with the large impact of monetary policy magnitude puzzle and second it shows that this impact will not be limited to short term credit supply but will also affect long term lending even if the corresponding interest rate is unaffected composition puzzle

the life cycle of a microfinance institution the irish loan funds abstract ireland s loan funds were a long lived self sustaining large scale microfinance organization that made millions of loans without collateral to the poor during the first 100 years of their life cycle a period of growth ending in the 1840s they adapted constantly and obtained improvements to their legal structure because they were complementary to the banking system and seen as effective in relieving poverty in their 2nd century they became ossified in part because of competition with commercial banks the loan funds provide an example of sustainable microfinance under harsh economic conditions and illustrate how organizations change incrementally and when successful alter their institutional framework

reputation in an internet auction market i introduction without transmission of credible information asymmetries may lead to underproduction of goods or even market failure reputation mitigates inefficiencies associated with information asymmetries by providing an informative signal of quality 1 the difficulty in quantifying reputation means that few studies can analyze empirically the role of reputation in markets our analysis of a quantified market observed measure of reputation provides direct evidence of the effect of a seller s reputation on the terms of a onetime real world transaction thereby contributing empirical support to a fundamental economic principle this study empirically examines person to person transactions within the internet market known as ebay in this virtual market of unseen participants and products buyers and sellers face the risks of repudiation as the counter party may deny the agreement after the fact buyers assume risks associated with lack of seller integrity and asymmetric information about the particular product as the buyer is typically required to send payment before the seller ships the product in addition for many ebay transactions the cost of enforcing a contract is high relative to the transaction s value resulting in a practical absence of legal enforcement 2 by providing a history of trade execution information ebay benefits market participants by reducing information asymmetries while achieving substantial transaction cost economies market participants relate personal experiences which ebay uses to calculate a numerical reputation measure for each user market participants in turn can use this reputation measure to assess counter party risk and adjust bidding behavior accordingly in a sample of 460 auctions held between january 1998 and july 1998 we find a positive relation between prices and ebay s reputation measure higher reputation sellers experience higher auction prices ceteris paribus our findings suggest that repeat players are rewarded for building reputation consistent with the belief that the high reputation seller s value of future transactions outweighs the value of taking advantage of the buyer in the current transaction buyers are willing to pay more to a higher reputation seller this article contributes to the literature not only by providing quantitative support of long accepted reputation theories but also by illustrating the use of nontraditional markets as a natural laboratory for experiments this article is an example of how a newly formed electronic market can provide the elements necessary for analytical research we find that ebay transactions for this item exhibit characteristics similar to transactions in more conventional markets namely 1 prices are higher when there is less quantity supplied when fewer of the items are available the same day 2 prices are lower during periods of lower demand times less likely to have high traffic 3 sellers with higher shipping and handling costs receive lower prices and 4 sellers failing to provide information about shipping and handling fees i e larger information asymmetries receive fewer bids dramatic innovations in online market structure and increasing availability of online market data should enable researchers to examine directly other traditionally non quantifiable economic ideas this article is organized as follows section ii describes how reputation can be used to facilitate transactions in the presence of asymmetric information section iii describes the ebay market summarizes the listing and bidding processes and discusses the reputation mechanism for this market section iv presents the price and reputation descriptive statistics associated with a consistently auctioned item and reports the empirical findings of how this item s highest bid price varies with the level of the seller s reputation we conclude in section v with a discussion of ebay s continued attempts to add value to the market through recent structural changes

bank sovereign risk spillovers in the european debt crisis this paper investigates contagion between bank risk and sovereign risk in europe over the period 2006 2011 since this period covers various stages of the banking and sovereign crisis it oers a fertile ground to analyze bank sovereign risk spillovers we de ne contagion as excess correlation i e correlation between banks and sovereigns over and above what is explained by common factors using cds spreads at the bank and at the sovereign level moreover we investigate the determinants of contagion by analyzing bank speci c as well as country speci c variables and their interaction we provide empirical evidence that various contagion channels are at work including a strong home bias in bank bond portfolios using the eba s disclosure of sovereign exposures of banks we nd that banks with a weak capital and or funding position are particularly vulnerable to risk spillovers at the country level the debt ratio is the most important driver of contagion

the influence of rating levels and rating convergence on the spillover effects of sovereign credit actions abstract this paper assesses contagion and competition as alternative types of stock market spillovers arising from sovereign rating actions our research design is based on the premise that the type of spillover effects within and between groups of countries will be influenced by the sovereign rating level split ratings and the extent of rating convergence i e specific types of rating action will induce different and or stronger effects the results reveal a clear pattern whereby downgrades of high rated countries induce contagion to both high and low rated countries while downgrades of low rated countries reveal the opposite i e they induce competitive effects split ratings are found to intensify stock market spillover effects rating convergence divergence across similarly rated sovereigns has a meaningful influence on the spillover effects for the downgrades of high rated countries rating convergence mitigates the contagion effect to other high rated countries in the region but has very limited effect on the contagion to low rated countries for downgrades of low rated countries rating convergence strengthens the competitive effect on other low rated countries but has little effect on the competitive impact on high rated countries

who borrows from the lender of last resort understanding why banks borrow from the lender of last resort lolr during a nancial crisis is crucial to understanding the macroeconomic impact of such largescale interventions we document a strong divergence among banks take up of lolr assistance during the nancial crisis in the euro area as banks which borrowed heavily also used increasingly risky collateral we propose four explanations for this divergence

too many to fail evidence of regulatory forbearance when the banking sector is weak this paper studies bank failures in 21 emerging market countries in the 1990s by using a competing risk hazard model for bank survival we show that a government is less likely to take over or close a failing bank if the banking system is weak this too many to fail effect is robust to controlling for macroeconomic factors financial crises the too big to fail effect domestic financial development and concerns due to systemic risk and information spillovers the paper also shows that the too many to fail effect is stronger for larger banks and when there is a large government budget deficit