off the cliff and back credit conditions and international trade during the global financial crisis abstract we study the collapse of international trade flows during the global financial crisis using detailed data on monthly us imports we show that credit conditions were an important channel through which the crisis affected trade volumes by exploiting the variation in the cost of capital across countries and over time as well as the variation in financial vulnerability across sectors countries with higher interbank rates and thus tighter credit markets exported less to the us during the peak of the crisis this effect was especially pronounced in sectors that require extensive external financing have limited access to trade credit or have few collateralizable assets exports of financially vulnerable industries were thus more sensitive to the cost of external capital than exports of less vulnerable industries and this sensitivity rose during the financial crisis the quantitative implications of our estimates for trade volumes highlight the large real effects of financial crises and the potential gains from policy intervention

the spatial and temporal diffusion of house prices in the uk abstract this paper provides a method for the analysis of the spatial and temporal diffusion of shocks in a dynamic system we use changes in real house prices within the uk economy at the level of regions to illustrate its use adjustment to shocks involves both a region specific and a spatial effect shocks to a dominant region london are propagated contemporaneously and spatially to other regions they in turn impact on other regions with a delay we allow for lagged effects to echo back to the dominant region london in turn is influenced by international developments through its link to new york and other financial centers it is shown that new york house prices have a direct effect on london house prices we analyse the effect of shocks using generalised spatio temporal impulse responses these highlight the diffusion of shocks both over time as with the conventional impulse responses and over space

exchange rate management and manufactured exports in sub saharan africa this paper presents an overview of the evolution of exchange rate regimes in africa and then attempts to assess empirically the impact of exchange rate policy on manufactured export performance on a panel of major sub saharan africa countries over the 1970 92 period we examine the impact of three exchange rate policy indicators real effective exchangerate changes real exchange rate volatility and model based measures of real exchange rate misalignment export supply functions are estimated for three manufacturing industries textile chemicals and metals and two exchange rate regimes a fixed rates regime including six cfa franc countries and a more flexible regime represented by five non cfa countries our findings show that exchange rate management matters for export performance this is evidenced both by the significant impact of changes in the real effective exchange rate and by the negative influence exerted independently by real exchange rate misalignment on the

the propagation of regional recessions this paper develops a framework for inferring common markov switching components in a panel data set with large cross section and time series dimensions we apply the framework to studying similarities and dierences across u s states in the timing of business cycles we hypothesize that there exists a small number of cluster designations with individual states in a given cluster sharing certain business cycle characteristics we nd that although oil producing and agricultural states can sometimes experience a separate recession from the rest of the united states for the most part dierences across states appear to be a matter of timing with some states entering recession or recovering before others jel c11 c32 e32

explaining the spatial variation in housing prices an economic geography approach housing prices vary geographically even between neighbouring municipalities local differences can be attributed to differences in socio economic variables and real estate characteristics this article argues that one should additionally take into account the geographical location of municipalities in particular housing prices are affected by distance and travel time to important economic centres offering jobs and extensive services following the economic geography literature we develop a model showing the explicit impact of geographical barriers on housing prices as such we distinguish ourselves from the existing literature on the dynamics of housing prices since geographical elements are fairly constant over time we estimate our model on municipality level housing prices for all 589 belgian municipalities in 2001 we also differentiate between the two main regions of belgium flanders and wallonia our empirical results confirm expectations geographical barriers have significantly negative eff

firm size and the nature of innovation within industries the case of process and product r d the effect of firm size on the allocation of r d effort between process and product innovation is examined it is hypothesized that relative to product innovations process innovations are less saleable in disembodied form and spawn less growth this implies that the returns to process r d will depend more on the firm s output at the time it conducts its r d than the returns to product r d incorporating this distinction in a simple model the authors derive and test predictions about how the fraction of r d devoted to process innovation varies with firm size within industries

empirical studies of financial innovation lots of talk little action this paper reviews the extant empirical studies of financial innovation adopting broad criteria we could find only somewhat more than two dozen studies and since some financial innovations are examined by more than one study they cover only seventeen phenomena especially striking is the fact that only two studies offer tests of the broad hypotheses concerning the environmental conditions spurring financial innovation e g regulation taxes unstable macroeconomic conditions and ripe technologies that have been advanced in descriptive articles we offer some tentative conjectures as to why empirical studies of financial innovation are comparatively rare among our suggested culprits is an absence of accessible data we urge financial regulators to undertake more surveys of financial innovation and to make the survey data more available to researchers

when credit bites back using data on 14 advanced countries between 1870 and 2008 we document two key facts of the modern business cycle relative to typical recessions financial crisis recessions are costlier and more credit intensive expansions tend to be followed by deeper recessions in financial crises or otherwise and slower recoveries we use local projection methods to condition on a broad set of macro economic controls to study how past credit accumulation impacts key macro economic variables such as output investment lending interest rates and inflation the facts that we uncover lend support to the idea that financial factors play an important role in the modern business cycle

the spatial dimension of us house prices spatial heterogeneity and spatial dependence are two well established aspects of house price developments however the analysis of differences in spatial dependence across time and space has not gained much attention yet this paper jointly analyses these three aspects of spatial data a panel smooth transition regression model is applied that allows for heterogeneity across time and space in spatial house price spillovers and for heterogeneity in the effect of the fundamentals on house price dynamics evidence is found for heterogeneity in spatial spillovers of house prices across space and time house prices in neighbouring regions spill over more in times of increasing neighbouring house prices then when neighbouring house prices are declining this is interpreted as evidence for the disposition effect moreover heterogeneity in the effect of the fundamentals on house price dynamics could not be detected for all variables real per capita disposable income and the unemployment rate have a homogeneous

the performance of internet based business models evidence from the banking industry the initial internet bank startups tended to underperform branching bank startups this suggested that internet only business models were not economically viable for banks however firms that pioneer new business models may benefit substantially from experience as they grow older and firms that use automated production technologies may benefit from scale effects as they grow larger econometric analysis of internet only bank startups finds strong evidence of the latter but not the former effect the results suggest that internet only banking success depends on attaining sufficient scale and strong management practices

banking scope and financial innovation we explore the implications of financial system design for financial innovation we begin with assumptions about the investment opportunities of firms their observable attributes and the roles of commercial banks investment banks and the financial market we examine the borrower s choice between bank and financial market funding the commercial bank s choice of monitoring capacity and the investment bank s choice of whether to invest in financial innovation our main result is that financial innovation in a universal banking system is stochastically lower than innovation in a financial system in which commercial and investment banks are functionally separated article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

determinants of banks risk exposure to new account fraud evidence from germany abstract this paper studies empirically the determinants of new account fraud risk within two dimensions the probability of fraud and the expected and unexpected monetary loss per account due to fraud by fraud risk we mean the risk that a bank fails to enforce a debt because the identity of the person incurring the debt cannot be ascertained using a unique and rich data set of account applicants provided by a german internet only bank we find that fraud risk is highly sensitive to demographic and socio economic variables like nationality gender marital status age occupation and urbanisation for example foreigners are 22 25 times more likely to commit account fraud than germans and men are 2 5 times more risky than women

systemic risks and the too big to fail problem the financial crisis of 2007 9 resulted in state intervention in financial markets around the world and the state became a major shareholder in many banks while state bailouts were politically sensitive policy makers had little alternative but to supply funds to financial institutions that were viewed as too big to fail or tbtf in this paper i review the history of and the rationale for the tbtf policy i argue that from a policy perspective the most important costs of the tbtf problem are incurred ex ante in the form of distorted incentives that arise as a consequence of distortions to the capital markets and to the choice of banks scale and scope i argue that it is impossible credibly to withdraw the tbtf policy and hence that it should be managed so as to minimize the costs of these distortions in this context i discuss the role of policy in institutional design in the restriction of bank scope and in designing appropriate capital regulations

is the internet delivery channel changing banks performance the case of spanish banks abstract in spite of the conspicuous use of the internet as a delivery channel there is a relative dearth of empirical studies that provide a quantitative analysis of the impact of the internet on banks financial performance this paper attempts to fill this gap by identifying and estimating the impact of the adoption of a transactional web site on financial performance using a sample of 72 commercial banks operating in spain over the period 1994 2002 the impact on banks performance of transactional web adoption takes time to appear the adoption of the internet as a delivery channel involves a gradual reduction in overhead expenses particularly staff marketing and it this effect is statistically significant after one and a half years after adoption the cost reduction translates into an improvement in banks profitability which becomes significant after one and a half years in terms of roa and after three years in terms of roe the paper also concludes that the internet is being used as a complement to rather than a substitute for physical branches

dynamic relationship between house prices in malaysia s major economic regions and singapore house prices fereidouni h g al mulali u lee j y m and mohammed a h dynamic relationship between house prices in malaysia s major economic regions and singapore house prices regional studies the purpose of this study is to examine house price diffusion among malaysia s major economic regions kuala lumpur selangor pulau pinang and johor and between each of these regions and neighbouring singapore by using the quarterly data from 2000 q1 to 2011 q1 by applying multivariate co integration approach the results show the existence of ripple effects among malaysia s major economic regions moreover it is found that house price diffusion observed within a country can be extended across the border implications are offered along with the findings of this research

can pure play internet banking survive the credit crisis this paper positions the pure play internet banking model ppi as a hybrid business model that combines features of both relationship and transaction banking although in terms of customer orientation ppi banks may partly resemble relationship banks they lack their comparative advantage in generating borrower specific information instead the characteristic features of ppi banks are low costs and easy scalability while the latter may enable ppi banks to quickly capture market share it may also generate overexposure in risky markets we present a case study on ing direct one of the leading global ppi banks and address the sustainability of the ppi business model by comparing the ing direct foreign operations the findings for ing direct are validated using data for e trade bank we conclude that managing growth appears to be the prime challenge to ppi banks

modeling regional house prices we develop a panel model for regional house prices for which both the cross section and the time series dimension is large the model allows for stochastic trends cointegration cross equation correlations and most importantly latent class clustering of regions class membership is fully data driven and based on the average growth rates of house prices and the relationship of house prices with economic growth we apply the model to quarterly data for the netherlands the results suggest that there is convincing evidence for the existence of two distinct clusters of regions with pronounced differences in house price dynamics

financial innovation the bright and the dark sides based on data from 32 countries over the period 1996 2010 this paper is the first to assess the relationship between financial innovation on the one hand and bank growth and fragility as well as economic growth on the other hand we find that different measures of financial innovation capturing both a broad concept and specific innovations are associated with faster bank growth but also higher bank fragility and worse bank performance during the recent crisis these effects are stronger in countries with larger securities markets and more restrictive regulatory frameworks in spite of these seemingly ambiguous findings our evidence points to a positive net effect of financial innovation on economic growth financial innovation is associated with higher growth in countries and industries with better growth opportunities

the international credit channel of u s monetary policy transmission to developing countries evidence from trade data abstract in a large sector level bilateral trade dataset we find robust evidence supporting a broad international credit channel of u s monetary policy transmission to developing countries we show that u s monetary policy has a significant effect on the sectoral composition of developing countries exports financially more vulnerable sectors have a significantly more negative exposure of their trade to a tight u s monetary policy especially in financially less developed exporting countries or during significant u s tightening periods moreover we identify both a monetary policy dependence mechanism and a financial dollarization mechanism through which u s monetary policy can influence the sectoral composition of developing countries exports

when is quality of financial system a source of comparative advantage abstract dominant theories of trade tend to ignore the role of finance as a source of comparative advantage on the other hand the finance literature places financial institutions as a driver of economic growth this paper unites these two competing schools of thought in a general equilibrium framework for economies with high quality institutions defined by the competitiveness of the financial sector the quality of corporate governance and the level of property rights protection finance is passive on the other hand for economies with low quality institutions the quality of the financial system is an independent source of comparative advantage interestingly the conventional measure of financial development the size of the financial market relative to gdp does not adequately capture the underlying quality of financial institutions in addition free trade may reduce the aggregate income in south financial capital tends to flow from south to north

malmquist type indices in the presence of negative data an application to bank branches in this paper we develop an index and an indicator of productivity change that can be used with negative data for that purpose the range directional model rdm a particular case of the directional distance function is used for computing efficiency in the presence of negative data we use rdm efficiency measures to arrive at a malmquist type index which can reflect productivity change and we use rdm inefficiency measures to arrive at a luenberger productivity indicator and relate the two the productivity index and indicator are developed relative to a fixed meta technology and so they are referred to as a meta malmquist index and meta luenberger indicator we also address the fact that vrs technologies are used for computing the productivity index and indicator a requirement under negative data which raises issues relating to the interpretability of the index we illustrate how the meta malmquist index can be used not only for comparing the performance of a unit in two time periods but also for comparing the performance of two different units at the same or different time periods the proposed approach is then applied to a sample of bank branches where negative data were involved the paper shows how the approach yields information from a variety of perspectives on performance which management can use

the modern history of exchange rate arrangements a reinterpretation we develop a novel system of reclassifying historical exchange rate regimes one key difference between our study and previous classifications is that we employ monthly data on market determined parallel exchange rates going back to 1946 for 153 countries our approach differs from the imf official classification which we show to be only a little better than random it also differs radically from all previous attempts at historical reclassification our classification points to a rethinking of economic performance under alternative exchange rate regimes indeed the breakup of bretton woods had less impact on exchange rate regimes than is popularly believed