What happened to profitability? Shocks,challenges and perspectives for euro area banks

This paper analyses the evolution of bank profitability from 2005 to 2016, with a focus on the period covering both the global financial crisis and the euro area crisis. To accomplish this, we constructed a dataset that includes financial statement information from 310 euro area banks. Using a dual approach – a ‘bottom-up’ approach as applied by bank analysts and macroeconomists' ‘top-down’ approach, we find that the profitability of euro area banks was hit by two shocks of different nature. The Lehman Brothers collapse affected mostly big banks with diversified portfolios via losses in their securities investment. The subsequent euro area debt crisis and economic recession hit more traditional banks specialising in retail lending activities, mainly through increasing impairment costs. If the first shock had a one-off impact on bank profitability, the second shock is far more long-lasting and is still depressing the profitability of banks in peripheral Europe.     

Are Remittances Insurance? Evidence from Rainfall Shocks in the Philippines

Do remittances sent by overseas migrants serve as insurancefor recipient households? In a study of how remittances fromoverseas respond to income shocks experienced by Philippinehouseholds, changes in income are found to lead to changes inremittances in the opposite direction, consistent with an insurancemotivation. Roughly 60 percent of declines in household incomeare replaced by remittance inflows from overseas. Because householdincome and remittances are jointly determined, rainfall shocksare used as instrumental variables for income changes. The hypothesiscannot be rejected that consumption in households with migrantmembers is unchanged in response to income shocks, whereas consumptionresponds strongly to income shocks in households without migrants.     

Why Don’t Oil Shocks Cause Inflation? Evidence from Disaggregate Inflation Data

This paper uses disaggregate U.S. inflation data to evaluate explanations for the breakdown of the relationship between oil price shocks and consumer price inflation. A data set with measures of inflation, energy intensity, labor intensity, and sensitivity to monetary policy is constructed for 97 sectors that make up core CPI inflation. A comparison of the 1973–85 and 1986–2006 time periods reveals that substitution away from energy use in production and monetary policy were both important, with approximately two‐thirds of the change in response of inflation to oil shocks being due to reduced energy usage, and one‐third to monetary policy. We find no evidence that other factors, such as changes in wage rigidities or changes in the persistence of oil shocks, played a role.     

Global or Domestic? Which Shocks Drive Inflation in European Small Open Economies?

We investigate which shocks drive inflation in small open economies. In the first step, we use the structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) approach to identify the global shocks. Second, we regress the disaggregated price indices for selected European economies on the global shocks controlling for the domestic variables. We find that the fluctuations of inflation in the analyzed countries are to large extent determined by the cyclical movements of the domestic output gap however the commodity shock also contributes strongly to inflation variability. The role of the non-commodity global supply shock is less prominent, however, interpreted to some extent as a globalization shock, for most of the analyzed period lowers the inflation. Nonetheless, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, this shock reversed what may be interpreted as the weakening of the globalization process.     

How Do Extreme Global Shocks Affect Foreign Portfolio Investment? An Event Study for India

Foreign portfolio flows in and out of India are relevant for policymakers, and are often portrayed in the media as having a destabilizing effect on the domestic market. We use an event study approach to examine whether extreme global shocks trigger abnormal responses in foreign equity flows in and out of India, or abnormal responses in the Indian stock market. We do not find strong evidence of abnormal responses, even for the case of the global crisis of 2008.     

What Is the Importance of Monetary and Fiscal Shocks in Explaining U.S. Macroeconomic Fluctuations?

This paper analyzes the importance of monetary and fiscal policy shocks in explaining U.S. macroeconomic fluctuations, and establishes new stylized facts. The novelty of our empirical analysis is that we jointly consider both monetary and fiscal policy, whereas the existing literature only focuses on either one or the other. Our main findings are twofold: fiscal shocks are relatively more important in explaining medium cycle fluctuations whereas monetary policy shocks are relatively more important in explaining business cycle fluctuations, and failing to recognize that both monetary and fiscal policy simultaneously affect macroeconomic variables might incorrectly attribute the fluctuations to the wrong source.     

Do Inflation Expectations Propagate the Inflationary Impact of Real Oil Price Shocks?: Evidence from the Michigan Survey

This paper presents evidence that inflation expectations, as measured by the Michigan Survey of Consumers, only play a minimal role in the propagation of real oil price shocks into inflation. This is despite evidence that confirms that inflation expectations are sensitive to real oil price shocks. Further analysis suggests that after the 1990s, inflation expectations may have played no part in propagating real oil price shocks into inflation.     

Do Declines in Bank Health Affect Borrowers’ Voluntary Disclosures? Evidence from International Propagation of Banking Shocks

I examine whether declines in banks’ financial health affect their borrowers’ disclosures. Prior studies indicate that, in relationship lending, banks and borrowers rely on private communication, rather than public disclosures, to resolve information asymmetries. When banking relationships are threatened, borrowers must turn to new funding sources, inducing them to reconsider their disclosure policies. This paper predicts that borrowers, whose banking relationships are threatened by declining bank health, change their public disclosures of forward‐looking information. Using the emerging‐market financial crises in the late 1990s as shocks to the health of certain U.S. banks, I find that affected banks’ U.S. borrowers increase both the quantity and informativeness of their management forecasts following these shocks compared to borrowers of unaffected banks. The results are similar using conference calls or the length of the Management's Discussion and Analysis section as alternative proxies for voluntary disclosure. Overall, these results provide new insights into the impact of availability of relationship lending on firms’ disclosure choices.     

endous task to

b them in the urban life. The first and foremost challenge in this process would be the housing problem. Experiences in other countries show that negligence on this issue would lead to the pitfall of urban slums. The present text examines the relationship between urbanization a     

从Copy to China，到to China Copy

众所周知，中国互联网在过去几十年走了一条C2C（Copy?to?China）的路，几乎所有知名互联网应用都可以在美国找到它的影子，在“微创新”这样的外衣下，没人觉得这有什么不好。最近正在发生一些微妙变化，C2C很难奏效，同时海外产品开始向中国同行取经，to?China?Copy（到中国复制）兴起，移动互联网时代中国的玩家们获得了逆袭的机会。     

Life to he Chosen

The happiest of people don＇t necessarily have the best of everything;they just make the most of everything that comes along their way.     

How to Weigh Unemployment Relative to Inflation in Monetary Policy?

The monetary policy mandate for the Federal Reserve and of the Riksbank are essentially the same and boil down to stabilizing inflation around the inflation target and employment or unemployment around a long‐run sustainable rate. The relative weight on stabilizing unemployment or employment versus stabilizing inflation may be close to one. A positive unemployment‐gap forecast normally calls for a positive inflation‐gap forecast.     

Risks to Price Target

According to the Sohu＇s price target calculation, our price target of S26 is based on 25X our ＇07 non GAAP EPS estimate of $1.03 and 32X GAAP EPS of $0.82, or approximately 1.0X P/E to growth. Our target 1X PEG is in line with that typically accorded Chinese online ad companies, It also equates to ～20X P/E to our 200SE add jeste EPS （which adds back the stock based compensation）, Looking at free target implies 3.5% cash flow yield, excluding more than $L80 per share in net cash balance sheet.     

Introduction to Daxing District

Located in the south of Beijing, Daxing District is a unique suburban county with two new satellite towns in Beijing, among which Huangcun satellite town with district government is 13 kilometers away from the 3rd-Ring Road South, one of the first satellite towns of key development in Beijing with approval by the State Council in 1984. Beijing New City Yizhuang, or Beijing Economic and Technological Development Area is another new satellite town rapidly growing up in Yizhuang Town of Daxing District.     

The logical status of risk – to burnish or to dull

Presented here is an elaboration of the fundamental features of the meaning of risk. It distinguishes between analytic approaches grounded in realism and postmodern (including constructionist) epistemologies and the presuppositions of each. It argues that attempts to fuse the ontology of risk with epistemological considerations into a common definition is both internally contradictory and a weak foundation for a theoretically justified definition of risk. In place of a fused definition of risk, it re‐affirms a definition risk as a state of the world, independent of percipient actors.     

Introduction to Huairou District

Located in the northeast of Beijing, Huairou District boasts total area of 2128.7 square kilometers with inhabitant of 304 thousand. In 1995, the district hosted the 4th UN World Women Conference-Non-government Organization Forum.     

Introduction to Tongzhou District

Tongzhou District is located in the southeast of Beijing, at the north end of Great Jinghang Canal and the east extending line of Changanjie, with area of 912.34 square kilometers. Tongzhou has a history of more than 2000 years, which is the important traffic passage, important storage place in the east of Beijing in history. In the history, for states coming to pay respects to Ancient China, local     

Introduction to Shunyi District

Located in the northeast of Beijing, Shunyi District is 30 kilometers away from the urban area, with total area of 1021 square kilometers and plain areas of 95.7%. Shunyi District boasts of an elegant natural environment, and the location advantages are richly endowed by nature with transport facilities. The largest airport of the country -     

Beijing is to issue policies to support chain operation development.

In order to adapt to the requirements of the modern circulation and further improve the organizing extent and scale level of chain operation in Beijing and help the resources integration and technical upgrading of the chain operation enterprises, enhance the market competitiveness of such enterprises and meet the demands of people to improve their living quality, Beijing Commerce Bureau and Beijing Development and Reform Commission recently issued Implementation Suggestions on Promoting Chain Operation Development.     

Are for-profit hospital conversions harmful to patients and to Medicare?

We examine how changes in hospital ownership to and from for-profit status affect quality and Medicare payments per hospital stay. We hypothesize that hospitals converting to for-profit ownership boost post acquisition profitability by reducing dimensions of quality not readily observed by patients and by raising prices. We find that 1-2 years after conversion to for-profit status, mortality of patients, which is difficult for outsiders to monitor, increases while hospital profitability rises markedly and staffing decreases. Thereafter, the decline in quality is much lower. A similar decline in quality is not observed after hospitals switch from for-profit to government or private nonprofit status.