Does financial globalization promote risk sharing?

In theory, one of the main benefits of financial globalization is that it should allow for more efficient international risk sharing. In this paper, we provide an empirical evaluation of the patterns of risk sharing among different groups of countries and examine how international financial integration has affected the evolution of these patterns. Using a variety of empirical techniques, we conclude that there is at best a modest degree of international risk sharing, and certainly nowhere near the levels predicted by theory. In addition, only industrial countries have attained better risk sharing outcomes during the recent period of globalization. Developing countries have, by and large, been shut out of this benefit. Even emerging market economies, many of which have reduced capital controls and all of which have witnessed large increases in cross-border capital flows, have seen little change in their ability to share risk. We find that the composition of flows may help explain why emerging markets have not been able to realize this presumed benefit of financial globalization. In particular, our results suggest that portfolio debt, which had dominated the external liability stocks of most emerging markets until recently, is not conducive to risk sharing.     

HOW HOUSEHOLD PORTFOLIOS EVOLVE AFTER RETIREMENT: THE EFFECT OF AGING AND HEALTH SHOCKS

We study how the portfolios of U.S. households evolve after retirement, using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). In particular, we investigate the influence of aging and health shocks on a household's ownership of various assets and on the share of total assets held in each asset class. We find that households decrease their ownership of principal residences, vehicles, financial assets, businesses, and real estate as they age, while increasing the share of assets held in liquid assets and time deposits. We find that widowhood and other health shocks are associated with the same kinds of portfolio changes, and that the effect of shocks strengthens with time since the shock. Finally, we show that the effect of a shock is greatly magnified when households have physical or mental impairments. This suggests that factors other than standard risk and return considerations weigh heavily in many older households' portfolio decisions.     

Asymmetric firms,technology sharing and R&D investment

We use a combination of theory and experiment to study the incentives for firms to share knowledge when they engage in research and development (R&D) in an uncertain environment. We consider both symmetric and asymmetric starting points with regards to the amount of initial knowledge firms have before conducting R&D and look at how differences in starting positions affect the willingness of firms to share knowledge. We investigate when and if firms find R&D cooperation beneficial and how investment in R&D is affected by the outcome of the sharing decisions. The experimental evidence shows that overall subjects tend to behave consistently with theoretical predictions for the sharing of knowledge, although leaders who are not compensated by a side payment from laggards are more willing to share than predicted by the theory, and leaders who are compensated are less willing. The data on investment suggests less investment with sharing than without, consistent with theory. Compared to exact numerical predictions, there is overinvestment or underinvestment except for symmetric firms under no sharing. All cases of overinvestment and underinvestment, regardless of sharing or not and regardless of starting positions, are well explained by smoothed-out best (quantal) responses.     

Mixed data sampling expectile regression with applications to measuring financial risk

To avoid information loss or measurement error in traditional methods dealing with mixed frequency data, we develop a novel mixed data sampling expectile regression (MIDAS-ER) model to measure financial risk. We construct the MIDAS-ER model by introducing a MIDAS structure into expectile regressions. This enables us to perform an expectile regression on raw mixed frequency data directly. We apply the proposed MIDAS-ER model to estimate two popular financial risk measures, namely, Value at Risk and Expected Shortfall, with both simulated data and four stock indices, and compare the model's performance with those of several popular models. The outstanding performance of our model demonstrates that high-frequency information helps to improve the accuracy of risk measurement. In addition, the numerical results also imply that our model can be a significant tool for risk-averse investors to control risk losses and for financial institutions to implement robust risk management.     

Rational inattention,long-run consumption risk,and portfolio choice

This paper explores how the introduction of rational inattention (RI) – that agents process information subject to finite channel capacity – affects optimal consumption and investment decisions in an otherwise standard intertemporal model of portfolio choice. We first explicitly derive optimal consumption and portfolio rules under RI and then show that introducing RI reduces the optimal share of savings invested in the risky asset because inattentive investors face greater long-run consumption risk. We also show that the investment horizon matters for portfolio allocation in the presence of RI, even if investment opportunities are constant and the utility function of investors is constant relative risk aversion. Second, after aggregating across investors, we show that introducing RI can better explain the observed joint dynamics of aggregate consumption and the equity return. Finally, we show that RI increases the implied equity premium because investors under RI face greater long-run consumption risk and thus require higher compensation in equilibrium.     

Decision Utility and Anticipated Discrete Emotions: An Investment Decision Model

Integrating theories and findings from various disciplines, we develop a decision utility model to explain how anticipated discrete emotions mediate investment decisions. We illustrate the model with the anticipated discrete emotions of a hypothetical Ponzi scheme investor and suggest practical measures to manage financial risks, emotionally.     

Precautionary Saving,Financial Risk,and Portfolio Choice

Relying on a direct question about the desired amount of precautionary wealth from the 2002 wave of the Italian “Survey of Household Income and Wealth,” I assess the main determinants of the precautionary motive for saving, focusing on the role played by financial risk on households' saving decisions. Households that invest mainly in safe assets do not need to protect themselves against future and unexpected financial losses. Consequently, once we control for households' sources of risk beside financial ones, the amount of precautionary savings of a household investing exclusively in safe assets should be lower compared to households who detain a non‐negligible share of risky assets in their portfolio. Results show that, as expected, a strong and negative correlation exists between the desired amount of precautionary wealth and the ownership of a portfolio made exclusively of safe assets.     

Prediction of bank financial strength ratings: The case of Turkey

Bank financial strength ratings have gained widespread popularity especially after the recent financial turmoil. Rating agencies were criticized because of their ratings and failure to predict the bankruptcy of the banks. Based on this observation, we investigate whether the forecast of the rating of bank's financial strength using publicly available data is consistent with those of the credit rating agency. We use the data of Turkish banks for this investigation. We take a country-specific approach because previous studies found that proxies used for environmental factors (political, economic, and financial risk of the country) did not have any explanatory power and it is hard to find international data for other important factors such as franchise value, concentration, and efficiency. We use two popular multivariate statistical techniques (multiple discriminant analysis and ordered logistic regression) to estimate a suitable model and we compare their performances with those of two mostly used data mining techniques (Support Vector Machine and Artificial Neural Network). Our results suggest that our predictions are consistent with those of Moody's financial strength rating in general.. The important factors in rating are found to be profitability (measured by return on equity), efficient use of resources, and funding the businesses and the households instead of the government that shows efficient placement of the funds.     

International risk sharing during the globalization era

Abstract. Though financial globalization should improve international risk sharing, empirical support is lacking. We develop a simple welfare‐based measure that captures how far countries are from the ideal of perfect risk sharing. Applying it to data, we find some evidence that international risk sharing has improved during globalization. Improved risk sharing comes mostly from the convergence in rates of consumption growth among countries rather than from synchronization of consumption at the business cycle frequency.     

Conditional volatility and correlations of weekly returns and the VaR analysis of 2008 stock market crash

Modelling of conditional volatilities and correlations across asset returns is an integral part of portfolio decision making and risk management. Over the past three decades there has been a trend towards increased asset return correlations across markets, a trend which has been accentuated during the recent financial crisis. We shall examine the nature of asset return correlations using weekly returns on futures markets and investigate the extent to which multivariate volatility models proposed in the literature can be used to formally characterize and quantify market risk. In particular, we ask how adequate these models are for modelling market risk at times of financial crisis. In doing so we consider a multivariate t version of the Gaussian dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) model proposed by Engle (2002), and show that the t-DCC model passes the usual diagnostic tests based on probability integral transforms, but fails the value at risk (VaR) based diagnostics when applied to the post 2007 period that includes the recent financial crisis.     

International Reserves and the Composition of Foreign Equity Investment

This paper studies the effect of central banks' international reserve hoardings on the composition of foreign equity investment. Specifically, it examines whether reserves affect the share of foreign portfolio equity investment (PEI) in total foreign equity investment, which includes both PEI and foreign direct investment (FDI). Foreign investors' decisions regarding the location and the type of equity capital investment might be influenced by a country's level of international reserves. In a simple theoretical model, it is shown that higher reserves, thanks to their ability to lower exchange rate risk, reduce the risk premium of PEI. Hence, higher reserves are expected to increase the inflow of PEI relative to FDI. This hypothesis is tested for a sample of 76 developing countries during the period 1980–2010 using different estimation methods, model specifications and data samples. The results suggest that higher levels of reserves are associated with a larger share of PEI relative to FDI. This result points to a collateral benefit of reserves that has been neglected so far. Reserves may contribute to develop domestic financial markets and facilitate domestic firms' access to foreign portfolio equity financing. In addition, this paper finds a strong negative effect of the global financial crisis beginning in 2008 on the share of PEI, which confirms the hypothesis that PEI is more crisis‐dependent than FDI.     

Asymmetries and interdependencies in time use between Italian parents

In recent decades, changes in parents’ attitudes towards the importance of spending time with children to optimize their future behaviour and cognitive development have greatly affected patterns of time allocation among both working and nonworking parents in all developed countries. We compare the two waves of the Italian Time Use dataset (1988 and 2002) to analyse how family time allocation changed over time in a country that was undergoing a marked increase in female employment rate and a continuous decline in total fertility rate. We focus especially on how parents’ time with their children depends on their employment status and household characteristics. Using a simultaneous sequential approach, we consider links among the different time uses of individuals and correlations with spouses’ decisions. We find that wives’ time at work time strongly influences the time spent by both spouses with their children in 2002, but not in 1988. Fathers were much more involved in childcare and rearing in 2002 than in 1988. In general, as women's work time increased, substitutes for their childcare time were found within the household (fathers or other co-resident adults).     

CEO的财务经历有利于缓解企业融资约束吗*

CEO的财务经历有利于其做出合理的融资决策和投资决策,从而有助于降低企业融资约束。以2000—2013年沪深A股上市公司作为研究对象,本文实证检验结果证明了笔者的这一假设。该结论在控制内生性以及采用其他指标衡量融资约束等稳健性检验之后仍然成立。进一步检验结果表明,在外部融资条件较差时,CEO财务经历对于缓解融资约束的作用更为显著;同时,CEO财务经历有助于企业提高投资绩效。这表明了具有财务经历的CEO通过提高企业外部融资能力和投资决策的合理性,从而缓解企业融资约束。本文在丰富高阶梯队理论和融资约束领域文献的同时,对于上市公司制定科学合理的CEO聘任决策以及缓解融资约束等方面有重要的启示。     

Securitization of mortgage debt,domestic lending,and international risk sharing

Abstract Securitization makes mortgage‐related risks internationally tradeable and thus contributes considerably to the international diversification of macroeconomic risk: in the years 2003–2008, the increase in international cross‐holdings of securitized mortgage debt has lowered industrialized countries’ conditional consumption volatility (relative to the United States) by about 10–15 percentage points. We turn to the role of domestic credit in explaining this result. Domestic credit leads to better international risk sharing only if debt is securitized and traded internationally. Conversely, the risk‐sharing benefits from securitization seem to evaporate if credit dries up – as it did in the recent financial crisis.     

Effect of market access on sharing practices within two Huaorani communities

One explanation for meat sharing within hunter-gatherer communities is that sharing reduces variance in consumption that results from unpredictable harvests. If this food-risk reduction is the primary reason for sharing, then a good alternative to sharing would be selling meat in a market and using the cash to buy storable foods. We analyze the effect of market access on sharing behavior in two Huaorani communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon in order to test the hypothesis that hunters share mainly to reduce food risk. If this hypothesis is correct we expect to find that hunters are selling meat that would have otherwise gone into sharing networks. The alternative hypothesis is that sharing has multiple benefits, in addition to risk reduction, making sharing and selling imperfect substitutes. We find evidence that households use the market to reduce food risk, but that the amount of meat a hunter sells has no relationship with sharing intensity. Rather, the likelihood of selling meat simply increases with hunting returns. The results suggest that selling meat has lower expected benefits than sharing and so hunters first satisfy their sharing requirements and then sell any excess meat.     

Financial market segmentation,stock market volatility and the role of monetary policy

We study a segmented financial markets model where only the agents who trade stocks encounter financial income risk. In such an economy, the welfare-maximizing monetary policy attains the novel role of redistributing the traders' financial market risk among all agents in the economy. In order to do that, optimal monetary policy reacts to financial market movements; it is expansionary in bad times for the financial markets and contractionary in good ones. In our quantitative exercise, a dividend shock generates different policy responses and consumption paths among the optimal and the 2% inflation targeting policy. The latter implies large distributional welfare losses and risk sharing losses of similar magnitude with those generated by business cycle fluctuations. In addition, the optimal monetary policy does not minimize stock price volatility and implies lower inflation volatility than other commonly used policies.     

Risk aversion and portfolio allocation to mutual fund classes

The major factors affecting fund flows allocated to a range of mutual fund classes bearing different risk–return profiles are studied. The flexible functional form of the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) is applied to identify the major drivers of Greek investors' demand patterns for equity, bond, balanced and money market funds, given the strong growth rates of the domestic fund market and the economy's latest entry into the EMU. An increase in household expenditure is shown to have a positive impact on mutual fund flows. An adverse price impact, however, may erode budget benefits towards a fund class, as the price factor appears to be important. The cross-price effects provide insight on complementarity and substitutability among the mutual fund classes. Variations in investors' risk aversion attitudes affect demand for mutual funds and can result in asset reallocation between the asset classes. The conclusions have useful policy implications particularly to asset fund management and portfolio allocation strategies and can be compared with established mutual fund markets.     

Natural disasters and electoral outcomes

Natural disasters are good examples of catastrophic events that may affect vote decisions. In this study, we analyze how the occurrence of earthquakes changes voters' behavior at municipal elections and which channels drive this change, focusing in particular on the role of media exposure. We exploit data from 13,338 municipal electoral cycles where incumbents seek reelection between 1993 and 2015 in Italy. We apply a difference-in-difference strategy with time and cities fixed effect to the probability of reelection and vote share using three different control groups: the universe of municipalities, a sub-sample of neighboring municipalities, and a sub-sample of municipalities identified by a one-to-one nearest-neighbor propensity score matching procedure. We find that the occurrence of destructive earthquakes significantly increases the incumbent mayors’ chance of being reelected and their vote share. We argue that this result is driven by the incumbent mayor advantage in offering recovery from disaster damages combined with a higher visibility on the media in the aftermath of the disaster. Thus, the mediatic relevance of earthquake occurrence may bias voters towards the incumbent.     

ATTITUDES TOWARD RISK AND SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS RELATED TO EDUCATIONAL LOANS

We explore the relationship between willingness to take financial risk and the probability of taking out a loan for educational purposes as well as the influence of risk attitudes on the size of the loan using data drawn from the U.S. Survey of Consumer Finances. The findings suggest a positive relationship between individuals' willingness to take financial risk and the probability of taking out a loan for educational purposes. Similarly, individuals' willingness to take financial risk appears to have an important relationship with the size of the educational loan. The findings suggest that non‐white individuals and females are less likely to finance education through loans which could potentially increase inequalities in education and income if such individuals are deterred from investing in human capital. (JEL I22, I23)     

Banks,Financial Markets and International Consumption Risk Sharing

In this article, we explore how characteristics of the domestic financial system influence the international allocation of consumption risk in a sample of OECD countries. Our results show that the extent of risk sharing achieved does not depend on the overall development of the domestic financial system per se. Rather, it depends on how the financial system is organized. Countries characterized by developed financial markets are less exposed to idiosyncratic risk, whereas the development of the banking sector contributes little to the international diversification of consumption risk.