Unconventional monetary policy and stock repurchases: Firm-level evidence from a comparison between the United States and Japan

This paper is the first comparative study examining the determinants of stock repurchases during the period of unconventional monetary policy. By constructing a vast firm-level dataset of the U.S. and Japan and conducting multivariate Tobit and probit analyses, this paper presents evidence that during the period of unconventional monetary policy, in both the U.S. and Japan, firms with more free cash flow and lower borrowing costs are more likely to repurchase stock, firms with higher financial leverage are more likely to abstain from stock repurchases, and firms coordinate dividends and stock repurchases to please shareholders. I also find striking contrasts between the results of U.S. and Japanese firms, and show the importance of financial structure in explaining the contrasting results. From a micro perspective, this paper provides new insight and evidence to support the view that financial structure should be thought of as an important factor determining the effects of unconventional monetary policy.     

Decomposing financial (in)stability in emerging economies

The analysis of the build-up of risks in emerging economies have traditionally been scarce and focused mostly on external risks, despite the recent substantial development of their financial system. This paper builds an index of financial vulnerabilities tailored to emerging economies, grouping 32 indicators around four poles: valuation and risk appetite, imbalances in the non-financial sector, financial sector vulnerabilities, and global vulnerabilities. It adopts a model-free approach, purposely departing from early warning models or complex econometric constructs, and rely on data made already available by international organisations. Our index of financial vulnerabilities enables a granular mapping of where risk originates and how it spreads to other parts of the financial system. Using various data visualisation tools and benefitting from the flexibility of our index’s methodology, we are able build a narrative of the evolution of financial stability in emerging economies from 2005 to 2015. Finally, we also discuss the relation between our index and both the business cycle (proxied by GDP) and the credit cycle (proxied by the credit-to-GDP gap).     

Stock market dependence in crisis periods: Evidence from oil price shocks and the Qatar blockade

This paper examines the correlation and the dependence patterns of the Qatar stock market with other markets using copula statistical theory and exploiting new datasets covering the period August 1998 to June 2018. To examine the crisis –specific change in the average degree of dependence we decomposed the data into the time periods before and after oil price shocks and the 2017 political crisis among the Gulf Cooperation Council members (i.e. the Qatari blockade). Our findings from the static copula modelling show that the correlations between the Qatari and the other stock markets significantly change after the oil price and the blockade crisis as well. The degree of change in the correlation is time varying and differs from county-group to another. Moreover, our findings reveals that the 2008 global financial crisis has a stronger impact than the price shocks and political crisis. The findings of the paper are of interest and allow for formulating a reliable and dynamic portfolio design framework for investors and risk managers.     

Discovering bank risk factors from financial statements based on a new semi‐supervised text mining algorithm

This paper aims to comprehensively uncover bank risk factors from qualitative textual risk disclosures reported in financial statements, which contain a huge amount of information on bank risks. We propose a new semi‐supervised text mining approach named naive collision algorithm to analyse the textual risk disclosures, which can more accurately identify bank risk factors compared with the typical unsupervised text mining approach. We identified 21 bank risk factors in total, which is far more than identified in previous studies. We further analyse the importance of each bank risk factor and how the importance of each risk factor changes over time.     

Real income convergence and the patterns of financial integration in the EU

We analyse real income convergence among the EU28 countries throughout 1995–2017 and the relationship with the convergence patterns of financial systems. We apply the nonlinear latent factor model of Phillips and Sul (2007, 2009) to real incomes and the IMF financial development indices for financial markets and financial institutions (Svirydzenka, 2016), and identify convergence clubs endogenously. We have several results. First, income disparities narrowed significantly over the last twenty years; yet, the growth convergence process lost momentum triggered by the global financial crisis and countries legacies shaped up asymmetries that have crystallised. Second, countries' financial systems exhibit high fragmentation, especially for financial markets, with the new EU member states at a lower financial development, confirming the existence of a two-tier Europe. Overall, the convergence patterns for real incomes and financial development are strongly correlated. Finally, the financial structure matters and market-oriented economies feature higher long-run growth, indicating the need to implement pan-European policy actions that increase the opportunities of risk diversification, enhance capital raising and channel large-scale financing to firms.     

The impact on stock prices of deferral and elimination of internal control audit requirement for small firms

This paper examines the cumulative market reaction to the events related to deferral of internal control audit requirement under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and its elimination under the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 for nonaccelerated filers (small firms). We document that small firms experienced negative cumulative abnormal returns around these events; and the differences between the cumulative abnormal returns for small firms and the two control groups (accelerated and large accelerated filers) were negative and significant at the 1% level. These results support the notion that market participants value the reliability of financial information irrespective of the firm size. Within the small firms, we find no firm characteristic significantly explains the market reaction to the events considered. That is, all small firms lost market value in reaction to the events that delayed and eliminated their internal control audit requirement.     

The impact of undergraduate personal finance education on individual financial literacy,attitudes and intentions

Financial literacy education features prominently among the policy options available to improve personal financial decision‐making. Notwithstanding calls to expand delivery of financial literacy units at university level, such offerings are relatively rare with little evaluation. We provide an evaluation of the impact on financial literacy, financial attitudes and financial behaviour intentions of a semester unit in personal finance delivered to undergraduates at an Australian university, carefully controlling for confounding effects in the analysis. We report increases in objective and subjective financial literacy and an additional gender effect. Contrary to previous speculation, we do not find overconfidence as an associated outcome.     

Financing energy efficiency retrofits in Chilean households: The role of financial instruments,savings and uncertainty in energy transition

High firewood consumption for heating produces high levels of pollution in cities in central and southern Chile, with serious consequences for health and quality of life. Energy efficiency measures (EEMs) have been identified as the best strategy to reduce air pollution and maximize social benefits. However, their adoption has been slow. The objective of this article is to investigate household preferences for financial incentives needed to promote private investments in EEMs in Central-Southern Chilean households and study the role of energy savings and the uncertainty about potential savings in the investment decision, with the aim of finding solutions to increase the adoption of these technologies. We use a choice experiment to explore the trade-off between the investment costs, financial instruments, energy savings, and the uncertainty about achieving the theoretical savings provided by engineering and architectural models. The results show that financial instruments play the most important role in this decision, followed by the savings achieved by the retrofit. Householders prefer to finance their investments with a mix of their personal resources and medium-term credits, trying to avoid long-term commitments. Although uncertainty was found to be a significant variable, it seems to play a small role in the investment decision.     

Political booms and currency crises

This paper shows evidence that political booms, defined as the rise in governments’ popularity, are associated with a higher likelihood of currency crises. The reasoning behind this finding is that prudent economic policies to address underlying weaknesses in the economy may be political costly for incumbent governments in the short-term. Hence, popularity-concerned governments may not have enough incentives to take such corrective actions in a timely manner. This approach, in turn, can deteriorate economic fundamentals and increase related risks in the economy which can eventually lead to crises. This paper sheds light on this phenomenon in the case of currency crises, suggesting that currency crises can be viewed as “political booms gone bust” events. Moreover, it finds that higher international reserves, higher exports, and a higher degree of financial openness alleviate the effect of political booms on currency crises.