Exogenous shocks and managerial preparedness: A study of U.S. airlines’ environmental scanning before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic

Managerial preparedness is a constant concern for firm stakeholders. This concern is exacerbated during times of immense stress brought about by exogenous shocks. In this paper, we analyze the preparedness of U.S. commercial airline management teams to the largest systematic exogenous shock to date, namely the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 and 2020. We do this by underpinning the paper with theory on environmental scanning and managerial dysfunction and then documenting the signals and actions of management around multiple public health scares. These include the SARS outbreak, the Swine Flu outbreak and the COVID-19 outbreak. Our results, based off of corporate filings with the SEC, is that airline management had multiple “dry runs” before the COVID-19 outbreak that should have lead them to prepare for financially catastrophic scenarios such as the one observed in 2020. Instead, management teams failed to learn from these, and other, prior shocks. Instead, they focused on other, less serious threats while diffusing their financial buffers through dividends and share buybacks.     

Unconventional monetary policy announcements and information shocks in the U.S.

We study unconventional policy shocks and information shocks associated with central bank announcements in the U.S. While unconventional policy shocks capture the direct influence of announced monetary policy actions, information shocks are associated with central bank information conveyed with the announcement. To disentangle these two types of shocks, we impose sign restrictions on high frequency changes in interest rates and stock prices around announcements. We find that information shocks lead to persistent declines in the 10-year government bond yield, whereas the actual unconventional policy shock induces only small interest rate responses. We also find that expansionary output effects of unconventional monetary policy are to some extent counteracted by the information shock.     

The role of financial journalists in the expectations channel of the monetary transmission mechanism

Monetary policy relies on managing the inflation expectations of the public in order to influence prices (inflation). Relying on the South African experience, we argue that most of the general public are exposed to the communication of the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) only via the media. This state of affairs is fairly typical around the globe. We explored the role and biases of the journalists in transmitting the SARB’s communications to the rationally inattentive general public. Our aim was to obtain insights about the factors that influence media articles that deal with monetary policy issues. Using interviews and qualitative content analysis, we explored the extent of the journalists’ knowledge about inflation and monetary policy, their views concerning the credibility of the SARB, the sources of information they use, and the constraints and incentives they face in writing their articles.     

Banks' environmental policy and business outcomes: The role of competition

By integrating the two areas of competition–performance and environment–performance, this research explores if competition matters in the relationship between environmental practices and interest margins in the market. A panel of 458 banks from 74 countries for the period of 2006–2016 is used, and the sample is further divided into developed and developing countries. This paper uses the system Generalized Method of Moments estimator to tackle potential omitted variable bias, endogeneity, and simultaneity issues. Without competition, environmental practices only affect banks in developing countries; however, the results show a significant impact for the full sample, including developed countries, when the competition is taken into consideration, suggesting that competition might play a role in the relationship of environmental practices and interest margins. In the full sample, competition impacts the relationship negatively after a moderate level of competition is reached in the market. The environmental practices in developing countries are prone to competition in the market. In developed countries, the competition is found to be lightly positively moderating the impact of environmental practices on interest margins. Based on these findings, it is recommended that developing countries should have a low or moderate level of competition to encourage environmental practices. For developed countries, however, high competition should be preferred to encourage banks to consider environmental practices as one of their core business strategies. These findings are found robust to different statistical estimators.     

Can fintech improve the efficiency of commercial banks? —An analysis based on big data

This paper assess the potential impact of Fintech on the banking industry. Results suggest that, for commercial banks, development of Fintech leads to increased profitability, financial innovation, and improved control of risk. Overall, by using financial technology, commercial banks can improve their traditional business model by reducing bank operating costs, improving service efficiency, strengthening risk control capabilities, and creating enhanced customer-oriented business models for customers; thereby improving comprehensive competitiveness. We also find that levels of such outcomes vary with levels of respective bank’s use of technological innovation.     

我国银行理财业务发展趋势研究

对国内商业银行理财业务的发展状况进行了简要概述， 进而对理财业务开展过程中的一些问题进行了分析， 强调指出市场化应该成为银行理财业务转型升级和创新发展的方向， 并提出了实现市场化发展方向的若干具体措施。     

政策性银行法律规制的探讨

作为我国金融体制改革产物的政策性银行,其运作还缺乏完善的法律规定,应完善对政策性银行的法律规制体系,以实现其可持续发展。     

银行业市场竞争对企业技术创新的影响研究

银行贷款是企业创新的重要融资来源,银行业市场的变化影响着企业技术创新的融资环境.基于2008-2014年沪深A股上市公司的实证检验发现:银行市场竞争性的提高有利于缓解企业的融资约束,促进企业技术创新.企业规模对中小企业的技术创新有正向的影响,对大型企业存在负的效应.银行业市场竞争对企业技术创新的影响也因企业规模不同而不同,中小企业受到的融资约束明显,银行业竞争度的提高更有利于促进中小企业的技术创新.     

融资约束对企业出口影响的Heckman验证-基于银行信用风险的视角

基于中国工业企业数据库1998-2014年7032家企业的平衡面板数据,从银行信用风险内部评级的视角,研究融资约束对企业出口的影响.结果表明:银行信贷融资约束与企业的出口决策及出口强度间有显著负相关关系.同时,使用Heckman二阶段模型研究发现:不同形式的商业信用对企业出口决策及出口强度的影响和作用机制会因企业所处供求端位置的不同而存在差异.其中,需求端的商业信用仅与企业出口决策显著正相关,而与出口强度的相关性并不显著;供给端的商业信用则与企业出口强度显著负相关.     

Too big to fail: Measures,remedies, and consequences for efficiency and stability*

This paper evaluates whether reform efforts addressing “too big to fail” actually enhance the stability of the financial system, and whether trade‐offs exist between stability and efficiency. We also present and discuss various measures of bank size and complexity since such measures are essential for implementing appropriate corrective remedies. As we will show, there are no unambiguous measures of size or complexity that can fully capture a bank's contribution to systemic risk. Their effects on efficiency are also impossible to capture with certainty. While we recognize the need for additional research and empirical evidence, we do identify weaknesses and strengths of proposed and implemented reforms that could have consequences for bank stability and efficiency.