Does more finance mean more inequality in times of crisis?

Many recent empirical studies show that both banking crises and financial development (FD) play an important role in understanding the dynamics of income inequality (IncI) over the last decades. However, so far no study has investigated the role of FD in the amplification of IncI following banking crises. This paper seeks to address this issue based on a sample of 69 banking crises in 54 countries over the 1977–2013 period. Our analysis suggests that FD is associated with a significant increase in IncI in the aftermath of banking crises. This result is robust to a broad range of alternative specifications and is unaffected by various potential sources of endogeneity. We also show that the relationship between FD and the redistributive consequences of banking crises is not subject to a threshold effect and is stronger for developing countries.     

Fair value accounting from a distributed cognition perspective

This study offers a unique interdisciplinary perspective on fair value accounting. The growing influence of esoteric financial instruments whose valuation is becoming increasingly complex makes it necessary to focus on actual valuation practices. Based on an extensive review, this paper regards fair value accounting for complex financial instruments as involving processes distributed among actors located inside and/or outside a reporting entity. It also draws attention to collaboration by organizations that apply their external and internal resources to perform complex financial valuations. Furthermore, it demonstrates that cases involving unusual market conditions underline the importance of human interactions to the valuation process.     

Corporate social responsibility reporting in financial institutions: Evidence from Euronext

The legitimacy, the identity and the social impact of financial institutions go beyond the generation of revenues for providers of capital, through financial intermediation. Financial institutions bear significant corporate social responsibility (CSR). We produce measures of CSR disclosure and explore the determinants of CSR disclosure practices in a cross section of financial institutions. Working with financial companies whose stocks are listed in the Euronext stock exchange, we find that the extent of disclosure of CSR practices is greater in large companies and also in companies of greater financial leverage. Therefore, increased corporate visibility and financial risk increase stakeholder demand for transparency on the social impact of financial institutions and their CSR practices.     

Floating a “lifeboat”: The Banque de France and the crisis of 1889

When faced with a run on a “systemically important” but insolvent bank in 1889, the Banque de France pre-emptively organized a lifeboat to ensure that depositors were protected and an orderly liquidation could proceed. To protect the Banque from losses on its lifeboat loan, a guarantee syndicate was formed penalizing those who had participated in the copper speculation that had caused the crisis bringing the bank down. Creation of the syndicate and other actions were consistent with mitigating the moral hazard from such an intervention. This episode contrasts the advice given by Bagehot to the Bank of England to counter a panic by lending freely at a high rate on good collateral, allowing insolvent institutions to fail.     

Financial development and barriers to the cross-border diffusion of financial innovation

This paper explores the determinants of financial development by focusing on the role played by barriers to the diffusion of financial technology. These barriers are measured using human genetic distance from the technology frontier. The results based on cross-sectional data for 123 countries suggest that genetic distance to the global frontier has an economically and statistically significant effect on financial development, in that countries that are genetically far from the technology leader tend to have lower levels of financial development. Genetic distance is found to have the largest effect, even after controlling for other determinants of financial development established in the literature. These findings indicate that cultural barriers to the diffusion of financial technology across borders impact financial development by influencing the follower countries’ ability to adopt and adapt innovations from the frontier.     

Hedging house price risk with futures contracts after the bubble burst

This paper extends the existing literature on managing house price risk. While previous work finds that a hedger would have reduced a large amount of variance in housing returns in Las Vegas, Nevada using Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) futures contracts, we show that neither static nor dynamic strategies would have maintained an effective hedge during the significant decline in housing prices. The inability to hedge house price risk using CME futures contracts ultimately calls into question the long-term viability of housing futures.     

玉林市存贷比运行特征、存在问题及对策建议——基于桂东四市比较

存贷款比例是银行业金融机构经营管理的重要指标之一,存贷比例过低不利于地方经济的发展。广西玉林市自2000年以来,存贷差逐年扩大,存贷比长期在低位徘徊,2013年存贷比在广西全区排最后一名。本文通过桂东四市（玉林市、梧州市、贺州市、贵港市）经济金融主要指标对比,分析玉林市银行业金融机构存贷比运行特征,揭示造成玉林市低存贷比的原因,提出提高存贷比的相关措施以及科学合理看待存贷比的建议。     

Did the value premium survive the subprime credit crisis?

We provide evidence that value stocks significantly underperformed growth stocks during the subprime credit crisis, despite a positive value premium before the crisis. The reversal in the value premium concentrates in financially constrained firms, suggesting it was due to the adverse influence of the crisis rather than confounding effects. These findings are robust to alternative financial constraint proxies and asset pricing models. The observation that value stocks are vulnerable to losses during extreme downturns like the crisis is consistent with them being riskier than growth stocks. Our findings have implications for the academic debate on the underlying cause of the value premium and for investors on the profitability of value investing strategies.     

金融自由化、资源配置偏向与城乡收入差距——基于省级面板数据的经验证据

文章运用主成分分析法,重测了我国金融自由化指数值,同时采用31个省级面板数据,实证分析了金融自由化、资源配置偏向对我国城乡收入差距的影响。结果表明,金融自由化弱化了金融资源配置偏向对城乡收入差距的抑制作用;财政、固定资产投入偏向,均拉大了城乡收入差距;而FDI则一定程度上缩小了城乡收入差距。此外,金融自由化、资源配置偏向对城乡收入差距的影响,具有区域差异性。     

A Typology of Communicative Strategies in Online Privacy Policies: Ethics, Power and Informed Consent

The opaque use of data collection methods on the WWW has given rise to privacy concerns among Internet users. Privacy policies on websites may ease these concerns, if they communicate clearly and unequivocally when, how and for what purpose data are collected, used or shared. This paper examines privacy policies from a linguistic angle to determine whether the language of these documents is adequate for communicating data-handling practices in a manner that enables informed consent on the part of the user. The findings highlight that corporate privacy policies obfuscate, enhance and mitigate unethical data handling practices and use persuasive appeals to increase companies’ trustworthiness. The communicative strategies identified provide starting points for redesigning existing privacy statements with a view to communicating data handling practices in a more transparent and responsible manner, laying the groundwork for informed consent.