International Outsourcing of Services: What Role for Central and East European Countries?

Central and East European countries (CEECs) that have recently acceded to the European Union are increasingly emerging on the map of global companies as possible locations for outsourcing services. Starting from the assumption of labor cost differentials in favor of the CEECs, the paper explores the CEECs' capacity and potential to supply outsourcable services to the EU-15. We analyze trends in trade flows and foreign direct investment in computer services and other business services. Although the available statistical data are deficient and excessively aggregated, the scattered evidence suggests that the CEECs are important suppliers of outsourcable services to the EU-15. Apart from labor cost differentials, other factors, such as the availability of skilled workforce as well as geographical and cultural proximity, might also contribute to EU-15 companies' preference for the CEECs when deciding on the location for international outsourcing of services. Increased specialization within the enlarged European Union could bring greater benefits from the international outsourcing of services, provided the European Union improves the functioning of labor markets and the competitiveness of the service sector, including the efficient implementation of the internal market for services.     

Corporate Groups and Minority Shareholder Wealth: A Role for Private Benefits?

This paper aims at developing a theoretical framework to address the issue of internal resource allocation within corporate groups, representing an extension of the internal capital market approach developed for Anglo-Saxon type multidivisional enterprises. In particular, the paper investigates how private benefits from control affect investment decision processes in a capital constrained business group. We consider a group of n listed companies controlled by one main shareholder (i.e., a hierarchical group), and suppose that the group as a whole is endowed with an exogenous and limited amount of capital for investment. We analyze the effects of private benefits on the investment allocative efficiency and on the wealth of the group';s various claimants. Under reasonable assumptions, we show that the controlling shareholder always finds preferable to secure private benefits. Moreover, and surprisingly enough, we find that the appropriation of control benefits may give rise to an increase in the market value of the group as well as in the portfolio wealth of the set of minority shareholders. In particular, the positive effect of control benefits on minority interests increases with the capital rationing of the group. Therefore, the effects of private benefits can be different in different markets, depending on the degree of development and the credit capacity of the single market. The findings of this paper challenge the largely accepted view that private benefits from control are always harmful to minority shareholders.     

Doha Merchandise Trade Reform: What Is at Stake for Developing Countries?

The LINKAGE model of the global economy and the latest GlobalTrade Analysis Project (GTAP) database (version 6.05) are usedto examine the impact of current merchandise trade barriersand agricultural subsidies and possible reform outcomes of theWorld Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) Doha DevelopmentAgenda. The results suggest that moving to free global merchandisetrade would boost real incomes in Sub-Saharan Africa proportionatelymore than in other developing countries or in high-income countries,despite the terms of trade loss in parts of that region. Particularattention is given to agriculture, as farmers constitute thepoorest households in developing countries but the most assistedin rich countries. Net farm incomes would rise substantiallyin Sub-Saharan Africa and other developing country regions,alleviating rural poverty. Partial liberalization could movethe world some way toward those desirable outcomes, the moreso the more developing countries themselves cut applied tariffs,particularly on agricultural imports.     

Exploring governance of the new European Banking Authority—A case for harmonization?

In the context of the proposed EU financial supervisory reforms, this paper focuses on the governance of the network of national supervisory banking agencies and the newly established Community supervisor (European Banking Authority, EBA). We assess to what extent lack of governance convergence nationally and with EBA could undermine the incentives for cooperation among supervisors. Convergence should particularly focus on (i) the issue of the presence of politicians on decision-making bodies; (ii) the need for clearly defining dismissal procedures of heads of supervision; (iii) autonomy from government in regulatory matters; (iv) supervisory autonomy in matters of licensing and withdrawing licenses; (iv) mechanisms for judicial accountability; (v) legal protection for supervisors handling in good faith. In the absence of full centralization of prudential supervision, early harmonization of national governance arrangements towards best practice would better align supervisors’ incentive structures and, hence, be beneficial for the effectiveness of European supervision.     

The European Union preventive restructuring framework: A hole in one?

While traditionally (Continental) Europe has not been known for an in particular debtor‐ or restructuring‐friendly insolvency practice, in recent decades, important reforms were implemented that would foster restructurings in Europe. In this article, we comparatively look a the status quo of insolvency and restructuring practice in five different European countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, UK). We place our observations into the context of the preventive restructuring directive, to be implemented within the next two years after its publication on 26 June 2019. The directive leaves quite some room implementation, from a watered‐down restructuring tool with high access threshold to a pre‐insolvency debtor‐friendly US‐style restructuring procedure.     

Settling for efficiency – A framework for the European securities transaction industry

Despite a lot of restructuring and many innovations in recent years, the securities transaction industry in the European Union is still a highly inefficient and inconsistently configured system for cross-border transactions. This paper analyzes the functions performed, the institutions involved and the parameters concerned that shape market and ownership structure in the industry. Of particular interest are microeconomic incentives of the main players that can be in contradiction to social welfare. We develop a framework and analyze three consistent systems for the securities transaction industry in the EU that offer superior efficiency than the current, inefficient arrangement. Some policy advice is given to select the ‘best’ system for the Single European Financial Market.     

Does high profitability improve stability for European banks?

We investigate whether high profitability influences the occurrence of bank distress in Europe. We utilize four sets of indicators for high profitability in logit models to explain bank distress with a hand-collected dataset of European bank distresses. We find that high profitability does not reduce the occurrence of bank distress. In contrast, we obtain limited evidence that high profitability can lead to increase such occurrence through a time horizon of about 3 years. Our findings therefore challenge the view that bank profitability should be promoted to favor bank stability.     

The 2011 European short sale ban: A cure or a curse?

This paper examines whether the 2011 European short sale ban on financial stocks proved to be successful or had a negative impact on financial markets. We explicitly take an options market perspective and focus on market participants’ changes in beliefs and expectations. During the ban, short positions in banned stocks decreased, whereas they increased for non-banned stocks. Our results indicate that the ban increased implied jump risk levels, thereby negatively impacting the banned financial stocks. However, we also observe that after the announcement of the ban, financial contagion risk actually dropped for banned stocks. Instead of a substitution effect between regular short selling and synthetic shorting through single stock puts, we observe a migration out of single stock puts into the EuroStoxx 50 index options market. We conclude that this type of migration diversified selling pressure initially concentrated in financial stocks across a larger share of the stock market, thereby reducing systemic risks and enhancing overall financial stability.     

What Drives the Creation of New Businesses? A Panel-Data Analysis for EU Countries

Our article aims to identify the key factors that affect the establishment of new businesses in 18 developed and emerging member countries in the European Union over the period 2003–2015. Using panel-data estimation techniques, we alternatively assess the effects of some macroeconomic, demographic, individual, and business environment-related factors on the dynamics of new firm creation, proxied by the rates of nascent entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial intentions. The results show that macroeconomic and demographic variables are the most significant determinants, followed by the individual characteristics of potential entrepreneurs and of the business environment. In addition, the sovereign debt crisis in Europe in 2010 positively affected entrepreneurship through increased support for new firms by individual country governments and the European Union.     

Economic democracy: A path for the future?

As opposed to political democracy and its attempts at power control in the public sector, the concentration of economic power, and its antidote, the concept of economic democracy, has received much less attention. In the paper, we first offer a definition of economic democracy as a “a system of checks and balances on economic power and support for the right of citizens to actively participate in the economy regardless of social status, race, gender, etc.” Based on our definition, we suggest six possible faces of economic democracy and look at their implications for the vision of a sustainable, equitable and non-growing society, as discussed within the degrowth movement: (1) Regulation of market mechanisms and corporate activities. Regulation is one of the most obvious paths to curbing economic power, hence we highlight the issue of deregulation vis a vis possible degrowth policies. A revision of the free-market paradigm is suggested. (2) Support for social enterprises. We discuss different forms of democratic governance within enterprises and suggest that co-operative approaches, common in social enterprises, are better suited to a degrowth economy. (3) Democratic money creation processes, including pluralist community currencies, are suggested to counter economic power caused by the practice of fractional banking. (4) Reclaiming the commons (especially in their original sense as communal land stewardship systems) both conceptually and physically is seen by us as an important aspect of enhancing economic democracy. (5) Redistribution of income and capital assets is discussed as another approach to achieving economic democracy. (6) Finally, inspired by Vandana Shiva, we suggest that a broader view of economic democracy would involve a diversity of production scales and modes, including small-scale, subsistence and self-employment.     

The ‘Wild Cards’ of European futures: Planning for discontinuities?

The use of Wild Cards has been extensively developed in the corporate world, particularly by companies dealing with strategic commodities in global markets, i.e., the nexus between warfare, oil, and energy use. One of the purposes of Wild Cards is to test the ability of a system - usually a large organisation - to react to unforeseen but high-impact events. The work presented in this article was undertaken in the context of the project on ‘Spatial Scenarios’ for the European Spatial Planning Observation Network (ESPON) Programme. In this project, four Wild Cards were introduced: “an era of energy scarcity”, “the demise of Europe's social security system”, “the gulf stream stops”, and “the dollar goes down the drain”. These Wild Cards were introduced to investigate how external events may have asymmetric impacts across the European territory, to include some reflections on themes that were not included in the integrated scenarios, and to raise awareness of the fact that today's policy choices have to be evaluated not only in the light of current policy goals but also in the light of possible, sometimes dramatic, future events. In this way the Wild Cards helped to highlight the potential impact of external events on the territorial development of Europe and their particular impact on the internal disparities between the regions.     

Monetary Policy Stress in EMU: What Role for Fundamentals and Missed Forecasts?

This article reexamines the problem of monetary policy stress in the EMU. In addition to estimating the amount of stress in particular countries, we investigate its sources by breaking it down into its “fundamental” parts, covering how it is a result of country-specific macroeconomic divergences and the EMU-wide “non-fundamental” component, with special attention given to the role of missed forecasts. Our results confirm that peripheral countries were exposed to risks emerging from low interest rates while the “core” countries did not suffer from much monetary policy stress. Interestingly, the bulk of it was non-fundamental, i.e., not caused by inflation and output gap differentials between countries. We show that missed forecasts did make an important contribution to this part of the stress and were mainly responsible for pushing the interest rate below its rule-consistent level.     

The German Capital Markets Model Case Act (KapMuG): a European role model for increasing the efficiency of capital markets? Analysis and suggestions for reform

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the determinants of the sovereign credit ratings provided by the three major rating agencies: Fitch Ratings, Moody’s and Standard and Poor. A principal component analysis is employed in order to identify the common factors affecting these ratings. The impact of the variables correlated with these factors on ratings is then assessed through an ordered logistic model. Results show that sovereign ratings are mostly influenced by per capita income, government income, real exchange rate changes, inflation rate and default history. The study also highlights the importance of corruption, as measured by Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, which appears as a proxy for both economic development and the quality of the governance of a country.     

The Housing Cycle: What Role for Mortgage Market Development and Housing Finance?

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics - We use duration analysis to assess the impact of securitization, mortgage sector liberalization and government involvement in housing finance on...     

Systemic risk: A new trade-off for monetary policy?

We introduce time-varying systemic risk (à la He and Krishnamurthy, 2014) in an otherwise standard New-Keynesian model to study whether simple leaning-against-the-wind interest rate rules can reduce systemic risk and improve welfare. We find that while financial sector leverage contains additional information about the state of the economy that is not captured in inflation and output leaning against financial variables can only marginally improve welfare because rules are detrimental in the presence of falling asset prices. An optimal macroprudential policy, similar to a counter cyclical capital requirement, can eliminate systemic risk raising welfare by about 1.5%. Also, a surprise monetary policy tightening does not necessarily reduce systemic risk, especially during bad times. Finally, a volatility paradox a la Brunnermeier and Sannikov (2014) arises when monetary policy tries to excessively stabilize output.     

Consumer confidence or the business cycle: What matters more for European expected returns?

Answer: The business cycle.We show that consumer confidence and the output gap both affect excess returns on stocks in many European countries: When the output gap is positive (the economy is doing well), expected returns are low, and when consumer confidence is high, expected returns are also low. Consumer confidence and the output gap are also highly positively correlated. In fact, we find that consumer confidence does not contain independent information (i.e. information over and above that contained by the output gap) about expected returns. Our use of European data allows us to examine both aggregate European and local-country data on consumer confidence and output gaps. We find that even local-country consumer confidence does not contain independent information about expected returns. Our findings have asset pricing implications: We show that the cross-country distribution of expected returns is better captured when using the European output gap as a risk factor.     

Assumable Financing Redux: A New Challenge for Appraisal?

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics - Given the long term secular decline in interest rates, assumable financing has been of little concern for decades. But given both the growth of...     

Has European corporatism delivered? A survey with preliminary evidence

I ask whether European firms' investments in stakeholder welfare come at the cost of lower shareholder value. Focusing on the largest 50 public firms in four European countries, I find a valuation discount in the Tobin's Q of continental European firms relative to matched US firms. The valuation discount is correlated with presence of large block holders in European firms but not with the poorer disclosure record of US firms on the environmental (E) and social (S) dimensions. In sum, poorer governance (G) in continental Europe appears to destroy more shareholder value than better E and S disclosure can add.