Valuation of double trigger catastrophe options with counterparty risk

This study presents a novel catastrophe option pricing model that considers counterparty risk. Asset prices are modeled through a jump-diffusion process which is correlated to counterparty loss process and collateral assets. Because of the long term of catastrophe options, this study also examines the model in the stochastic interest rate environment. The numerical results indicate that counterparty risk significantly affects the value of options. Recently, numerous serious financial events have demonstrated the importance of counterparty risk when valuing financial products.     

Funding liquidity risk and the low-volatility anomaly: Evidence from the Taiwan stock market

We investigate whether the funding liquidity risk to institutional investors influences the negative relation between expected returns and variance (the ‘‘Low-volatility anomaly’’). With the Taiwan stock market as a setting, we implement a multivariate Markov switching model and use the funding liquidity risk to model the time-varying transition probabilities of the regime-switching process to capture changes in the funding liquidity risk regime. Our evidence documents that the low-volatility anomaly is most pronounced when there is high funding liquidity risk. When there is low funding liquidity risk, however, the low-volatility anomaly has a significant reversal. These results imply that the increased funding liquidity risk due to financial shock transmitted from parent banks is associated with higher selling pressure on institutional investors’ high-volatility stocks, leading to the low-volatility anomaly.     

基於巴塞尔协议的中国上市金融业实证研究

本研究探讨中国上市金融业资产风险与管制资本的关系。论文以1993年至2002年间上市的金融业为样本。实证结果发现:(1)控制了流动性风险、规模、总体经济等因素后,资本比率与资产风险间成显著正相关,破产理论或管制理论适用于解释样本期间内中国上市金融业风险与资本运作间的关系。(2)1997年参照巴塞尔协议实施相关法规办法以后,金融业资产风险上升,显示此项管制并未达成降低风险的效果。(3)管制实施以后,为维持净资产收益率,金融机构的资产风险反而较管制前为高。(4)核心资本是金融业吸收损失的主要来源。     

Systemic liquidity contagion in the European interbank market

Systemic liquidity risk, defined by the International Monetary Fund as “the risk of simultaneous liquidity difficulties at multiple financial institutions,” is a key topic in financial stability studies and macroprudential policy-making. In this context, the complex web of interconnections of the interbank market plays the crucial role of allowing funding liquidity shortages to propagate between financial institutions. Here, we introduce a simple yet effective model of the interbank market in which liquidity shortages propagate through an epidemic-like contagion mechanism on the network of interbank loans. The model is defined by using aggregate balance sheet information of European banks, and it exploits country and bank-specific risk features to account for the heterogeneity of financial institutions. Moreover, in order to obtain the European-wide topology of the interbank network, we define a block reconstruction method based on the exchange flows between the various countries. We show that the proposed contagion model is able to estimate systemic liquidity risk across different years and countries. Results suggest that our effective contagion approach can be successfully used as a viable alternative to more realistic but complicated models, which not only require more specific balance sheet variables with high time resolution but also need assumptions on how banks respond to liquidity shocks.

     

公司流动性价值的复合实物期权定价法研究

公司流动性是指公司或企业持有的流动性资产,它除了账面价值外,还含有某种潜在价值。对公司流动性价值进行科学的评估,对于投资者、公司管理者等各方都非常重要。采用实物期权理论对公司流动性进行定价,是目前公司金融理论的前沿课题。本文首次揭示了公司流动性的复合实物期权性质,并用复合实物期权模型进行了定价的尝试,为公司财务管理决策提供了一种量化的工具。     

3. Money, Credit, and Crisis

The financial crisis of 2008–2009 has antecedents in earlier crises, including the Great Depression. In order to understand how the current crisis arose, we must review the most fundamental principles of banking. Doing that, we find that the main service performed by banks is the creation of liquidity, a collective good that can be destroyed by the behavior of individual financial institutions. The key element in creating liquidity is the monetization of various types of collateral. When collateral takes the form of land or capital that turns over slowly, banks lose liquidity. That is why major banking crises have frequently been associated with real estate lending. The best way to restore health to the financial system is by restoring the principles of the "real bills" doctrine that requires loans to be self-liquidating.     

The effect of firm financial characteristics and the availability of alternative finance on IPO underpricing

This article tests the hypothesis that the financial characteristics of the issuing firm, along with the availability of alternative sources of financing, are important determinants of the level of underpricing. While risk and its relationship to underpricing have been examined in previous studies, liquidity risk is unique because of its special implications for a firm’s bargaining position with the underwriter. Consistent with my hypothesis, firms with greater liquidity concerns at the IPO experience greater underpricing. On the other hand, firms with higher levels of venture capital funding and/or debt financing are more fully priced.     

The shadow costs of repos and bank liability structure

Making use of a structural model that allows for optimal liquidity management, we study the role that repos play in a bank׳s financing structure. In our model the bank׳s assets consist of illiquid loans and liquid reserves and are financed by a combination of repos, long-term debt, deposits and equity. Repos are a cheap source of funding, but they are subject to an exogenous rollover risk. We show that the use of repos inflicts two types of indirect (“shadow”) costs on the bank׳s shareholders: first, it induces the bank to maintain higher liquid reserves in order to alleviate the additional default risk; second, it adds to the cost of long-term debt financing. These shadow costs limit the bank׳s appetite for cheap but unstable repo funding. This effect is, however, weakened under poor returns on risky assets, access to deposit funding and the depositor preference rule. We also analyze the impact of a liquidity coverage ratio, payout restrictions and a leverage ratio on the bank׳s financing choices and show that all these tools are able to curb the bank׳s reliance on repos.     

流动性对中国商业银行业绩影响的实证研究

金融危机反映了银行在面对资金压力时持有的流动性资产不足,同时也凸显了银行流动性监管的重要性。为了建立既能够确保金融体系稳定,又能够兼顾银行盈利能力最大化目标的监管标准,有必要对银行流动性资产对业绩的影响进行实证研究,本文利用2003～2010年中国14家上市商业银行数据,检验了流动性资产对于银行业绩的影响,研究发现流动性资产和银行业绩之间存在非线性关系,而且四大国有商业银行和十家股份制商业银行流动性管理行为存在显著差异。     

Liquidity, Its Origins and Effects

A bstract . Accumulation of wealth claims—financial assets —gives the owner the option of present or future consumption and serves as a fund for it or as a reserve "against unforeseen contingencies" (Katona). In the latter case it reflects income uncertainties and the difficulties of borrowing in any time of personal emergency, or corporate special need. The borrowing rate must always be less than the lending rate to offset transaction costs; this gives rise to a spectrum of interest rates as economies of scale operate in capital raising and capital investing to overcome costs of achieving and improving liquidity. Uncertainty is a psychosocial factor in financial markets which makes traditional static two-period models of limited value and requires dynamic multiperiod models for more comprehensive analyses.     

The role of banking regulation in an economy under credit risk and liquidity shock

This paper develops a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model which includes a financial sector to analyze the effects of liquidity shock and credit risk in the Brazilian economy. Banks use equity capital and deposits from agents to finance investments of the productive sector. The sources of financial frictions are default rate and liquidity shock, due to deposits withdrawn in advance. The banking supervisor injects liquidity in the deposit market. Using data for the Brazilian economy in the period from 1995 to 2009, the structural parameters are estimated by Bayesian methods. Impulse response functions are computed to describe the dynamic effects of exogenous shocks. The major results show that credit risk is pro-cyclical and default risk depends on structural features. The banking regulator is able to set up a policy to promote financial stability and efficiently reduce fluctuations in the output.     

Does financial regulation affect the profit efficiency and risk of banks? Evidence from China's commercial banks

The goal of financial regulation is to enable banks to improve liquidity and solvency. Stricter regulation may be good for bank stability, but not for bank efficiency. This research aims to examine whether banks have met the CBRC's standard of financial regulations and explores how the previously implemented financial regulations have affected bank efficiency and risk in the past. In addition, we also explored the trade-off relationship between efficiency and risk. Unlike other studies, this study used bank assets as a classification standard from the financial risk and differential regulatory perspective.The empirical results indicate that the CBRC regulates the provision coverage ratio and cost-to-income ratio, which seems relevant to large banks and the loan-to-deposit ratio, capital adequacy ratio, and leverage ratio, which seems relevant to small banks. The CBRC regulates the current ratio to reduce the risks of banks. Based on our empirical results, the current ratio did not affect the risks and led to different efficiency results between large and small banks. In an environment with asymmetric information, a bank decision-making is unobservable. The characteristics of financial regulation provide market clues if a bank is operating at the most efficiency and risk condition.     

Individual risk attitudes and the composition of financial portfolios: Evidence from German household portfolios

This paper explores the relationship between the self-declared risk aversion of private investors and their propensity to hold incomplete portfolios of financial assets. The analysis is based on household survey data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (SOEP) that provides a reliable measure of individual attitudes toward financial risk. Our findings suggest that more risk averse households tend to hold incomplete portfolios consisting mainly of a few risk-free assets. We also find that the propensity to acquire additional assets is highly dependent on whether liquidity and safety needs are met.     

货币性外汇储备资产的多层次优化配置

在中国拥有巨额外汇储备并急需寻求储备资产管理模式创新的背景下,本文以货币性外汇储备和资本性外汇储备的划分为前提,将多层次、系统的管理思想引入到外汇储备资产优化配置中。通过构建基于多层次需求的货币性外汇储备币种结构优化的AHP模型,测算出外汇储备货币性资产的最优币种权重。在币种结构确定的基础上再建立修正的资产结构优化AHP模型,并最终计算出货币性资产权重,从而实现了币种结构和资产结构优化的真正结合。研究结果表明：美元在币种权重中的领导地位还难以撼动,货币性存款在资产组合权重中也具有明显优势。因此,在货币性资产优化配置中,不宜将币种盲目多样化,同时应充分考虑货币性储备资产的功能和特性,选择流动性强、安全性高的金融资产。     

Optimal Precision of Accounting Information in Debt Financing

This paper studies qualitative characteristics of accounting systems that are used in debt financing. We consider a financially constrained firm that provides to lenders information on the value of assets that serve as collateral in a financing contract for a risky investment project. We find that the investor prefers an accounting system that provides biased signals about the value of assets. This bias adjusts the information content of the signals to maximize the probability of undertaking the project. Under fair value accounting, low book values are more precise measures of actual value than high book values, which is consistent with conditional conservatism. Next, we study accounting risk to study the effect of institutions that govern the financial reporting policy based on the optimal precision. We find that fair value measurement introduces greater accounting risk and is preferred by financially constrained firms to measurement at historical cost.     

基于动态VaR模型的我国银行间拆借市场风险度量研究

本文介绍了一种基于GARCH和非参数法的动态VaR模型——L_VaR模型,用来度量市场风险与流动性风险两者综合风险的大小。并通过采样我国银行间隔夜拆借的高频交易数据,以及SAS软件的数据处理分析发现,GARCH（1,1）模型能较好地拟合隔夜拆借利率的波动情况,而非参数估计法（Boot- strap）能较准确地估计拆借市场流动性的波动水平。实证结果表明。基于动态VaR模型对于市场风险与流动性风险两者综合风险的短期预测效果较为理想。     

Systemic financial risk indicators and securitised assets: an agent-based framework

The paper presents an agent-based model of a credit economy which includes a securitisation process and a bailout mechanism for bank bankruptcies. Within this framework, banks are able to sell mortgages to a financial vehicle corporation, which finances its activity by creating mortgage-backed securities and selling them to a mutual fund. In turn, the mutual fund collects liquidity by selling shares to households and remunerates them with a monthly interest. The impact of this mechanism is analysed by means of computational experiments for different levels of banks’ securitisation propensity. Furthermore, we study a set of systemic risk indicators which have the aim of assessing the imbalances in the financial system. Two of them are the mortgage-to-GDP ratio and the capital adequacy ratio, which are constructed to detect only the on-balance sheet changes in banks’ credit exposure. We consider two additional indicators, similar to the previous ones with the only difference that they are also able to account for the off-balance sheet items. Moreover, we adopt an indicator, the so-called “virtuous–unvirtuous cycle” indicator, which, besides off-balance assets, targets also the GDP. The results show that higher securitisation propensity weakens the financial stability of banks with relevant effects on different sectors of the economy. Most importantly, the analysis of systemic risk reveals the important issue of designing suitable systemic risk indicators for predicting incoming financial crises, finding that an essential feature of these indicators should be to integrate banks’ off-balance sheet assets.

     

Low interest rate policy and the use of reserve requirements in emerging markets

This paper sheds light on the link between the interest rate policy in large advanced economies with international funding and reserve currencies (the United States and the euro area) and the use of reserve requirements in emerging markets. Using reserve requirement data for 28 emerging markets from 1998 to 2012, we provide evidence that emerging market central banks tend to raise reserve requirements when interest rates in international funding markets decline or financial inflows accelerate, most likely to preserve financial stability. In contrast, when global liquidity risk rises and funding from the large advanced economies dries up, emerging markets lower reserve requirements.     

Prices,debt and market structure in an agent-based model of the financial market

We develop an agent-based model in which heterogeneous and boundedly rational agents interact by trading a risky asset at an endogenously set price. Agents are endowed with balance sheets comprising the risky asset as well as cash on the asset side and equity capital as well as debt on the liabilities side. A number of findings emerge when simulating the model: we find that the empirically observable log-normal distribution of bank balance sheet size naturally emerges and that higher levels of leverage lead to a greater inequality among agents. Furthermore, greater leverage increases the frequency of bankruptcies and systemic events. Credit frictions, which we define as the stickiness of debt adjustments, are able to explain a key difference in the relation between leverage and assets observed for different bank types. Lowering credit frictions leads to an increasingly procyclical behavior of leverage, which is typical for investment banks. Nevertheless, the impact of credit frictions on the fragility of the model financial system is complex. Lower frictions do increase the stability of the system most of the time, while systemic events become more probable. In particular, we observe an increasing frequency of severe liquidity crises that can lead to the collapse of the entire model financial system.     

Indirect Convertibility,Equity‐Based Banking and Financial Stability

Banking reform proposals put forward in the wake of the recent financial crisis maintain that equity‐based banking would be stable and would prevent bank runs. This article argues that complementing this form of banking with an indirect convertibility monetary standard and thereby dispensing with base money would enhance financial stability further. Banks would not hold a distinctive asset (base money) that would be called upon by customers at short notice, thereby removing the possibility of bank runs. No discrepancy in value between the two sides of a bank's balance sheet would arise as its assets (securitised loans) would be marked to market. Unlike other recent contributions, the intermediation model outlined here is not ‘limited purpose’ in nature as banks would not be restricted in the form of lending activity they can pursue. Common sources of banking and financial instability – liquidity risk, solvency risk, moral hazard – would be absent.