Predicting Long‐Term Financial Returns: VAR versus DSGE Model—A Horse Race

This paper considers a U.S. institutional investor who is implementing a long‐term portfolio allocation using forecasts of financial returns. We compare the predictive performance of two competing macrofinance models—an unrestricted vector autoRegression (VAR) and a fully‐structural dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model—for horizons up to 15 years. Although the performances are similar for short horizons, the DSGE model outperforms the VAR at forecasting financial returns in the long term. This model also generates substantially higher Sharpe ratios. Although it contains fewer unknown parameters, it benefits from economically grounded restrictions that help anchor financial returns in the long term.     

山东省金融稳定报告(2008)摘要

2008年,山东省区域经济呈前高后低走势,上半年经济高位运行,下半年在经济周期调整压力和国际金融危机冲击下,各项指标渐次回落。但总体看,由于国家宏观调控政策果断调整,有力发挥了反向调节效应,金融体系在支持经济发展、结构优化和增长方式转变等方面发挥了积极作用。银行业体现出较强的抗风险能力,证券、保险业起伏明显,金融基础设施的支撑作用进一步突显。下一阶段区域金融稳定状况主要取决于各地贯彻落实宏观政策措施的及时性、有效性和长效性,尤其有赖于能否尽快扭转经济下行态势。在不确定性增多的环境下,金融管理部门和金融机构须倾力协作,坚持改革创新,努力捕捉"化危为机"的契机;积极健全风险防范化解机制,在逆境中谋求进取发展。     

Corporate Sell‐offs in the UK: Use of Proceeds,Financial Distress and Long‐run Impact on Shareholder Wealth

This study examines the long‐run return performance following UK corporate sell‐off announcements. We observe significant negative abnormal returns up to five years subsequent to sell‐off announcements. Our finding is robust to various specifications, irrespective of the intended use of proceeds. We also find a significantly positive association between long‐run abnormal returns and the magnitude of cash proceeds for sellers reducing corporate debt as well as for sellers with deeper financial distress or higher growth prospects. Overall, we find that UK corporate sell‐offs are associated with declines in subsequent shareholder wealth.     

The Long‐Term Effect of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act on Cross‐Listing Premia

This paper uses a triple difference approach to assess whether the adoption of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act predicts long‐term changes in cross‐listing premia of affected foreign firms. I measure cross‐listing premia as the difference between the Tobin's q of a cross‐listed company and a non‐cross‐listed company from the same country matched on propensity to cross‐list (first difference). I find that average premia for firms cross‐listed on levels 2 or 3 (subject to SOX) declined in the year of SOX adoption (2002) and remained significantly below their pre‐SOX level through year‐end 2005 (second difference). Firms listed on levels 2 or 3, which are subject to SOX, experienced larger declines in premia than firms listed on levels 1 or 4, which are not subject to SOX (third difference). The estimated decline is 0.15–0.20 depending on specification. Riskier firms and firms from high‐disclosing and high‐GDP countries suffered larger post‐SOX declines. Firm size predicts smaller declines in premia in well‐governed countries. Faster‐growing firms in poorly‐governed countries experienced smaller declines in premia. The results are robust to the use of different before‐and‐after periods; the use of annual, quarterly, or monthly data; the use of individual companies' Tobin's q's instead of matched pairs, and different regression specifications. The overall evidence is consistent with the view that SOX negatively affected cross‐listed premia, and particularly hurt riskier firms and firms from well‐governed countries, while perhaps helping high‐growth firms from poorly‐governed countries. At the same time, after‐SOX, level‐23 firms continue to enjoy a substantial premium, estimated at about 0.32.     

山东省金融稳定报告(2010)摘要

2009年,山东省区域经济在国际金融危机的不利形势下,实现了平稳较快发展和质量效益提升,经济社会呈现协调发展。金融业保持高速增长,自身效益和金融服务水平继续提升,为迅速扭转经济下滑走势做出重大贡献。但强力刺激总需求的措施具有负面效应,突出表现为解决部分深层次矛盾的时机被推延,一些新的不确定性在积聚。而金融繁荣特别是信贷剧增后,风险规模和风险点逐渐增加,金融业稳健经营和风险管理面临严峻挑战。     

Fund Management and Systemic Risk – Lessons from the Global Financial Crisis

Fund managers play an important role in increasing efficiency and stability in financial markets. But research also indicates that fund management in certain circumstances may contribute to the buildup of systemic risk and severity of financial crises. The global financial crisis provided a number of new experiences on the contribution of fund managers to systemic risk. In this article, we focus on these lessons from the crisis. We distinguish between three sources of systemic risk in the financial system that may arise from fund management: insufficient credit risk transfer to fund managers; runs on funds that cause sudden reductions in funding to banks and other financial entities; and contagion through business ties between fund managers and their sponsors. Our discussion relates to the current intense debate on the role the so‐called shadow banking system played in the global financial crisis. Several regulatory initiatives have been launched or suggested to reduce the systemic risk arising from non‐bank financial entities, and we briefly discuss the likely impact of these on the sources of systemic risk outlined in the article.     

Household Wealth and Macroeconomic Activity: 2008–2013

This paper provides estimates of the effects of the fall in financial and housing wealth in 2008–09 on overall macroeconomic activity. When the wealth losses are run through a structural macroeconometric model, it is estimated that the fall in wealth contributed about 2.1 percentage points to the rise in the unemployment rate in 2009 and about 3.3 points in 2010. The contribution to the fall in real GDP was 4.5% and 5.4% in the 2 years. These estimates account for most—but not all—of the recessionary increase in unemployment. The remaining increase in unemployment may have resulted more directly from financial stresses, but little evidence is found for this in this study.     

Risk‐Adjusted Long‐Term Contrarian Profits: Evidence from Non‐S&P 500 High‐Volume Stocks

Can trading volume help unravel the long‐term overreaction puzzle? With portfolios of non‐S&P 500 NYSE stocks, we show that (1) both the high‐ and low‐volume (abnormal volume) contrarian portfolios earn a much higher market‐adjusted excess return than the normal‐volume contrarian portfolio, (2) however, when leverage‐induced risk is factored in, excess returns from contrarian portfolios with normal‐ and low‐volume stocks are insignificant, (3) only excess returns from high‐volume contrarian stocks are significant and cannot be explained by the time‐varying risk and return framework, and (4) such high‐volume, risk‐adjusted excess returns arise mainly from winner (glamour) stocks.     

Dissecting Foreign Bank Lending Behavior During the 2008–2009 Crisis

This paper analyzes the lending behavior of foreign‐owned banks during the recent global crisis. Using bank‐level panel data for 51 countries, the paper explores the role of affiliate and parent financial characteristics, host location, as well as the impact of parent geographic origin and reach on foreign banks’ credit growth. Overall, the analysis finds robust evidence that foreign banks curtailed the growth of credit relative to other banks, independent of the host region in which they operate. Banks from the United States reduced loan growth less than other parent banks. Neither the global nor regional reach of parent banks influenced the lending growth of foreign affiliates. Parent capitalization and not parent funding explained the behavior of foreign bank credit growth during the global crisis. However, funding did affect the lending behavior of domestic and foreign banks in host countries, with those relying more heavily on deposits suffering a smaller decline in bank lending. Although not the focus of the paper, we also find that government‐owned banks played a countercyclical role in all regions.     

The Determinants of Corporate Trade Credit Policies in a Bank‐dominated Financial Environment: the Case of Finnish Small Firms

This paper examines trade credit policies of small firms operating in a bank‐dominated environment (Finland). We find that creditworthiness and access to capital markets are important determinants of trade credit extended by sellers. The level of purchases is positively correlated with the level of accounts payable. Larger and older firms and firms with strong internal financing are less likely to use trade credit, whereas firms with a high ratio of current assets to total assets, and firms subject to loan restructurings use it more. Negative loan decisions by financial intermediaries increase and a close bank‐borrower relationship decreases the probability that a firm does not take advantage of trade credit discounts.     

Islamic and conventional banks' soundness during the 2007–2008 financial crisis

The recent global financial crisis has induced a series of failure of many conventional banks and led to an increased interest in the Islamic banking business model. This paper attempts to answer empirically the following question: What was the effect of the 2007–2008 financial crisis on the soundness of Islamic banks and their conventional peers? Using the Z-score as an indicator of bank stability, our regression analysis (covering a matched sample of 34 Islamic Banks (IBs) and 34 conventional banks (CBs) from 16 countries) shows that there is no significant difference in terms of the effect of the financial crisis on the soundness of IBs and CBs. This finding reveals that IBs are diverging from their theoretical business model which would have allowed them to keep the same level of soundness even during the crisis.     

A Retrospective Evaluation of European Financial Management (1995–2008)

We provide a retrospective evaluation of European Financial Management (EFM) from 1995 to 2008. In 14 years, EFM has published a total of 333 articles, with 564 authors from 299 academic and non-academic institutions. The authors and institutions represent 26 different countries. Two interesting results emerge from this analysis. First, although EFM is a young finance journal, it has achieved a highly respectable status among all finance journals. In fact, EFM has surpassed a number of well-established finance journals in its research impact. Second, consistent with its mission, EFM has published articles whose authors have European affiliations and research content. Nonetheless, we find that EFM is the publication outlet of authors outside the European region as well. The rising readership and variety of articles published suggest that EFM is a general finance journal that has done very well in serving the interests of the finance profession for the last 14 years.     

高校金融专业学生考核机制创新研究

高等教育关乎国家发展和民族振兴,而学生考核又关系高校教育的质量和导向。文章以高校金融专业为切入点,分析我国高校金融专业对学生的考核现状,结合金融专业的教学特点,并借鉴国外高校对学生的考评经验,提出了若干完善和创新我国高校金融专业学生学习考核方式的建议。     

Monetary Policy and Financial Stability: Cross‐Country Evidence

We explain the heterogeneous response of central banks to financial stability risks based on a financial stability orientation (FSO) index, which reflects statutory, regulatory, and discretionary components of central banks' monetary policy frameworks. Our baseline results from a cross‐country panel of modified Taylor rules suggest that central banks with a high FSO increase their policy rates in response to elevated financial stability risks by 0.27 percentage points more than central banks with a low orientation. Back‐of‐the‐envelope calculations suggest that this policy rate differential translates into a reduced crisis probability but also into considerably lower inflation and output growth rates.     

The paper‐bill spread and real output: what matters more,a change in the paper rate or a change in the bill rate?

This paper adds to the literature on the information content of the paper-bill spread by explicitly taking into account the two sources of wider spreads, rises in the paper rate and declines in the bill rate. Results from impulse response analysis and variance decompositions suggest that decreases in real output are greater and last longer when a widening of the paper-bill spread comes from an increase in the paper rate rather than from an equivalent decrease in the bill rate. This is consistent with the idea that changes in the commercial paper rate have greater information content about future business cycles than do changes in the Treasury bill rate.     

Investor Protection and the Role of Firm‐Level Financial Transparency in Attracting Foreign Investment

We ask if companies can attract foreign equity capital by improving the transparency of their financial statements. Using a large panel of firms across 51 countries outside the United States, we show that the answer is yes, but only in countries with relatively high levels of investor protection. In countries with poor investor protection, unilaterally increasing firm‐level transparency has no effect on foreign ownership. Furthermore, our results indicate that in countries with higher levels of investor protection, the positive association between transparency and foreign ownership is stronger following a country's adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standards.     

Managerial Social Capital and Financial Development: A Cross‐Country Analysis

This study examines the issue of whether managerial social capital, defined as aggregate benefits of social obligations and informal contacts formed through social networks, has an impact on financial development. Utilizing a large cross‐country sample for the period 1999–2012, we provide evidence that higher levels of social capital have a positive effect on financial development. We are able to examine different types of social connections for our sample firms and find that informal and nonprofessional relationships matter the most for financial market development. These findings are robust to alternative model specifications, variable measurement, and estimation techniques.     

The Timeliness of Accounting Write‐Downs by U.S. Financial Institutions During the Financial Crisis of 2007–2008

I examine the timeliness of write‐downs taken by U.S. financial institutions during the financial crisis of 2007–2008. The timeliness of write‐downs is measured by benchmarking the quarterly accounting write‐down schedule with the devaluation schedule implied by exposure‐specific credit indices such as the ABX. The results show that the accounting write‐downs are less timely than the devaluations implied by credit indices. In a cross‐sectional analysis of the determinants of the timeliness of write‐downs, I document that corporate governance quality, regulatory investigations, and litigation pressure are positively related to the timeliness of write‐downs, whereas the write‐downs by firms with higher financial leverage, tighter regulatory constraints, and more complex exposures are less timely. I control for numerous exposure‐specific characteristics and document that less risky exposures and exposures that were affected later during the financial crisis were written down later. Regarding the consequences of timeliness, I find that the exposure to risky assets is reflected faster in stock returns for firms with timelier write‐downs.