Financial networks with electronic transactions: modelling,analysis and computations

Abstract

Advances in telecommunication networks, and, in particular, the Internet have transformed the economic landscape for financial decision-making. In this paper, we focus on financial networks with electronic transactions and with different tiers of decision-makers and we develop an integrated framework for the modelling, analysis and computation of solutions to such problems. Specifically, we consider an economy consisting of three types of decision-makers: those with sources of funds; intermediary ones, and consumers associated with the financial products at the demand markets. Those with sources of funds can transact with the intermediaries either physically or electronically as well as directly in an electronic manner with the consumers. The intermediaries, in turn, can also transact with the consumers either in a physical or an electronic fashion. We address the behaviour of the decision-makers, identify the network structure of the problem, derive the equilibrium conditions, and establish the variational inequality formulation. In addition, we propose a continuous time adjustment process for the study of the disequilibrium dynamics and prove that the set of stationary points of the resulting projected dynamical system coincides with the set of solutions of the variational inequality. We then utilize variational inequality theory to derive qualitative properties of the equilibrium price and financial flow pattern. Finally, we apply an algorithm for the determination of equilibrium prices and financial flows in several examples.     

Stock exchange competition in a simple model of capital market equilibrium

This paper uses a simple model of mean-variance capital markets equilibrium with proportional transactions costs to analyze the competition of stock markets for investors. We assume that equity trading is costly and endogenize transactions costs as variables strategically influenced by stock exchanges. Among other things, the model predicts that increasing financial market correlation leads to a decrease of transaction costs, an increase in cross-border trading activity, and to a decrease in the home bias of international equity flows. These predictions are consistent with the recent evolution of international stock markets.     

Price formation and the appraisal function in real estate markets

A real estate market model characterized by incomplete information, costly search, and varying expectations is presented. The model describes a self-selection process for market participants and a distribution of transaction prices. These transaction prices, which arise from a Nash equilibrium, can be expressed as a noisy signal, reflecting incomplete information as well as the conditions of sale. The appraiser's role is formalized as the task of signal extraction. The model emphasizes the differences in information available to individual buyers and sellers, who make transactions only infrequently, and the appraiser, whose expertise comes from observing many transactions. Based on the model, it is shown that contrary to popular perceptions, appraisal smoothing is consistent with an optimal updating strategy.     

A Study of the Interaction of Insurance and Financial Markets: Efficiency and Full Insurance Coverage

The first contribution of this article is to provide a framework, a model together with a corresponding equilibrium notion, suitable for the study of the interaction between insurance and dynamic financial markets. Our central result is that in equilibrium risk‐averse agents purchase full insurance coverage, despite unfair insurance prices. We identify three conditions that explain this result: (1) insurance contracts are priced competitively, (2) financial prices include a risk premium only for undiversifiable risk, and (3) financial markets are effectively complete. An implication is that in this model disasters can be insured by fully assessable stock insurance companies.     

The impact of keeping up with the Joneses behavior on asset prices and portfolio choice

This paper studies the asset pricing and portfolio choice implications of keeping up with the Joneses preferences. In terms of portfolio choice, we provide sufficient conditions on the utility function under which no portfolio bias can arise across agents in equilibrium. Regarding asset prices, we find that under Joneses behavior asset prices are a function of the economy's aggregate consumption, the agents preference parameters, the wealth endowment distribution and the weighting across agents in the Joneses definition. We present necessary and sufficient conditions such that equilibrium prices are only a function of aggregate wealth. Non-financial, non-diversifiable income is introduced in the model. In the presence of Joneses behavior, an under-diversified equilibrium emerges where investors will bias their portfolios towards the financial assets that better hedge their exposure to the non-financial income risk.     

Optimal hedging for fund and insurance managers with partially observable investment flows

All financial practitioners are working in incomplete markets full of unhedgeable risk factors. Making the situation worse, they are only equipped with imperfect information on the relevant processes. In addition to the market risk, fund and insurance managers have to be prepared for sudden and possibly contagious changes in the investment flows from their clients so that they can avoid the over- as well as under-hedging. In this work, the prices of securities, the occurrences of insured events and (possibly a network of) investment flows are used to infer their drifts and intensities by a stochastic filtering technique. We utilize the inferred information to provide the optimal hedging strategy based on the mean-variance (or quadratic) risk criterion. A BSDE approach allows a systematic derivation of the optimal strategy, which is shown to be implementable by a set of simple ODEs and standard Monte Carlo simulation. The presented framework may also be useful for manufacturers and energy firms to install an efficient overlay of dynamic hedging by financial derivatives to minimize the costs.     

Tunneling or propping: Evidence from connected transactions in China

Friedman et al. (2003) develop a model in which, in equilibrium, controlling shareholders may choose either tunneling or propping of their listed companies depending on the magnitude of an adverse shock and the magnitude of the private benefits of control. In this paper, we employ connected transaction data from China to test the implications of their model. We hypothesize that, when listed companies are financially healthy (in financial distress), their controlling shareholders are more likely to conduct connected transactions to tunnel (prop up) their listed companies and the market reacts unfavorably (favorably) to the announcement of these transactions. Our empirical findings strongly support our hypotheses. We also find that all of the transaction types in our sample can be used for tunneling or propping depending on different financial situations of the firms. Finally, political connection is negatively associated with the announcement effect. Overall, our analysis supports Friedman et al.'s (2003) model by furnishing clear evidence for propping and tunneling to occur in the same company but at different times.     

Partial equilibria with convex capital requirements: existence,uniqueness and stability

We consider several risk-averse financial agents who negotiate the price of a bundle of contingent claims in an incomplete semimartingale model of a financial market. Assuming that the agents’ risk preferences are modeled by convex capital requirements, we define and analyze their demand functions and propose a notion of a partial equilibrium price. In addition to sufficient conditions for the existence and uniqueness, we also show that the equilibrium prices are stable with respect to misspecifications of agents’ risk preferences.     

The shortage of safe assets in the US investment portfolio: Some international evidence

This paper develops a Bayesian Global VAR (GVAR) model to track the international transmission dynamics of two stylized shocks, namely a supply and demand shock to US-based safe assets. Our main findings can be summarized as follows. First, we find that (positive) supply-sided shocks lead to pronounced increases in economic activity which spills over to foreign countries. The impact of supply-sided shocks can also be seen for other quantities of interest, most notably equity prices and exchange rates in Europe. Second, a demand-sided shock leads to an appreciation of the US dollar and generally lower yields on US securities, forcing investors to shift their portfolios towards foreign fixed income securities. This yields sizable positive effects on US output, equity prices and a general decrease in financial market volatility.     

结售汇如何影响银行风险承担水平?——基于银行资产负债表的视角

本文构建了一个基于银行资产负债表的理论模型,研究了结售汇对银行风险承担水平的影响机制,并采用结售汇报表数据进行实证检验。结果表明,为实现利润最大化,银行会将外汇流入创造的流动性用于投放较高风险的贷款,导致净结汇对银行风险承担水平有正向影响,异质性分析结果显示大型银行受影响程度高于中小银行。本文结论意味着,当考虑结售汇波动可能进一步加剧时,有必要出台更多结构性政策,补足外汇流入减少带来的货币缺口,优化存款市场结构,稳定金融机构流动性预期,以缓冲外需冲击可能带来的影响,并激励银行服务重心进一步下沉,为小微企业提供更多信贷支持,完成好金融服务实体经济的重要使命。     

International tax arbitrage,currency options and put-call parity conditions

Using a finite-horizon general equilibrium model with uncertainty and money, we characterize situations where tax arbitrage opportunities may arise for international portfolio investors in an economy with heterogeneous capital income taxation where foreign currency exposure can be hedged using forward contracts and a set of currency options. We obtain tax-modified option prices similar to the no-tax ones, but augmented by tax-induced “risk-premium” terms; tax-modified put-call parity conditions are derived that revert to their standard (no-tax) format if the respective marginal agents in the bond and option markets are in identical tax brackets.     

宏观审慎政策协调能否抑制国际性银行危机传染？——基于跨境金融关联视角的实证研究

本文基于跨境金融关联视角对宏观审慎政策能否抑制国际性银行危机传染这一重要的理论与实践问题进行了实证研究。选取亚洲金融危机和全球金融危机时期遭受冲击的10个代表性国家作为样本,构建Logit模型和多元回归模型探讨本国及具有金融关联的国家协调实施宏观审慎政策对本国系统性银行危机传染的影响。研究表明,具有金融关联的国家出现金融危机会显著增加本国系统性银行危机的发生概率,具有金融关联的国家实施宏观审慎政策对本国信贷的影响比对房价的影响更明显,本国及具有金融关联的国家协调实施宏观审慎政策会显著降低本国系统性银行危机的发生概率。在调整银行危机指标及考虑贸易关联和流动性风险的影响后,研究结果依然保持稳健。本文的研究结论揭示了加强宏观审慎政策协调有助于维护全球金融稳定,对于中国政策当局强化宏观审慎管理具有极其重要的政策含义。     

Financial liberalization,bureaucratic corruption and economic development

We study the effect of international financial integration on economic development when the quality of governance may be compromised by corruption. Our analysis is based on a dynamic general equilibrium model of a small economy in which growth is driven by capital accumulation and public policy is administered by government-appointed bureaucrats. Corruption may arise due to the opportunity for bureaucrats to embezzle public funds, an opportunity that is made more attractive by financial liberalization which, at the same time, raises efficiency in capital production. Our main results may be summarized as follows: (1) corruption is always bad for economic development, but its effect is worse if the economy is open than if it is closed; (2) the incidence of corruption may, itself, be affected by both the development and openness of the economy; (3) financial liberalization is good for development when governance is good, but may be bad for development when governance is bad; and (4) corruption and poverty may coexist as permanent, rather than just transitory, fixtures of an economy.     

美联储政策变化、国际资本流动与宏观经济波动

本文构建包含国际投资者、外资企业和银行流动性冲击的DSGE模型来探究美联储货币政策变动和政策不确定性对我国宏观经济的影响和作用机制。研究发现:(1) 美联储加息会导致我国产出、投资和通货膨胀的下降、汇率贬值、国际资本外流和银行系统流动性紧张。随着金融摩擦程度的增加和银行杠杆率的上升,美联储加息对我国产出、投资和资产价格的负面影响会进一步增强。(2) 美联储货币政策不确定性的增加会直接导致外资企业的投资、劳动需求和产出的下降,并对我国总产出、总投资和资产价格产生明显的负向外溢效应,进一步加剧我国宏观经济的波动。(3)为应对美联储的利率变动,适当限制国际资本流动能有效稳定我国经济波动和改善社会福利,而实施固定汇率和央行盯住美国利率的政策会加大宏观经济的波动,并导致社会福利下降。     

Risk management and market conditions

In this paper, we investigate the relation between hedging activity by commercial/merchant/producers to commodity prices and commodity market volatility using Commitments of Traders reports from commodity futures markets exchanges. Qualifying the body of literature which attributes hedging activity to departures from Modigliani-Miller theory, market imperfections and transactions cost, we address the paradoxes of hedging which is not value creating and the absence of hedging when firms might benefit, arguing that it may be related to the market conditions and risk appetite. We discover that prices and volatility are generally statistically significant contributors to hedging activity by commercial/merchant/producers’ users but with marked differences in their elasticities. For some commodities, price levels alone and not volatility are significant. We demonstrate that analysis of hedging in commodity markets should take cognisance of conditions and the degree of risk aversion, otherwise the implicit assumption is that hedging is invariant to such matters. Through considering both market conditions and the degree of risk aversion, understanding the motivation for hedging may be enhanced.     

Transfer pricing in vertically integrated industries

Tax officials judge whether a multinational’s transfer price is consistent with the arm’s-length standard, the price at which two independent firms would carry out a similar transaction, by using data from comparable but independent transactions. In vertically integrated industries, the only source of comparable data may be from controlled (nonindependent) transactions. Conventional wisdom asserts that standard arm’s-length methods cannot perform well in such markets because the comparability rules encourage the integrated firms to collude tacitly on transfer prices in a way that amplifies tax-differential incentives. In this paper, we show that strategic linkages between vertically integrated firms operating in the same final good market moderate, and can possibly reverse, tax-differential incentives if the correct comparison method is used. The Cost-Plus method turns out to be the most effective in limiting the equilibrium amount of profit-shifting out of the high-tax country and it yields the highest tax revenues for the high-tax country. These benefits are shown to strengthen when the firms have private cost information.      

内外部金融周期差异如何影响中国跨境资本流动?

本文揭示了内外部金融周期差异影响跨境资本流动的机制,并以美国为外部经济代表,基于1998年第一季度至2018年第一季度数据进行了实证检验。研究发现:(1)中国跨境资本流动波动主要来自短期资本流动波动;分类看,其他投资波动较大;方向上看,流入波动要大于流出波动。(2)利差、汇差、资产价差(股指变动差异和房价变动差异)是影响跨境资本流动的重要因素,汇差和资产价差对短期资本流动影响尤甚。(3)内外部金融周期差异变动对资本流入的影响比对资本流出的影响更明显。(4)近年来,利差对跨境资本流动影响减弱,汇差和资产价差对跨境资本流动影响增强。结果说明,防范跨境资本流动风险要关注其他投资资本流动大幅波动风险,同时注意防范汇率和资产价格波动共振对跨境资本流动的冲击。     

Exchange market pressure in OECD and emerging economies: Domestic vs. external factors and capital flows in the old and new normal

We study the ways domestic and external global factors (such as risk appetite, global liquidity, U.S. monetary policy, and commodity prices) affected the exchange market pressure before and after the global financial crisis, as well as the role of these factors during the Federal Reserve's tapering episode. Utilizing a comprehensive database on capital controls, we investigate whether control measures have a significant impact on mitigating exchange market pressure associated with capital flows [net and gross]. Using quarterly data over the 2000–2014 period and a dynamic panel model estimation, we find that external factors played a significant role in driving exchange market pressure for both OECD countries and emerging market countries, with a larger impact on the latter. While the effect of net capital flows on exchange market pressure is muted, short-term gross portfolio inflows and outflows comprise important factors that account for exchange market pressure. Short-term portfolio flows and long-term foreign direct investment flows have a significant impact on exchange market pressure for emerging market economies and no significant effect for OECD countries. Capital controls seem to significantly reduce the exchange market pressure, although the economic size of this impact is highly dependent on the institutional quality.     

Spillovers of U.S. unconventional monetary policy to emerging markets: The role of capital flows

We employ a structural global VAR model to analyze whether U.S. unconventional monetary policy shocks, identified through changes in the central bank’s balance sheet, have an impact on financial and economic conditions in emerging market economies (EMEs). Moreover, we study whether international capital flows are an important channel of shock transmission. We find that an expansionary policy shock significantly increases portfolio flows from the U.S. to EMEs for almost two quarters, accompanied by a persistent movement in real and financial variables in recipient countries. Moreover, EMEs on average respond to the shock with an easing of their own monetary policy stance. The findings appear to be independent of heterogeneous country characteristics like the underlying exchange rate arrangement, the quality of institutions, or the degree of financial openness.     

The effect of relative performance evaluation on earnings management: a game-theoretic approach

Because investors and creditors often compare the financial statements of similar or competing firms when deciding how to allocate their funds, it is likely that a firm's financial well-being depends on how well it performs relative to its rivals. In this paper, we consider the problem of earnings management as a non-cooperative game among several firms, in which each firm seeks a comparison advantage through its financial statement numbers. Our model indicates that firms may exaggerate their earnings in a world driven by multi-firm-comparisons simply because they expect other firms to do so. Thus, very little may be needed for earnings management to emerge in the Nash equilibrium. Our results hold under the following conditions. First, investors and creditors are not able to unravel the earnings management, thus ensuring that some information asymmetry remains. Second, investors and creditors make inter-firm comparisons when assessing firm value. Third, firms care about their own fundamental value as well as the market's perception about firm value. We also show that the equilibrium amount of earnings management depends on the characteristics of the earnings management technique itself and on the proportion of stockholders who are long-term investors in the firm.