The Illiquidity Discount of Life Insurance Investments

We incorporate an illiquid life insurance investment in the multi-period investment strategy of an investor with constant relative risk aversion and independent and identically distributed returns. In our setup, the liquid and the illiquid assets are risky and correlated and the illiquid investment cannot be rebalanced. We calculate the illiquidity discount as the difference in certainty equivalent rates of return between the optimal strategy with all assets being rebalanced in each period and the strategy with the illiquid investment. Calibrating our model to data of the German market we find a negative relationship between the level of risk aversion and the illiquidity discount when the investor does not rebalance at all. However, when the investor rebalances his liquid assets in each period to hedge against the illiquid investment the illiquidity discount becomes economically negligible.     

The relative influence of price and non-price factors on short-term retail deposit quantities?

This study explores how price and non-price factors influence change in the quantity of short-term retail deposits held by depository institutions. The analysis is undertaken for a sample of UK building societies over 23 years using a disaggregated data set with a two-stage econometric procedure involving system estimators in a panel framework using seemingly unrelated regression, generalised method of moments and an ordinary least-squares fixed effects estimators to control for contemporaneous correlation and endogeneity concerns. Price factors examined include the policy or base rate and retail deposit interest rates set by individual building societies and non-price factors including the branch network and the number of deposit accounts offered by individual building societies. The cost of funds, one non-price factor and occurrence of mergers are consistently significant influences of retail deposit quantities. We conclude risk assessment of retail deposit quantity and monetary policy transmission would benefit from considering both price and non-price factors, rather than only price factors.     

Oil price shocks and volatility spillovers in the Nigerian sovereign bond market

This paper investigates volatility spillover in the Nigerian sovereign bond market arising from oil price shocks, using Vector Autoregressive Moving Average ‐ Asymmetric Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (VARMA‐AGARCH) model. The paper covers the period March 22, 2011 to April 14, 2016 and makes use of the daily data of the Nigerian Sovereign Bond, Brent oil and West Texas Intermediate (WTI), respectively. We endogenously and sequentially detect structural break points using the test of Bai and Perron (2003) framework. In order to accurately estimate the model, we modify it by incorporating the break points into the VARMA‐AGARCH model, a process which if ignored would lead to model misspecification. The results obtained demonstrate a significant cross‐market volatility transmission between oil and sovereign bond market with ample sensitivity to structural breaks. The study also computes optimum weight portfolio and hedge ratio both with and without structural breaks and results equally indicate sensitivity to structural breaks.     

Do risk management practices work? Evidence from hedge funds

We examine hedge fund risk management practices and their association with left-tail risk during the 2008 financial crisis. Consistent with risk management practices reducing left-tail risk, funds in our sample that use formal risk models performed significantly better in the extreme down months of 2008. We find no evidence that having either position limits or a dedicated head of risk management is associated with reduced left-tail risk. Funds employing value at risk models had more accurate expectations of how they would perform in a short-term equity bear market.     

Tail mutual exclusivity and Tail-VaR lower bounds

In this paper, we extend the concept of mutual exclusivity proposed by [Dhaene, J. & Denuit, M. (1999). The safest dependence structure among risks. Insurance: Mathematics and Economics 25, 11–21] to its tail counterpart and baptize this new dependency structure as tail mutual exclusivity. Probability levels are first specified for each component of the random vector. Under this dependency structure, at most one exceedance over the corresponding Value-at-Risks (VaRs) is possible, the other components being zero in such a case. No condition is imposed when all components stay below the VaRs. Several properties of this new negative dependence concept are derived. We show that this dependence structure gives rise to the smallest value of Tail-VaR (TVaR) of a sum of risks within a given Fréchet space, provided that the probability level of the TVaR is close enough to one.     

A tool for analysing the interdependence of indoor environmental quality and reported symptoms of the hospitals’ personnel

The working environment and the working conditions can influence the well-being of hospital employees and consequently their performance at work. The present questionnaire-based study (737 valid questionnaires) developed and evaluated a quantitative structural equation model (SEM) that examines the interdependence between the indoor environmental quality (IEQ), the working conditions, the atopic constituents and the reported health complains of employees in three Greek hospitals. The results of the SEM reveal that IEQ could partially explain the employees’ symptoms in the hospitals. The working conditions proved to be a key factor in the relationship between IEQ and symptoms. Multi-group analysis has shown that this interdependence is affected by the building characteristics, by the gender, the smoking habits and the specialty of each participant, but not by their age.     

The Effects of Regulating Hidden Add‐On Costs

We examine the welfare effects of price and disclosure regulation in a model where firms can shroud add‐on costs, such as penalty fees for consumer financial products. Such regulation can increase or decrease welfare even when there are no direct costs. There are, however, strong complementarities between price controls and disclosure mandates: conditional on disclosure being mandated, price controls always (weakly) increase welfare, and conditional on prices being sufficiently constrained, disclosure mandates always (weakly) increase welfare.     

The relationship between corporate governance and foreign ownership of the banks in developing countries

The aim of this paper is to determine the effect of corporate governance on foreign ownership of the banks. Within this context, annual data of 65 developing countries for the periods between 2004 and 2013 was analyzed. In addition to this situation, 7 explanatory variables were used in this study in order to achieve this objective. As a result of the analysis, it was identified that there is a strong relationship between operations of foreign banks and governance levels of the countries. In this regard, it was determined that the factors of corruption, political stability, rule of law and flexibility in legal regulations affect foreign bank operations. Moreover, it was also analyzed that foreign bank operations are stronger in the countries that have low poverty, high political stability and efficient legal infrastructure. On the other hand, it was defined that strict legal regulation affects foreign bank operations negatively which shows that foreign banks prefer to enter into the countries that have flexible legal regulations. This study gives essential information to developing countries about the factors that affect the decisions of foreign banks in order to enter into a developing country. Therefore, by considering the results of this study, the authorities of these countries can have a chance to take necessary actions so as to attract foreign banks.     

Real exchange rate dynamics: The role of elastic labor supply

Empirical evidence suggests that the flexibility of labor supply is closely related to the dynamic adjustment of the real exchange rate. This paper investigates this relationship in a two-sector dependent economy model. While, the long-run equilibrium real exchange rate is independent of the elasticity of labor supply, our analysis confirms that the nature of the labor supply can be a crucially important determinant of its short-run dynamics. The extent to which this is so depends to some degree on the source of the underlying structural change that is driving the dynamics of the real exchange rate. Numerical simulations confirm that this mechanism may help explain the larger short-run volatility and more rapid convergence typically associated with developing countries having less flexible labor markets.     

Corporate finance and governance in emerging markets: A selective review and an agenda for future research

There are important organizational and behavioral differences between firms in emerging markets and those in developed markets. We propose a top-down approach to understand how key institutional forces shape the structures and policies of firms in emerging markets. We review a selective set of prior studies as well as papers included in this Special Issue in identifying government quality, state ownership, and financial development as critical institutional forces that shape the financing and governance of firms in emerging markets. We suggest that future research should pay attention to several important but unanswered topics related to informal enforcement, government incentives, family firms, and network organizations.