Interest rate risk estimation: a new duration-based approach

Duration is widely used by fixed income managers to proxy the interest rate risk of their assets and liabilities. However, it is well known that the convexity of the price-yield relationship introduces approximation errors that grow with changes in yield. In this article we suggest a new approach, ‘discrete duration’, which significantly improves upon the accuracy of traditional duration methods and achieves a level of accuracy close to the more complex ‘duration-plus-convexity’ measure. In particular, discrete duration performs particularly well for long dated and low coupon rate bonds where the estimation error is impressively close to zero.     

Information versus imitation in a real-time agent-based model of financial markets

This paper presents an agent based model of a financial market with a real-time engine, whose operation replicates the official time schedule of Borsa Italiana S.p.A. Simulated time series are compared with empirical data at different time scales (ticks, 1 s, 1 min, 5 min) in order to check the compliance of the model with some stylized facts. The modeled market structure is a dynamic multiplex with two layers: the first one is a star network, whose hub is the market maker (i.e., the owner of the venue holding the order book), where transactions are executed; the second one is designed according to different topologies, representing social interactions, where investors decide their behavior according to informative flows. The effect of imitation on market stability is discussed and some policy implications are provided.

     

The missing shock: the macroeconomic impact of British Privatizations

In this paper the impact of privatization on macroeconomic performance in the United Kingdom is tested using quarterly data from 1979 to 1999. Privatization proceeds have been included in a simple analytical framework dealing with both demand and supply-side of the economy. Multivariate cointegration techniques have been used in order to consider the nonstationarity of the time series involved. The empirical results show that privatizations have no long-run effects on output in the UK. This result is consistent with microeconomic evidence that shows that in the UK ownership change per se had little impact on long term productivity trends. Moreover it is found that privatization proceeds have contributed to sustaining public expenditures.     

The role of institutional investors in public-to-private transactions

In Italy, as in many other European countries, listed firms will normally go dark through controlling owner-initiated tender offers. We find that institutional investors play a central role in the bid process and can protect minority shareholders from being frozen out in the bid. Specifically, tender offers are less likely to succeed when a firm has institutional investors in its ownership structure. When public-to-private offers are accepted, bid premiums are significantly greater if a financial institution (particularly when it is foreign, independent or activist) has a stake in the firm. We explore the effect of a number of hitherto unexplored factors on the takeover premium and find that shareholder agreements facilitate public-to-private acquisitions. Other factors, such as a threat to merge the target if the bid fails, or external validation of the offer price, have no impact on either the likelihood of delisting or the premium paid by the bidder.     

The Determinants of Regulatory Compliance: An Analysis of Insider Trading Disclosures in Italy

This paper investigates the determinants of regulatory compliance in corporate organizations. Exploiting a unique enforcement and reporting framework for insider trading in Italy, we present three main findings. First, board governance, such as chief executive–chairman duality and the proportion of non-executive directors, does not increase the propensity of firms to comply with regulation. Second, family firms and firms with a high degree of separation of ownership from control are most likely to comply with regulation. Third, corporate ethos is more important in predicting regulatory compliance than explicit corporate governance structures.     

Political and Fiscal Risk Determinants of Sovereign Spreads in Emerging Markets

Using a panel of 46 emerging market economies from 1997 to 2008, this paper investigates the key determinants of country risk premiums as measured by sovereign bond spreads. Unlike previous studies, the results indicate that both political and fiscal factors matter for credit risk in emerging markets. Lower levels of political risk are associated with tighter spreads, particularly during financial turmoil. Efforts at fiscal consolidation narrow credit spreads, especially in countries with high initial public debt levels. The composition of fiscal policy also matters as higher public investment lowers spreads as long as the fiscal position remains sustainable and the fiscal deficit does not worsen.     

The effect of ownership on sustainable development and environmental policy in urban waste management: An explicatory empirical analysis of Italian municipal corporations

This paper investigates the effect of ownership on sustainable development and environmental policy in Italian municipally owned corporations (MOCs) dealing with urban waste management, trying to understand if multiple ownership can generate better performance compared to single ownership and if the presence of private partners could be crucial in this. The research question is answered by analyzing 41 MOCs of the largest Italian cities operating in urban waste management. In this specific sector, public administrations have tried to improve their offer in terms of sustainable development, environmental policy, and efficiency. The paper covers the Italian case study, where urban waste production per capita is higher than the European average figure. The waste cycle management service is operated in Italy at local level through totally publicly owned companies (monoadministration or multiadministration), mixed (public–private) companies, or via a full externalization achieved by means of public tenders. Through a multinomial ordered probit panel, we show that MOCs with multiple owners perform better than those having a single owner and perform much better with the presence of a private partner, confirming those academic findings according to which collaborative arrangements can increase efficiency, do better than public sector bureaucracy, and lower the costs of service provision. The results of this paper can be used by academics, practitioners, and policy makers alike. To the best of our knowledge, this is the only study that applies this perspective to the analysis of the current international waste management scenario with relation to MOCs having multiple ownerships.     

Firms' efficiency and global value chains: An empirical investigation on Italian industry

This paper investigates the effect of participation in global value chains (GVCs) on firms' efficiency and explores heterogeneity in this impact across different firms, according to GVC governance, positioning in the chain and time length of participation. Our analysis takes advantage of survey data providing information on involvement in GVCs for a large set of Italian industrial SMEs between 2008 and 2012. We employ Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to retrieve a measure of firms' technical efficiency (i.e., DEA efficiency scores) and estimate the impact of involvement in GVCs on firms' efficiency through propensity-score matching techniques and truncated regression. Our results show that participation in GVCs induces significant efficiency premia, especially for suppliers, with stronger effects in the case of relational modes of participation.     

Choices on museum attendance: An agent-based approach

This paper presents an agent-based model to study museum attendance, with the final aim of evaluating how the rules on free admission affect charged visits. Heterogeneous agents of a population are assumed to make their choices over a bundle of goods and activities which include museum attendance along with other consumption and leisure-time alternatives. Simulations show that larger free-admission rules always lead to an increase in the number of total visits. A specific focus is dedicated to show which conditions let the free admittance policies induce an increment also in charged visits. Agents are characterized in terms of income and education. Addiction to cultural consumption is modelled both with and without reference to education. Specific aspects, such as crowd effects and renovation of exhibitions, are also considered, as features of the museum attendance.     

On the Identification of Interdependence and Contagion of Financial Crises

In this paper we propose a new framework for modelling heteroskedastic structural vector autoregressions. The identification of the structural parameters is obtained by exploiting the heteroskedasticity in the data naturally arising during crisis periods. More precisely, we provide identification conditions when heteroskedasticity and traditional restrictions on the parameters are jointly considered. Although the framework is general enough to find potential applications in many empirical economic fields, it proves to be well suited for distinguishing between interdependence and contagion in the literature related to the transmission of financial crises. This methodology is used to investigate the relationships between sovereign bond yields for some highly indebted EU countries.