Banks and Microbanks

We combine two datasets to examine whether the presence of banks affects the profitability and outreach of microfinance institutions. We find evidence that competition matters. Greater bank penetration in the overall economy is associated with microbanks pushing toward poorer markets, as reflected in smaller average loans sizes and greater outreach to women. The evidence is particularly strong for microbanks relying on commercial-funding and using traditional bilateral lending contracts (rather than group lending methods favored by microfinance NGOs). We consider plausible alternative explanations for the correlations, including relationships that run through the nature of the regulatory environment and the structure of the banking environment, but we fail to find strong support for these alternative hypotheses.     

Trade and Industrial Policies with Heterogeneous Firms: The Role of Country Asymmetries

This paper explores the role of country asymmetries for trade and industrial policies with heterogeneous firms. The analysis delivers a number of novel results. First, trade policies, infrastructure policies and industrial policies which improve the business conditions in one country have negative productivity and welfare effects on the trading partner. Second, symmetric trade liberalization is immiserizing for a trading partner whose business conditions are inferior. Third, there are gains from trade even for a country whose monopolistically competitive sector with heterogeneous firms is wiped out by switching from autarky to trade.     

PRICE SETTING OF MARKET MAKERS: A FILTERING PROBLEM WITH ENDOGENOUS FILTRATION

This paper studies the price‐setting problem of market makers under risk neutrality and perfect competition in continuous time. The classic approach of Glosten–Milgrom is followed. Bid and ask prices are defined as conditional expectations of a true value of the asset given the market makers' partial information that includes the customers' trading decisions. The true value is modeled as a Markov process that can be observed by the customers with some noise at Poisson times. A mathematically rigorous analysis of the price‐setting problem is carried out, solving a filtering problem with endogenous filtration that depends on the bid and ask price processes quoted by the market maker. The existence and uniqueness of the bid and ask price processes is shown under some conditions.     

Foreign banks,financial crises and macroeconomic fluctuations

Understanding the implications of increased foreign bank presence is especially compelling in periods of financial crisis. In this paper, we explore this issue by examining the relationship between the involvement of foreign banks in the banking systems and the volatility of key macroeconomic variables in normal and crisis periods. Using a sample of 20 Emerging European countries from 1998 to 2013, we find that an increase in the assets of foreign banks in the banking system reduces output and consumption growth volatility in general but does not significantly affect the volatility of investments. However, these banks were found to play a significant role in increasing output, consumption and investment volatility in 2009. Our findings suggest that foreign banks’ harmful impact during the global crisis was only temporary and that they seem to help Emerging European countries stabilize macroeconomic volatility in normal times and after the global crisis.     

Are directors’ dealings informative? Evidence from European stock markets

Are directors’ dealings reports informative for outside investors? We analyze short-term announcement effects for 2782 companies from eight European countries between January 2003 and December 2009. We find significant announcement effects in four out of eight countries after directors’ dealings reports have been disclosed. For most countries, the magnitude of the announcement effect depends on transaction size, firm size, book-to-market ratio, and multiple trades by different insiders on the same trading day. The results are stronger for purchases than for sales. For France, Ireland, and Sweden, we find tentative evidence that the corporate position of an insider is connected to the size of the announcement effect.