Mortality Among the Elderly in Sweden 1988–1997

By replacing the exponential growth in a Makeham function with a straight line at very high ages, graduated mortality rates gives an acceptable adherence to observed data.     

Systemic risk in Europe: deciphering leading measures,common patterns and real effects

The paper studies salient features of systemic risk in a sample of 22 European (EU and non-EU) countries during January 2010–March 2016. Building on a novel dataset and conducting an empirical horse race, we determine pivotal systemic risk measures for the sample countries. SRISK and volatility indicator tend to lead other metrics, followed by leverage. In contrast to the conventional wisdom, composite systemic risk measures aggregated with the aid of principal and independent component analysis perform worse. The leading systemic risk measures exhibit a high degree of connectedness. The VIX index, TED spread, the Composite Index of Systemic Stress (CISS) and long-term interest rates underlie their dynamics. Two clusters within the sample are identified, with CISS and long-term interest rates being crucial to distinguish between them. There is only scarce evidence for causal linkages between systemic risk and industrial production in the sample countries, based on the concurring results of standard and nonparametric Granger causality tests.     

Comovement,information production,and the business cycle

Recent theoretical research suggests that information production is a positive externality of aggregate economic activity (Veldkamp, 2005). Both the quantity and quality of information increase during periods of economic expansion and decrease during periods of contraction. Based on this insight, we hypothesize and confirm that time-varying information production drives the comovement patterns observed in stock returns. We examine stock return comovement in 36 countries from 1980 to 2007 and show that, consistent with the theory, comovement patterns are countercyclical; that is, when information production is high (low), comovement is low (high). We also find that the relation between comovement and the business cycle is stronger in countries that experience large intertemporal swings in information production. Finally, we show that the relation between business cycle and comovement is stronger in poor countries, countries with less developed financial markets, and countries with weaker accounting and transparency standards. These results suggest that financial development and transparency are conducive to a steady flow of financial information over the business cycle.     

Sell‐Side Analyst Bias When Investment Banks Have Privileged Access to the Board

Research on analyst bias typically identifies affiliation with reference to a subset of the mandates that could give rise to incentives for bias in a multifunction investment bank. This paper develops a new measure of affiliation based upon the UK practice of corporate broking. An advantage of this approach is that affiliation is no longer restricted to isolated equity issuance events as it is an ongoing activity. This research shows that prior US evidence regarding the “Global Settlement” is robust to this new measure and application in the United Kingdom rather than solely the United States. The paper uses a hazard rate methodology focusing on the timeliness of revisions to address selection bias concerns.     

Bitcoin fluctuations and the frequency of price overreactions

Financial Markets and Portfolio Management - This paper investigates the role of the frequency of price overreactions in the cryptocurrency market in the case of BitCoin over the period...     

What Do We Know About Annuitization Decisions?

Against the background of aging societies and increasing life expectancies, the protection of individuals from outliving their savings has become increasingly relevant. Annuities represent insurance against longevity risk and can prevent old‐age poverty. The aim of this article is to present the current state of theoretical, empirical and experimental evidence with regard to annuitization decisions. Toward this end, we conduct a systematic literature review that includes 89 articles. Based on this, we study welfare effects of mandatory annuitization, annuitization rates and the optimal fraction of wealth to be annuitized, as well as determinants of retirees’ choice to annuitize and their impact on annuity demand. Finally, we present possible solutions for overcoming the low uptake of annuities based on its causes. One main result is that behavioral biases in annuitization decisions particularly require considerably more theoretical research and empirical evidence, and that theoretical models already appear to well explain empirically observed annuitization rates.     

New development: Can ‘public’ market-based solutions restore the banking system? The case of non-performing loans (NPLs)

The authors discuss how policy-makers could use new market-based solutions to dismantle NPLs. They examine viable solutions for NPLs and then study the Italian State Guarantee Scheme for NPL Securitization (GACS) to highlight how public actors could efficiently use public resources to solve the NPL problem.     

Competition between Exchanges: Euronext versus Xetra

Exchanges in Europe are in a process of consolidation. After the failure of the proposed merger between Deutsche Börse and Euronext, these two groups are likely to become the nuclei for further mergers and co‐operation with currently independent exchanges. A decision for one of the groups entails a decision for the respective trading platform. Against that background we evaluate the attractiveness of the two dominant continental European trading systems. Though both are anonymous electronic limit order books, there are important differences in the trading protocols. We use a matched‐sample approach to compare execution costs in Euronext Paris and Xetra. We find that both quoted and effective spreads are lower in Xetra. The differences are more pronounced for less liquid stocks. When decomposing the spread we find no systematic differences in the adverse selection component. Realised spreads, on the other hand, are significantly higher in Euronext. Neither differences in the number of liquidity provision agreements nor differences in the minimum tick size or in the degree of domestic competition for order flow explain the different spread levels. We thus conclude that Xetra is the more efficient trading system.     

On the Relationship between Audit Tenure and Fees Paid to the Audit Firm and Audit Quality

Abstract

We investigate the impact of audit firm tenure, partner tenure, audit fees, fees for non-audit services and total fees on audit quality, as measured by discretionary accruals. Our sample consists of Spanish non-financial public companies for the years between 2006 and 2013. Results indicate that audit quality increases with audit firm tenure but decreases with partner tenure. Moreover, the level of fees paid to the audit firm seems to have a negative impact on audit quality, which is mainly driven by fees for audit services. In this regard, we do not observe any significant relationship between fees for non-audit services and audit quality. Our results also show that the negative relationship between either long partner tenures or high fees and audit quality does not occur when the tenure with the audit firm is long. Therefore, long audit firm tenures do not only seem to involve higher audit quality ‘per se’, but also moderate the negative effects of partner tenure and audit fees on audit quality. The results of this study, which are robust to several sensitivity checks, may be relevant for the current debate on auditor rotation and the joint provision of audit and non-audit services.     

The economic effects of foreign bank presence: Evidence from the Philippines

This study examines the economic effects of the liberalization of foreign bank entry in the Philippines from 1990 to 2006. The findings provide strong evidence on the dominance of competition effects from foreign bank presence which lead to the reduction in the profitability and overhead costs of domestic commercial banks. These findings, which reveal that both the actual market penetration and mere presence of foreign banks seem to exert competitive pressure to domestic banks, imply that foreign banks may serve as an effective competitive force, reducing the excess profits earned by domestic banks and compelling domestic banks to update their production technologies and techniques to improve their cost efficiency.From a policy perspective, the findings on competition effects of foreign banks in the domestic banking system justify the liberalization of foreign bank entry in the Philippines. The main findings demonstrate that the goal of banking liberalization in transforming domestic banks to be more competitive and efficient works considerably well in the case of the Philippines. Aside from the policy of easing the entry of foreign banks, bank-specific conditions can have significant impact on the performance of domestic banks. Therefore, a sustained improvement in the efficiency of domestic commercial banks requires not only liberalizing the entry of foreign banks, but also on continued strengthening of domestic prudential regulation and supervision on the commercial banking system.