金融监管法的价值:自由竞争与金融安全

分析美国金融法的历史可以看到,金融监管法的核心价值由完全的自由竞争变为单一的金融安全,再转向有安全保障的自由竞争;分析金融法律规范也可以证实,现行的金融监管目标与各种监管措施都体现自由竞争与金融安全的价值追求.过分追求金融安全的价值观是非常局限的,它只能适用于金融不安全的状况;现在的金融效率观不是金融监管法的价值观.自由竞争与金融安全是对立统一的关系,两者的地位随着金融运行态势的变化而逐步变化.     

中国地区金融发展水平的评价与实证分析

从金融发展和经济基础两方面选择了FIR等指标,构建了评价中国地区金融发展水平的评价指标体系,以层次分析法确定指标权重,以阀值法进行无量纲处理,利用所构建的指标体系,对2004年中国31个省市的金融发展水平进行检验。认为,东中西部地区金融发展水平差异明显,金融发展形如一右端被拉长的"橄榄球";东部地区金融发展水平成"圆柱体"形分布;影响西部地区金融发展水平的是"经济短板";制约各省份金融发展的"短板"各不相同。     

I (Could Have) Told You! Early warning indicators and crisis performance of the 12 “old” Euro-countries under the economic crisis 2008–09

The impact of the economic crisis 2008-09 was remarkably different in the 12 “old” member states in the Euro-zone. Five of them were hit especially badly; four of them even had to be bailed out by the rest in one way or another. This paper asks if one could have foretold, based solely on information available prior to 1999, which of the countries then about to enter the Euro-zone would run into economic trouble once a serious economic crisis occurred. The focus is on the (post)predictive power of three kinds of leading indicators: economic indicators, political indicators (indicating quality of governance), and indicators derived from the theory of optimal currency areas (OCA). Since there are more indicators than cases, PLS-regression is used to gauge the (post)predictive strength of the indicators examined. The results show that political indicators have quite some (post)predictive power in this case, whereas indicators derived from OCA-theory do not do too well. Economic indicators perform better than indicators derived from OCA-theory, but generally less well than the political indicators. Thus, the experience from the latest economic crisis in the Euro-zone suggests that more emphasis should be placed on the quality of governance record of a country when deciding if it should be deemed fit to become a member.     

Does corporate social responsibility reduce financial distress risk?

This paper examines how corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects the level of financial distress risk (FDR). Using a sample of 1201 US-listed firms during 1991–2012, our results indicate that firms with higher CSR levels have lower FDR, suggesting that a better CSR performance makes firms more creditworthy and have better access to financing, which is rewarded with less financial defaults. This finding is robust to using alternative proxies of FDR, to controlling for potential endogeneity, and is mainly driven by the community, diversity, employee relations, and environmental dimensions of CSR. Moreover, this relationship is more prevalent in firms with strong governance mechanisms and high product market competition. It is also more exacerbated for less distressed firms and during non-crisis periods. Overall, our findings suggest that the adoption of CSR practices comes with less distress and default risks, likely leading to a more attractive corporate environment, better financial stability and more crisis-resilient economies.     

Price connectedness between green bond and financial markets

We study price connectedness between the green bond and financial markets using a structural vector autoregressive (VAR) model that captures direct and indirect transmission of financial shocks across markets. Using heteroskedasticity to identify the structural VAR model parameters, our empirical findings reveal that the green bond market is closely linked to the fixed-income and currency markets, receiving sizeable price spillovers from those markets and transmitting negligible reverse effects. We also show that, in contrast, the green bond market is weakly tied to the stock, energy and high-yield corporate bond markets. These findings have implications in terms of portfolio and risk management decisions for environmentally aware investors holding positions in green bonds.     

Fire sales by euro area banks and funds: What is their asset price impact?

The assets under management of investment funds have soared in recent years, triggering a debate on their possible implications for financial stability. We contribute to this debate assessing the asset price impact of fire sales in a novel partial equilibrium model of euro area funds and banks calibrated over the period between 2008 and 2017. An initial shock to yields causes funds to sell assets to address investor redemptions, while both banks and funds sell assets to keep their leverage constant. These fire sales generate second-round price effects. We find that the potential losses due to the price impact of fire sales have decreased over time for the system. The contribution of funds to this impact is lower than that of banks. However, funds’ relative contribution has risen due to their increased assets under management and banks’ lower leverage and rebalancing towards loans. Should this trend continue, funds will become an increasingly important source of systemic risk.     

Foreign direct investment and economic growth: Is more financial development better?

We investigate the extent to which an increase in financial development affects the positive effect of foreign direct investment on economic growth. Although the financial sector is beneficial for economic growth, the effect of further financial development on growth is found to become insignificant. Using a dynamic panel threshold model on 62 middle- and high-income countries spanning the period 1987–2016, we re-examine the possible nonlinearity between finance, foreign direct investment, and growth. Consistent with the “vanishing effect” of financial development, we find significant evidence that foreign direct investment fosters growth in general, but the growth effect of foreign direct investment becomes negligible when the ratio of private sector credit to gross domestic product exceeds 95.6%. This finding is robust to different econometric methods, various subsamples and interaction analyses, and distinct financial development indicators.     

The provision of long-term credit and firm growth in developing countries

Do small and young firms benefit from an increase in the provision of long-term loans? By combining firm-level data from 62 countries (over the period 2006–2016) with a new database on short-term and long-term credit provided to the private sector, this article shows a higher provision of long-term credit does not stimulate growth of small and young firms. On the contrary, an increase in the availability of short-term credit spurs firm growth. The main explanation of this (counter-intuitive) result is the differential impact of short-term and long-term credit provision on small and young firms’ access to credit. Young and small firms are able to take advantage of an increase of short-term loans, which allow them to switch from informal finance to bank loans. However, a higher level of long-term credit does not alleviate credit constraints faced by opaque firms because these funds are allocated towards transparent borrowers.     

Quantile spillovers and dependence between Bitcoin,equities and strategic commodities

This paper has two aims. We first examine the dynamic spillovers between Bitcoin and 12 developed equities, gold, and crude oil for different market conditions using a Bayesian Time-Varying Parameter Vector Autoregressive (TVP-VAR) model with daily spot prices. Our econometric approach enables us to capture the left and right tails as well as the shoulders of the return distribution corresponding to volatility spillovers under the bear, normal, and bull market states among these financial assets. We quantify and trace the dependence and directional predictability from Bitcoin to other assets using the sample cross-quantilogram. Our key findings offer convincing evidence of time variation in the level of volatility. Spillovers between Bitcoin and other financial assets intensify during extreme global market conditions. Secondly, results from the cross-quantilogram indicate strong dependence and positive directional predictability between Bitcoin and most equities and crude oil when market returns are bullish. However, during the bearish market period, there is negative dependence and predictability from Bitcoin to stocks in Finland, the Netherlands, the U.S.A, and the crude oil market only. This implies that Bitcoin can act as a hedge to stocks in Finland, the Netherlands, the U.S.A, and the crude oil market. However, insignificant dependence and directional predictability from Bitcoin to the remaining assets indicate that Bitcoin may act as a safe-haven to these assets during bearish markets. Our findings hold important implications for both international investors and portfolio managers who consider Bitcoin as part of their portfolio diversification and other investment strategies.     

从股票错误定价看投资-现金流敏感性

在传统的投资-现金流敏感性研究基础上,本文运用中国上市公司2003-2008年面板数据,考察了盈余管理造成的股票错误定价对公司投资-现金流敏感性的影响.本文的实证结果表明:当股价处于上升通道中时(即投资者看好投资前景时),公司的投资-现金流敏感性较高,并且融资约束对公司的投资-现金流敏感性影响显著,但盈余操纵导致错误定价对公司投资-现金流敏感性影响不大;股指处于下降通道时,通过盈余操纵导致股价高估的公司,往往无法获得外部股权融资,只体现了更高的稳定股价和投资的意愿,因此,此类公司的投资-现金流敏感性较高.本文运用信息不对称理论,结合投资者情绪和管理者行为分析,对研究结果进行了解释并指出了后续研究的方向.