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3rd IWH-FIN-FIRE Workshop on Challenges to Financial Stability – ein Tagungsbericht

Lena Tonzer
Wirtschaft im Wandel, No. 3, 2017
Abstract
Zum dritten Mal in Folge fand am 28. und 29. August 2017 in den Räumen des IWH in Halle (Saale) der sich großer Beliebtheit erfreuende und vom IWH sowie dem „FIRE“ Research Center der Frankfurt School of Finance & Management gemeinschaftlich organisierte IWH-FIN-FIRE-Workshop statt.
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Jamaika

Reint E. Gropp
Wirtschaft im Wandel, No. 3, 2017
Abstract
Deutschland hat gewählt. Die Wahl hat große Verluste für die Volksparteien SPD und CDU gebracht, beide sind auf historische Tiefststände in der Wählergunst gesunken. Zusammen haben CDU und SPD nur noch knapp 54% der Stimmen; der Tag, an dem eine so genannte Große Koalition keine Mehrheit mehr haben wird, scheint nicht mehr fern. Für die CDU waren die Verluste noch deutlich dramatischer als für die SPD, was aber nicht so sehr ins Gewicht fällt, weil die CDU noch immer stärkste Partei ist und die Kanzlerin stellen kann. Allerdings kann sie nicht alleine regieren. Nachdem die SPD sich zumindest vorläufig (wenn auch nicht völlig glaubwürdig) aus der Regierungsbildung verabschiedet hat, bleibt also nur eine Jamaika-Koalition zwischen CDU, FDP und den Grünen.
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Aktuelle Trends: Ertragslage der ostdeutschen Betriebe verbessert sich stetig

Steffen Müller
Wirtschaft im Wandel, No. 3, 2017
Abstract
Ostdeutschland weist auch mehr als 25 Jahre nach der deutschen Vereinigung eine um circa ein Viertel geringere Arbeitsproduktivität als Westdeutschland auf. Wesentlich geringer ist der Rückstand jedoch bei der Ertragslage. Vor elf Jahren machten etwa 70% der westdeutschen Betriebe und 65% der ostdeutschen Betriebe Gewinne. Nach einem kurzen Knick um die Wirtschafts- und Finanzkrise 2009 ist dieser Anteil kontinuierlich auf 80% im Westen und 76% im Osten angestiegen. Das bedeutet, dass sich beide Landesteile bei dieser Kennzahl seit geraumer Zeit mit recht geringem Abstand im Gleichschritt bewegen.
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Arbeit ohne Sinn gefährdet die Produktivität

Sabrina Jeworrek
Wirtschaft im Wandel, No. 3, 2017
Abstract
Arbeit ohne Sinn ruft nicht nur negative Emotionen wie Enttäuschung oder das Gefühl, ersetzbar zu sein, hervor; vielmehr wird auch die zukünftige Arbeitsmotivation der Beschäftigten beeinflusst. Eine experimentelle Studie, die auf einer realen Arbeitssituation beruht, zeigt, dass Beschäftigte einen signifikant niedrigeren Arbeitseinsatz leisten, wenn ein vorangegangenes Projekt seinen ursprünglichen Sinn verloren hat. Die Information, dass das Projekt auch einen alternativen Zweck erfüllte, kompensiert die negativen Effekte allerdings vollständig, sowohl was den Arbeitseinsatz als auch den emotionalen Zustand der Beschäftigten angeht. Unternehmen und Personalverantwortliche sollten daher die Sinnhaftigkeit von Arbeitsaufgaben klar an ihre Beschäftigten kommunizieren sowie versuchen, auch gescheiterten Projekten eine Sinnhaftigkeit beizumessen.
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Bank Market Power and Loan Contracts: Empirical Evidence

Iftekhar Hasan, Liuling Liu, Haizhi Wang, Xinting Zhen
Economic Notes, forthcoming
Abstract
Using a sample of syndicated loan facilities granted to US corporate borrowers from 1987 to 2013, we directly gauge the lead banks’ market power, and test its effects on both price and non‐price terms in loan contracts. We find that bank market power is positively correlated with loan spreads, and the positive relation holds for both non‐relationship loans and relationship loans. In particular, we report that, for relationship loans, lending banks charge lower loan price for borrowing firms with lower switching cost. We further employ a framework accommodating the joint determination of loan contractual terms, and document that the lead banks’ market power is positively correlated with collateral and negatively correlated with loan maturity. In addition, we report a significant and negative relationship between banking power and the number of covenants in loan contracts, and the negative relationship is stronger for relationship loans.
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Macro-Financial Modelling of the Singapore Economy: a GVAR Approach

Alessandro Galesi, Filippo di Mauro
Monetary Authority of Singapore Macroeconomic Review, October 2017
Abstract
Globalisation has greatly increased the degree of interdependence across countries. Macroeconomic policy must therefore take a global perspective, particularly in the case of small open economies such as Singapore. From a modeller’s point of view, this requires considering many countries, regions and markets, as well as multiple channels of transmission, including trade and financial linkages. Cross-country interdependencies are increasingly reflected in the effects of global shocks, to oil or food prices for example, as well as technology and policy uncertainty spillovers.
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Do Managerial Risk-taking Incentives Influence Firms' Exchange Rate Exposure?

Bill Francis, Iftekhar Hasan, Delroy M. Hunter, Yun Zhu
Journal of Corporate Finance, 2017
Abstract
There is scant evidence on how risk-taking incentives impact specific firm risks. This has implications for board oversight of managerial risk taking, firms' development of comparative advantage in taking particular risks, and compensation design. We examine this question for exchange rate risk. Using multiple identification strategies, we find that vega increases exchange rate exposure for purely domestic and globally engaged firms. Vega's impact increases with international operations, declines post-SOX, and is robust to firm-level governance. Our results suggest that evidence that exposure reduces firm value can be viewed, in part, as a wealth transfer from shareholders and debt-holders to managers.
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Relationship Banking and SME Financing: The Case of Wales

Kent Matthews, Hans Degryse, Tianshu Zhao
International Journal of Banking, Accounting and Finance, No. 1, 2017
Abstract
Regional disparities in credit availability across the UK have been highlighted in a series of studies as a factor affecting both new firm starts and small firm growth prospects. This paper suggests that relationship banking might be an important means of attenuating differences in credit availability. The paper focuses on the value of relationship banking to SMEs in Wales in the period following the global banking crisis. The results show that SMEs that had developed a customer-loan relationship with their banks had a lower probability of experiencing a worsened credit outcome than those that did not. The implications of the findings for regional development and financial provision are discussed.
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EFN Report Autumn 2017: Economic Outlook for the Euro Area in 2017 and 2018

EFN Reports, No. 4, 2017
Abstract
In 2017 the world economy is in an upswing, but consumer price inflation is still surprisingly low in advanced economies, and central banks will therefore keep key interest rates very low and financial conditions favorable for the rest of the year and, probably, for 2018. Global growth, though, will moderate a bit, since expansive policy measures in China have been reduced. As an early consequence, imports of emerging Asia were no more than stagnant during summer. The upswing in the euro area is broad based, both regionally and with respect to the different components of aggregate demand, as investment has recently picked up markedly, partly due to construction of dwellings. From the production side, the level of capacity utilization in the manufacturing sector is clearly above its long-term average and rising further. Inflation will not have reached the ECB’s target rate of below but close to 2% at the end of 2018. The trend of a growing participation rate in labour markets and the amount of part-time and low quality jobs are some reasons why overall wage and price dynamics are still very moderate; the appreciation of the euro, the incorporation of technical innovations and a possible change in the consumer preferences for low-cost products could be other reasons. We forecast a GDP growth rate of 2.3% for 2017 and 1.9% for 2018. This year’s strong pickup of world trade means that net exports will, in spite of rather strong domestic demand, contribute positively to GDP growth in 2017, while the opposite holds for 2018, due to the significant appreciation of the Euro.
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Pricing Sin Stocks: Ethical Preference vs. Risk Aversion

Stefano Colonnello, Giuliano Curatola, Alessandro Gioffré
IWH Discussion Papers, No. 20, 2017
published in: European Economic Review
Abstract

We develop a model that reproduces the return and volatility spread between sin and non-sin stocks, where investors trade off dividends with the ethical assessment of companies. We relax the assumption of boycott behaviour and investigate the role played by the dividend share of sin stocks on their return and volatility spread relative to non-sin stocks. We empirically show that the dividend share predicts a positive return and volatility spread. This pattern is reproduced by our model when dividends and ethicalness are complementary goods and investors are sufficiently risk averse.

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