Geriet die preisliche Wettbewerbsfähigkeit von Euroraum-Ländern nach Gründung der Währungsunion aus dem Gleichgewicht?
Makram El-Shagi, Axel Lindner, Gregor von Schweinitz
Wirtschaft im Wandel,
No. 3,
2014
Abstract
Waren die Peripherieländer im Euroraum am Vorabend der Eurokrise nicht mehr wettbewerbsfähig? Oder war die preisliche Wettbewerbsfähigkeit in den Kernländern wie Deutschland ungewöhnlich hoch? Antworten auf diese Fragen sind nicht einfach. Das gängige Maß für die preisliche Wettbewerbsfähigkeit sind die realen effektiven Wechselkurse. Deren Bestimmungsfaktoren waren jedoch kurz vor der Krise selbst möglicherweise nicht im Gleichgewicht und lassen daher kaum Rückschlüsse auf gleichgewichtige Wechselkurse zu. Um dieses Messproblem zu umgehen, wird ein Matching-Ansatz zur Schätzung realer effektiver Wechselkurse verwendet. Dazu wird für jedes Mitgliedsland des Euroraums ein synthetisches Vergleichsland als Kombination mehrerer anderer Länder konstruiert, die den Euro nicht eingeführt haben. Es zeigt sich, dass die Peripherieländer des Euroraums am besten durch eine Mischung von Schwellenländern und entwickelten Volkswirtschaften beschrieben werden, während für ein Matching der Kernländer keine Schwellenländer notwendig sind. Die hier angewendete Methode zeigt, dass die realen effektiven Wechselkurse in den Peripherieländern zwischen Oktober 2007 und September 2008 teilweise deutlich zu hoch waren, während sie in den Kernländern mehr oder weniger nah bei ihrem Gleichgewichtsniveau lagen.
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Taxing Banks: An Evaluation of the German Bank Levy
Claudia M. Buch, Björn Hilberg, Lena Tonzer
Abstract
Bank distress can have severe negative consequences for the stability of the financial system, the real economy, and public finances. Regimes for restructuring and restoring banks financed by bank levies and fiscal backstops seek to reduce these costs. Bank levies attempt to internalize systemic risk and increase the costs of leverage. This paper evaluates the effects of the German bank levy implemented in 2011 as part of the German bank restructuring law. Our analysis offers three main insights. First, revenues raised through the bank levy are minimal, because of low tax rates and high thresholds for tax exemptions. Second, the bulk of the payments were contributed by large commercial banks and the head institutes of savings banks and credit unions. Third, the levy had no effect on the volume of loans or interest rates for the average German bank. For the banks affected most by the levy, we find evidence of fewer loans, higher lending rates, and lower deposit rates.
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Real Effective Exchange Rate Misalignment in the Euro Area: A Counterfactual Analysis
Makram El-Shagi, Axel Lindner, Gregor von Schweinitz
Abstract
Were real effective exchange rates (REER) of Euro area member countries drastically misaligned at the outbreak of the global financial crisis? The answer is difficult to determine because economic theory gives no simple guideline for determining the equilibrium values of real exchange rates, and the determinants of those values might have been distorted as well. To overcome these limitations, we use synthetic matching to construct a counterfactual economy for each member as a linear combination of a large set of non-Euro area countries. We find that Euro area crisis countries are best described by a mixture of advanced and emerging economies. Comparing the actual REER with those of the counterfactuals gives sensible estimates of the misalignments at the start of the crisis: All peripheral countries were strongly overvalued, while high undervaluation is only observed for Finland.
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Impact of Personal Economic Environment and Personality Factors on Individual Financial Decision Making
S. Prinz, G. Gründer, R. D. Hilgers, Oliver Holtemöller, I. Vernaleken
Frontiers in Decision Neuroscience,
No. 158,
2014
Abstract
This study on healthy young male students aimed to enlighten the associations between an individual’s financial decision making and surrogate makers for environmental factors covering long-term financial socialization, the current financial security/responsibility, and the personal affinity to financial affairs as represented by parental income, funding situation, and field of study. A group of 150 male young healthy students underwent two versions of the Holt and Laury (2002) lottery paradigm (matrix and random sequential version). Their financial decision was mainly driven by the factor “source of funding”: students with strict performance control (grants, scholarships) had much higher rates of relative risk aversion (RRA) than subjects with support from family (ΔRRA = 0.22; p = 0.018). Personality scores only modestly affected the outcome. In an ANOVA, however, also the intelligence quotient significantly and relevantly contributed to the explanation of variance; the effects of parental income and the personality factors “agreeableness” and “openness” showed moderate to modest – but significant – effects. These findings suggest that environmental factors more than personality factors affect risk aversion.
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In Search for Yield? Survey-based Evidence on Bank Risk Taking
Claudia M. Buch, S. Eickmeier, Esteban Prieto
Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control,
No. 43,
2014
Abstract
Monetary policy can have an impact on economic and financial stability through the risk taking of banks. Falling interest rates might induce investment into risky activities. This paper provides evidence on the link between monetary policy and bank risk taking. We use a factor-augmented vector autoregressive model (FAVAR) for the US for the period 1997–2008. Besides standard macroeconomic indicators, we include factors summarizing information provided in the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Terms of Business Lending (STBL). These data provide information on banks׳ new loans as well as interest rates for different loan risk categories and different banking groups. We identify a risk-taking channel of monetary policy by distinguishing responses to monetary policy shocks across different types of banks and different loan risk categories. Following an expansionary monetary policy shock, small domestic banks increase their exposure to risk. Large domestic banks do not change their risk exposure. Foreign banks take on more risk only in the mid-2000s, when interest rates were ‘too low for too long’.
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Sovereign Credit Risk, Banks' Government Support, and Bank Stock Returns around the World: Discussion of Correa, Lee, Sapriza, and Suarez
Reint E. Gropp
Journal of Money, Credit and Banking,
s1
2014
Abstract
In the years leading up to the 2008–09 financial crisis, many banks around the world greatly expanded their balance sheets to take advantage of cheap and abundantly available funding. Access to international funding markets, in particular, made it possible for banks to reach a size that in some cases was a large multiple of their home countries’ gross domestic product (GDP). In Iceland, for example, assets of the banking system reached up to 900% of GDP in 2007. Similarly, by the end of 2008, assets in UK and Swiss banks exceeded 500% of their countries’ GDPs, respectively. Banks may also have grown rapidly because they may have wanted to reach too-big-to-fail status in their country, implying even lower funding cost (Penas and Unal 2004).
The depth and severity of the 2008–09 financial crisis and the subsequent debt crisis in Europe, however, have cast doubts on the ability of governments to bail out banks when they experience severe difficulties, in particular, in financially fragile environments and faced with large budget imbalances. This has resulted in as what some observers have dubbed a “doom loop”: the combination of weak public finances and weak banks results in a vicious cycle, in which the funding cost of banks increases, as the ability of governments to bail out banks is called into question, in turn increasing the funding cost of these banks and making the likelihood that the government will actually have to step in even higher, which in turn increases funding cost to the government and so forth.
Against this background, the paper by Correa et al. (2014) explores the link between sovereign rating changes and bank stock returns. They show large negative reactions of stock returns in response to sovereign ratings downgrades for banks that are expected to receive government support in case of failure. They find the strongest effects in developed economies, where the credibility of government bail outs is higher ex ante, while the effects are smaller in developing and emerging economies. In my view, the paper makes a number of important contributions to the extant literature.
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The Ex Ante versus Ex Post Effect of Public Guarantees
H. Evren Damar, Reint E. Gropp, Adi Mordel
D. Evanoff, C. Holthausen, G. Kaufman and M. Kremer (eds), The Role of Central Banks in Financial Stability: How has it Changed? World Scientific Studies in International Economics 30,
2013
Abstract
In October 2006, Dominion Bond Rating Service (DBRS) introduced new ratings for banks that account for the potential of government support. The rating changes are not a reflection of any changes in the respective banks’ credit fundamentals. We use this natural experiment to evaluate the consequences of bail out expectations for bank behavior using a difference in differences approach. The results suggest a striking difference between the effects of bail out probabilities during calm times (“ex ante”) versus during crisis times (“ex post”). During calm times, higher bail-out probabilities result in higher risk taking, consistent with the moral hazard view and much of the empirical literature. However, in crisis times, we find that banks with higher bail out probabilities tend to increase their risk taking less compared to banks that were ex ante unlikely to be bailed-out. Charter values are one part of the explanation: Supported banks may have a funding advantage relative to non-supported banks during the crisis. However, we cannot rule out that other factors also may be playing a role, including tighter supervision of supported banks in crisis times.
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Establishment Exits in Germany: The Role of Size and Age
Daniel Fackler, Claus Schnabel, J. Wagner
Small Business Economics,
No. 3,
2013
Abstract
Using comprehensive data for West Germany, this paper investigates the determinants of establishment exit. We find that between 1975 and 2006 the average exit rate has risen considerably. In order to test various “liabilities” of establishment survival identified in the literature, we analyzed the impact of establishment size and put a special focus on differences between young and mature establishments. Our empirical analysis shows that the mortality risk falls with establishment size, which confirms the liability of smallness. The probability of exit is substantially higher for young establishments which are not more than 5 years old, thus confirming the liability of newness. There also exists a liability of aging since exit rates first decline over time, reaching a minimum at ages 15–18, and then rise again somewhat. The determinants of exit differ substantially between young and mature establishments, suggesting that young establishments are more vulnerable in a number of ways.
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Exchange Rate Regime, Real Misalignment and Currency Crises
Oliver Holtemöller, Sushanta Mallick
Economic Modelling,
No. 34,
2013
Abstract
Based on 69 sample countries, this paper examines the effect of macroeconomic fundamentals on real effective exchange rates (REER) in these sample countries. Using the misalignment of actual REER from its equilibrium level, we have estimated the factors explaining the extent of currency over- or under-valuation. Overall, we find that the higher the flexibility of the currency regime, the lower is the misalignment. The estimates are robust to different sub-samples of countries. We then explore the impact of such misalignment on the probability of a currency crisis in the next period, indicating the extent to which misalignment could be used as a leading indicator of a potential crisis. This paper thus makes a new contribution to the debate on the choice of exchange rate regime by bringing together real exchange rate misalignment and currency crisis literature.
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Macroeconomic Factors and Micro-Level Bank Risk
Claudia M. Buch
Bundesbank Discussion Paper 20/2010,
2010
Abstract
The interplay between banks and the macroeconomy is of key importance for financial and economic stability. We analyze this link using a factor-augmented vector autoregressive model (FAVAR) which extends a standard VAR for the U.S. macroeconomy. The model includes GDP growth, inflation, the Federal Funds rate, house price inflation, and a set of factors summarizing conditions in the banking sector. We use data of more than 1,500 commercial banks from the U.S. call reports to address the following questions. How are macroeconomic shocks transmitted to bank risk and other banking variables? What are the sources of bank heterogeneity, and what explains differences in individual banks’ responses to macroeconomic shocks? Our paper has two main findings: (i) Average bank risk declines, and average bank lending increases following expansionary shocks. (ii) The heterogeneity of banks is characterized by idiosyncratic shocks and the asymmetric transmission of common shocks. Risk of about 1/3 of all banks rises in response to a monetary loosening. The lending response of small, illiquid, and domestic banks is relatively large, and risk of banks with a low degree of capitalization and a high exposure to real estate loans decreases relatively strongly after expansionary monetary policy shocks. Also, lending of larger banks increases less while risk of riskier and domestic banks reacts more in response to house price shocks.
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