The Impact of Dark Trading and Visible Fragmentation on Market Quality
Hans Degryse, Frank de Jong, Vincent van Kervel
Review of Finance,
No. 4,
2015
Abstract
Two important characteristics of current equity markets are the large number of competing trading venues with publicly displayed order books and the substantial fraction of dark trading, which takes place outside such visible order books. This article evaluates the impact on liquidity of dark trading and fragmentation in visible order books. Dark trading has a detrimental effect on liquidity. Visible fragmentation improves liquidity aggregated over all visible trading venues but lowers liquidity at the traditional market, meaning that the benefits of fragmentation are not enjoyed by investors who choose to send orders only to the traditional market.
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The Political Determinants of Sovereign Bond Yield Spreads
Stefan Eichler
Journal of International Money and Finance,
No. 46,
2014
Abstract
This paper analyzes the political determinants of sovereign bond yield spreads using data for 27 emerging markets in the period 1996 to 2009. I find strong evidence that countries with parliamentary systems (as opposed to presidential regimes) and a low quality of governance face higher sovereign yield spreads, while the degree of democracy and elections play no significant role. A higher degree of political stability and the power to implement austerity measures significantly reduce sovereign yield spreads particularly in autocratic regimes, while no significant effect is detected for democratic countries. Overall, political determinants have a more pronounced impact on sovereign bond yield spreads in autocratic and closed regimes than in democratic and open countries.
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Regulation, Innovation and Technology Diffusion - Evidence from Building Energy Efficiency Standards in Germany
Makram El-Shagi, Claus Michelsen, Sebastian Rosenschon
Discussionpapers des DIW Berlin,
No. 1371,
2014
Abstract
The impact of environmental regulation on technology diffusion and innovations is studied using a unique data set of German residential buildings. We analyze how energy efficiency regulations, in terms of minimum standards, affects energy-use in newly constructed buildings and how it induces innovation in the residential-building industry. The data used consists of a large sample of German apartment houses built between 1950 and 2005. Based on this information, we determine their real energy requirements from energy performance certificates and energy billing information. We develop a new measure for regulation intensity and apply a panel-error-correction regression model to energy requirements of low and high quality housing. Our findings suggest that regulation significantly impacts technology adoption in low quality housing. This, in turn, induces improvements in the high quality segment where innovators respond to market signals.
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The Determinants of Inward Foreign Direct Investment in Business Services Across European Regions
Davide Castellani
Finanza e Statistica 104/2012,
2012
Abstract
The paper accounts for the determinants of inward foreign direct investment in business services across the EU-27 regions. Together with the traditional variables considered in the literature (market size, market quality, agglomeration economies, labour cost, technology, human capital), we focus on the role of forward linkages with manufacturing sectors and other service sectors as
attractors of business services FDI at the regional level. This hypothesis is based on the evidence that the growth of business services is mostly due to increasing intermediate demand by other services industries and by manufacturing industries and on the importance of geographical proximity for forward linkages in services.
To our knowledge, there are no studies investigating the role of forward linkages for the location of FDI. This paper aims therefore to fill this gap and add to the FDI literature by providing a picture of the specificities of the determinants of FDI in business services at the regional level. The empirical analysis draws upon the database fDi Markets, from which we selected projects having as a destination NUTS 2 European regions in the sectors of Business services over the period 2003-2008. Data on FDI have been matched with data drawn from the Eurostat Regio
database. Forward linkages have been constructed using the OECD Input/Output database. By estimating a negative binomial model, we find that regions specialised in those (manufacturing) sectors that are high potential users of business services attract more FDI than other regions. This confirms the role of forward linkages for the localisation of business service FDI, particularly in the case of manufacturing.
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Do Government Owned Banks Trade Market Power for Slack?
Andreas Hackethal, Michael Koetter, Oliver Vins
Applied Economics,
No. 33,
2012
Abstract
The ‘Quiet Life Hypothesis (QLH)’ posits that banks with market power have less incentives to maximize revenues and minimize cost. Especially government owned banks with a public mandate precluding profit maximization might succumb to a quiet life. We use a unified approach that simultaneously measures market power and efficiency to test the quiet life hypothesis of German savings banks. We find that average local market power declined between 1996 and 2006. Cost and profit efficiency remained constant. Nonparametric correlations are consistent with a quiet life regarding cost efficiency but not regarding profit efficiency. The quiet life on the cost side is negatively correlated with bank size, quality of loan portfolio and local per capita income. The last result indicates that the quiet cost life is therefore potentially due to benevolent excess consumption of local input factors by public savings banks.
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Effects of Entrepreneurship Education at Universities
S. Laspita, H. Patzelt, Viktor Slavtchev
Jena Economic Research Papers,
No. 25,
2012
Abstract
This study analyzes the impact of entrepreneurship education at universities on the intentions of students to become entrepreneurs or self-employed in the short-term (immediately after graduation) and in the long-term (five years after graduation). A difference-in-differences approach is applied that relates changes in entrepreneurial intentions to changes in the attendance of entrepreneurship classes in the same period. To account for a potential bias due to self-selection into entrepreneurship classes, only individuals having no prior entrepreneurial intentions are analyzed. Our results indicate a stimulating effect of entrepreneurship education on students’ intentions to become entrepreneurs or self-employed in the long-term but a discouraging effect on their intentions in the short-term. These results support the conjecture that entrepreneurship education provides more realistic perspectives on what it takes to be an entrepreneur, resulting in ‘sorting’. Overall, the results indicate that entrepreneurship education may improve the quality of labor market matches, the allocation of resources and talent, and increase social welfare. Not distinguishing between short- and long-term intentions may lead to misleading conclusions regarding the economic and social impact of entrepreneurship education.
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Quality of Work: An Investigation for East and West Germany for the Years 1994 and 2009
Herbert S. Buscher, S. Noack, M. Pelz
Wirtschaft im Wandel,
No. 12,
2011
Abstract
Qualität der Arbeit – ein überwiegend subjektives Empfinden von Erwerbstätigen hat als qualitatives Merkmal in den letzten Jahren bei der Bewertung der Arbeitswelt an Bedeutung gewonnen. Im Gegensatz zu quantitativen Aspekten des Erwerbs- und Arbeitslebens ist die Qualität der Arbeit allerdings schwer messbar und setzt sich aus zahlreichen Indikatoren zusammen. Die hierbei erfassten Bereiche erstrecken sich von gesundheitlichen Aspekten des Arbeitslebens bis hin zu Möglichkeiten, die Arbeitszeit flexibel zu gestalten. Die vorliegende Studie leistet einen Beitrag zur Erweiterung dieses Indikatorensystems, indem weitere Aspekte der Qualität von Arbeit wie berufsbedingtes Pendeln, die Übereinstimmung von erworbener Qualifikation und ausgeübter Tätigkeit, betriebliche Karrierechancen sowie die allgemeine Einkommenszufriedenheit untersucht werden. Hierbei wird zwischen Ost- und Westdeutschland sowie nach Altersklassen und Qualifikation der Befragten unterschieden. Ausgewertet werden die Ergebnisse auf der Basis des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP) für die Jahre 1994 und 2009. Hierdurch sollen Erkenntnisse darüber gewonnen werden, ob insbesondere ostdeutsche Arbeitnehmer zu einem Zeitpunkt relativ kurz nach der politischen Wende die Qualität der Arbeit anders bewerteten als westdeutsche Arbeitnehmer und ob über die Zeit eine Angleichung in der Beurteilung stattgefunden hat.
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The Changing Process of the Quality of Work – 8th Joint Workshop of the IWH and IAB on Labor Market Policy
Herbert S. Buscher
Wirtschaft im Wandel,
No. 11,
2011
Abstract
Am 20. und 21. Oktober 2011 fand zum achten Mal der gemeinsame Workshop des IWH und des Instituts für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB) in Halle (Saale) statt. Das diesjährige Leitthema befasste sich mit der Qualität der Arbeit im Wandel. Ein Grund für die Wahl des Schwerpunktthemas war, dass sich seit einiger Zeit auf dem Arbeitsmarkt ein Trend zu sinkenden Arbeitslosenzahlen abzeichnet. Dies wird oft als Beleg einer erfolgreichen Arbeitsmarktpolitik gewertet. Der Fokus auf rein quantitative Aspekte vernachlässigt allerdings die Qualität von Beschäftigung. In den letzten Jahren ist zugleich die Rede von einem Wandel der Arbeitswelt. Dabei wird (Erwerbs-)Arbeit in der Arbeitsmarktforschung nicht nur unter den Gesichtspunkten Einkommen,
Beschäftigungssicherheit und Aufstiegsmöglichkeiten betrachtet. Zunehmend rücken auch Aspekte wie die Sinnhaftigkeit von Tätigkeiten, Work-Life-Balance, Selbstverwirklichung, Autonomie und Arbeitszufriedenheit in den Mittelpunkt.
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The Impact of Government Procurement Composition on Private R&D Activities
Viktor Slavtchev, Simon Wiederhold
Abstract
This paper addresses the question of whether government procurement can work as a de facto innovation policy tool. We develop an endogenous growth model with quality-improving in-novation that incorporates industries with heterogeneous innovation sizes. Government demand in high-tech industries increases the market size in these industries and, with it, the incentives for private firms to invest in R&D. At the economy-wide level, the additional R&D induced in high-tech industries outweighs the R&D foregone in all remaining industries. The implications of the model are empirically tested using a unique data set that includes federal procurement in U.S. states. We find evidence that a shift in the composition of government purchases toward high-tech industries indeed stimulates privately funded company R&D.
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Finance and Growth in a Bank-Based Economy: Is It Quantity or Quality that Matters?
Michael Koetter, Michael Wedow
Journal of International Money and Finance,
No. 8,
2010
Abstract
Most finance–growth studies approximate the size of financial systems rather than the quality of intermediation to explain economic growth differentials. Furthermore, the neglect of systematic differences in cross-country studies could drive the result that finance matters. We suggest a measure of bank’s intermediation quality using bank-specific efficiency estimates and focus on the regions of one economy only: Germany. This quality measure has a significantly positive effect on growth. This result is robust to the exclusion of banks operating in multiple regions, controlling for the proximity of financial markets, when distinguishing different banking sectors active in Germany, and when excluding the structurally weaker East from the sample.
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