Banking Reform, Risk-Taking, and Accounting Quality: Evidence from Post-Soviet Transition States
Yiwei Fang, Wassim Dbouk, Iftekhar Hasan, Lingxiang Li
Journal of International Accounting Research,
Nr. 1,
2022
Abstract
The drastic banking reform within Central and Eastern Europe following the collapse of the Soviet Union provides an ideal quasi-experimental design to examine the causal effects of institutional development on accounting quality (AQ). We find that banking reform spurs significant improvement in predictive power of earnings and reductions in earnings smoothing, earnings-inflating discretionary provisions, and avoidance of reporting losses. These effects hold under alternative model specifications and after considering concurrent institutional developments. In contrast, corporate reform shows no such effects, refuting the alternative explanation that unobserved factors affect both reform speed in general and the quality of financial reporting. We further identify four specific reformative actions that are integral to the drastic banking reform process where prudential regulation contributes the most to the observed AQ improvement. It supports the conjecture that banking reform improves AQ by reducing banks' risk-taking behaviors and, as a result, their motive behind accounting manipulation.
Artikel Lesen
Revealing Corruption: Firm and Worker Level Evidence from Brazil
Emanuele Colonnelli, Spyridon Lagaras, Jacopo Ponticelli, Mounu Prem, Margarita Tsoutsoura
Journal of Financial Economics,
Nr. 3,
2022
Abstract
We study how the disclosure of corrupt practices affects the growth of firms involved in illegal interactions with the government using randomized audits of public procurement in Brazil. On average, firms exposed by the anti-corruption program grow larger after the audits, despite experiencing a decrease in procurement contracts. We manually collect new data on the details of thousands of corruption cases, through which we uncover a large heterogeneity in our firm-level effects depending on the degree of involvement in corruption. Using investment-, loan-, and worker- level data, we show that the average exposed firms adapt to the loss of government contracts by changing their investment strategy. They increase capital investment and borrow more to finance such investment, while there is no change in their internal organization. We provide qualitative support to our results by conducting new face-to-face surveys with business owners of government-dependent firms.
Artikel Lesen
Firm-level Employment, Labour Market Reforms, and Bank Distress
Ralph Setzer, Moritz Stieglitz
Journal of International Money and Finance,
February
2022
Abstract
We explore the impact of financial frictions on the employment effect of labour market reforms. Our study combines a new cross-country reform database on labour market reforms with matched firm-bank data for nine euro area countries over the period 1999 to 2013. While we find that labour market reforms are overall effective in increasing employment, restricted access to bank credit can undo up to half of medium to long-term employment gains at the firm-level. Entrepreneurs without sufficient access to credit cannot reap the full benefits of more flexible employment regulation.
Artikel Lesen
Inflation Puzzles, the Phillips Curve and Output Expectations: New Perspectives from the Euro Zone
Alessandro Sardone, Roberto Tamborini, Giuliana Passamani
Empirica,
February
2022
Abstract
Confidence in the Phillips Curve (PC) as predictor of inflation developments along the business cycle has been shaken by recent “inflation puzzles” in advanced countries, such as the “missing disinflation” in the aftermath of the Great Recession and the “missing inflation” in the years of recovery, to which the Euro-Zone “excess deflation” during the post-crisis depression may be added. This paper proposes a newly specified Phillips Curve model, in which expected inflation, instead of being treated as an exogenous explanatory variable of actual inflation, is endogenized. The idea is simply that if the PC is used to foresee inflation, then its expectational component should in some way be the result of agents using the PC itself. As a consequence, the truly independent explanatory variables of inflation turn out to be the output gaps and the related forecast errors by agents, with notable empirical consequences. The model is tested with the Euro-Zone data 1999–2019 showing that it may provide a consistent explanation of the “inflation puzzles” by disentangling the structural component from the expectational effects of the PC.
Artikel Lesen
Banking Deregulation and Consumption of Home Durables
H. Evren Damar, Ian Lange, Caitlin McKennie, Mirko Moro
IWH Discussion Papers,
Nr. 4,
2022
Abstract
We exploit the spatial and temporal variation of the staggered introduction of interstate banking deregulation across the U.S. to study the relationship between credit constraints and consumption of durables. Using the American Housing Survey from 1981 to 1989, we link the timing of these reforms with evidence of a credit expansion and household responses on many margins. We find evidence that low-income households are more likely to purchase new appliances after the deregulation. These durable goods allowed households to consume less natural gas and spend less time in domestic activities after the reforms.
Artikel Lesen
Who Creates New Firms When Local Opportunities Arise?
Shai B. Bernstein, Emanuele Colonnelli, Davide Malacrino, Timothy McQuade
Journal of Financial Economics,
Nr. 1,
2022
Abstract
We examine the characteristics of the individuals who become entrepreneurs when local opportunities arise. We identify local demand shocks by linking fluctuations in global commodity prices to municipality-level agricultural endowments in Brazil. We find that the firm creation response is mostly driven by young and skilled individuals. The characteristics of these responsive entrepreneurs are significantly different from those of average entrepreneurs in the economy. By structurally estimating a novel two-sector model of a local economy, we highlight how the demographic composition of the local population can significantly affect the entrepreneurial responsiveness of the economy.
Artikel Lesen
Dilemma and Global Financial Cycle: Evidence from Capital Account Liberalisation Episodes
Xiang Li
IWH Discussion Papers,
Nr. 13,
2021
Abstract
By focusing on the episodes of substantial capital account liberalisation and adopting a new methodology, this paper provides new evidence on the dilemma and global financial cycle theory. I first identify the capital account liberalisation episodes for 95 countries from 1970 to 2016, and then employ an augmented inverse propensity score weighted (AIPW) estimator to calculate the average treatment effect (ATE) of opening capital account on the interest rate comovements with the core country. Results show that opening capital account causes a country to lose its monetary policy independence, and a floating exchange rate regime cannot shield this effect. Moreover, the impact is stronger when liberalising outward and banking flows.
Artikel Lesen
Explaining Wage Losses After Job Displacement: Employer Size and Lost Firm Wage Premiums
Daniel Fackler, Steffen Müller, Jens Stegmaier
Journal of the European Economic Association,
Nr. 5,
2021
Abstract
This paper investigates whether wage losses after job displacement are driven by lost firm wage premiums or worker productivity depreciations. We estimate losses in wages and firm wage premiums, the latter being measured as firm effects from a two-way fixed-effects wage decomposition. Using new German administrative data on displacements from small and large employers, we find that wage losses are to a large extent explained by losses in firm wage premiums and that premium losses are largely permanent. We show that losses strongly increase with pre-displacement employer size. This provides an explanation for large and persistent wage losses reported in previous displacement studies typically focusing on large employers, only.
Artikel Lesen
Corporate Loan Spreads and Economic Activity
Anthony Saunders, Alessandro Spina, Sascha Steffen, Daniel Streitz
SSRN Working Paper,
2021
Abstract
We use secondary corporate loan-market prices to construct a novel loan-market-based credit spread. This measure has considerable predictive power for economic activity across macroeconomic outcomes in both the U.S. and Europe and captures unique information not contained in public market credit spreads. Loan-market borrowers are compositionally different and particularly sensitive to supply-side frictions as well as financial frictions that emanate from their own balance sheets. This evidence highlights the joint role of financial intermediary and borrower balance-sheet frictions in understanding macroeconomic developments and enriches our understanding of which type of financial frictions matter for the economy.
Artikel Lesen
Aspects of the Political Economy of the European Banking Union
Lena Tonzer
PolEconFin Initiative,
2021
Abstract
The regulatory architecture of the financial system has significantly changed after the global financial crisis of 2008/09. In Europe, the introduction of the Single Rulebook has been a major change and provides the legal foundation for the European Banking Union (EBU). The Single Rulebook consists of a regulation, the Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR), and three main directives targeting capital regulation and compensation of managers, harmonization of deposit insurance schemes, as well as resolution and restructuring rules (Capital Requirements Directive (CRD IV), Deposit Guarantee Schemes Directive (DGSD), Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD)).
Artikel Lesen