International Journal of Finance & Economics最新文献

The elicitation of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution (EIS), discount factor and risk attitude parameters in dynamic models is of central importance to economics, finance and public policy. This paper suggests an alternative method to jointly elicit and estimate these three parameters using experimental data. We employ a new model based on dynamic quantile preferences, where individuals maximize the stream of future $��\tau �$-quantile utilities, for $��\tau �\in �\left(�0�,�1�\right)�$. These preferences are simple, dynamically consistent and monotonic. In the quantile model, the risk attitude is captured by the quantile $��\tau �$ of the payoff distribution, while the EIS and the discount factor are related to the utility function describing individual's intertemporal behaviour, hence allowing for complete separability between risk, EIS and discount factor. The estimation of the parameters of interest uses a structural maximum likelihood method. Individual's risk aversion is estimated below the median. The discount factor is marginally smaller than estimates reported in the literature, and the EIS is slightly larger than one, which suggests that utility over time is concave. The estimates for the elasticity contrast with those reported by the existing studies using observational disaggregated data, which in general find an elasticity smaller than one.

This article investigates the relation between climate policy uncertainty and firm investment in China. We quantify climate policy uncertainty in China based on the news from two leading mainland newspapers: the Renmin Daily and the Guangming Daily. Using the sample of Chinese A-share companies from January 2003 to September 2021, we find robust evidence that firms exhibit lower levels of investment when facing to higher climate policy uncertainty. Specifically, we also show that this negative effect is more profound for state-owned enterprises, carbon-intensive enterprises, and enterprises with lower risk taking. The results also give evidence that the effect of climate policy uncertainty on firm investment can last up to three quarters and disappear within 1 year. Finally, we propose that investment irreversibility is plausible channel through which climate policy uncertainty discourages investment. Overall, these results shed light on the real effects of climate policy uncertainty and the determinants of investment.

This paper uses a panel survey (micro-level) dataset to explore the impact of US partisan polarization on households' portfolio decisions. The results document that households significantly reduce their market investments in risky assets due to stronger partisan polarization conditions. The findings survive certain robustness checks, while they clearly illustrate the rising effect of political uncertainty on such decisions. Such results could carry substantial implications since they suggest that partisan polarization uncertainty acts as a negative externality in this type of portfolio choice decisions.

This article investigates the relationship between corporate governance structures and financial flexibility for conventional and Islamic banks in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. We construct a novel financial flexibility index (FFI) for the banking sector and examine the impact of the Shari'ah supervisory board (SSB), board size, and risk governance on financial flexibility. We find that board size and risk governance significantly affect banks' financial flexibility for Islamic and conventional banks. However, Shari'ah governance rules determine how that relationship is manifested in Islamic banks. We show that SSB size and busy SSBs enhance Islamic banks' financial flexibility. Our results show that Western corporate governance structures may lead to suboptimal financial flexibility. Banking policies should re-evaluate the impact of one-size-fits-all approaches to corporate governance while promoting ‘soft policies’ to banking regulation that are value-enhancing for the banking sector.

The income smoothing (IS) literature connected with changes in the external environment provides unclear results whether this phenomenon occurs in expansion or in crisis. Given that a substantial amount of credit risk is generated in retail banking, this study exploits a large number of micro-loan portfolio level data of a systemic Greek bank and examines, for the first time, the IS behaviour at the retail banking level, contrasting the expansion period (2006–2008) with the financial crisis period (2009–2011). This specific case study provides more granular data compared with traditional archival studies, thus allowing the immediate and more frequent identification of exogenous (such as crisis effects) and endogenous (such as the geographic origination of loan portfolios) features that may affect IS practices. Based on the association between pre-provision loan income and loans loss provisions as a proxy for IS, we employ the robust Mean Group estimator (Pesaran and Smith, Journal of Econometrics, 1995;68(1):79–113) and find that this association is higher in expansionary periods and declines in recession. Moreover, we conclude that the IS behaviour is affected by geographical features of loan portfolios.

The Dutch healthcare insurance reform in 2006 replaced the dual system of public and private insurance with a single compulsory health insurance scheme, in which insurance providers compete for customers in a free market. This paper investigates whether competition among healthcare insurers has indeed increased and their efficiency has improved. We measure competition directly from either shifts in market shares, or developments in profits, using Dutch regulatory data. We find that a structural break occurs after the reform: competition is significantly higher after 2006 than before. This holds both for the analysis based on shifts in market shares and that based on profits. Several robustness tests confirm this outcome. Hence, the reform has had a significant impact. Nevertheless, we find that the health insurance sector is still less competitive than financial sectors such as banking and life insurance.

This paper empirically investigates the asymmetric effects of different economic variables including uncertainty caused by government policies on the two main US consumer confidence indices. This paper further investigates whether COVID-19 has any significant effect on the relationship between US consumer confidence indices and their determinants. The empirical investigation is conducted by means of non-linear asymmetric autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) tests, so that the asymmetric effect of uncertainty and other determinants on consumer confidence may be studied. The paper applies monthly data from January 2010 to December 2021. Results indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic did not alter the stability of the long-term relationship between the consumer confidence indices and their determinants. Uncertainty imposed by government policies plays a significant role before and, more prominently, during the pandemic. The increased effect of the uncertainty may be due to the jump in economic uncertainty during the COVID era. Our work may help to foster consumer confidence in terms of macroeconomic policy variables. The results can also expand the scope of investors' decision making as it provides an in-depth understanding of the drivers of consumers' confidence in the US economy.