JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS最新文献

Over time, a substantial amount of theoretical and empirical economic literature has been devoted to examining the relationship between financial access (a relevant component of financial development) and the distribution of income, with mixed findings. We propose a quantile regression approach to study the importance of financial access on income inequality and the effects of cooperative and commercial banking in shaping the relationship. We use data from 57 developed and developing countries from 2004 to 2019. Financial access has been demonstrated to lessen income inequality and the reduction is greater as income inequality increases. When commercial banks are considered instead of their counterparty, the magnitude of the reduction is greater. On the other hand, cooperative banks and credit unions appear to decrease income inequality in low-income countries as they strive for inclusive financial access. This study might provide new insights for policy makers, as they should facilitate access to capital for the most disadvantaged. This would lead to both a greater development of entrepreneurial skills and a better quality of human capital, as they could acquire a higher level of education.

We build on agency and strategy literature to investigate and explain whether and how changes in stock returns are related to critical managerial expenditure decisions by firms that are consistent and supportive of the firm’s strategy in different industry concentrations. Unlike previous work, our study considers the impact of an extended list of managerial expenditure decisions in the different industry concentration settings. Our research employs a rich panel of firms listed on the UK London Stock Exchange. We find strong support for our postulations. Key managerial expenditure decisions we considered, leverage, inventories turnover, R&D intensity, SGA and fixed asset additions have a differential impact depending on the industry concentration. Our findings add to our understanding of the effect of managerial agency and its integration to strategy on firm stock returns. Managerial expenditure decisions are both constrained by the competitive context as well as strategic logic – both of which impact stock returns. Our study helps managers to prioritize consequential expenditure decisions in different competitive contexts – a key resource for not only weathering crisis periods but optimizing returns to shareholders.

In this paper we examine multiple dimensions of ECB monetary policy communication by identifying its sentiment and relation with the economic environment and financial markets. We quantify communication sentiment using transcripts from official ECB communication events – press conferences, accounts and Executive Board speeches – as well as media reactions that highlight the key messages of those events. Importantly, we create distinctive lexicons for both of those communication types. We find that the overall trends in the sentiment indices for the analysed communication events closely resemble the movements of monetary policy stance as well as inflation dynamics in the euro area, both before and after the COVID-19 shock period. The communication tone generally shifts in advance of actual monetary policy actions. Using regression analysis, we find some expected, statistically significant effects of press conference sentiment on bank stock prices (information-type shock) and identify the impact of Executive Board speeches on euro area risk-free rates. Fragmentation issues among euro area member states do not seem to be negatively affected by the sentiments of the ECB’s communication. Still, policy makers should be aware that the tone of their communication events is likely to affect particular financial markets. These results are confirmed by various robustness checks.

This paper investigates the effects of economic uncertainty and economic policy uncertainty on banks’ loan loss provision in Brazil, and it seeks to identify which uncertainties have the greatest impact on loan loss provisions. Regarding uncertainties, it is possible to proxy economic uncertainty and economic policy uncertainty through disagreements among professional forecasters and through news-based proxies. Thus, as a novelty, disagreements among professional forecasters are used to proxy both economic and economic policy uncertainties, and for checking robustness, news-based proxies are employed. The disagreements in expectations are divided into two groups: the first focuses on uncertainties related to economic policy instruments (i.e., monetary policy interest rate and primary surplus), and the second on uncertainties related to economic outcomes (i.e., inflation, exchange rate, GDP growth, and public debt). Regarding the news-based proxies of economic policy uncertainty and economic uncertainty, two indicators were employed: the first is the Economic Policy Uncertainty index, and the second is the index of economic uncertainty unrelated to economic policy that we calculate. Based on dynamic panel data analysis for 125 Brazilian banks, the findings suggest uncertainties in economic outcomes have greater influence on banking provisions than uncertainties in economic policy. The study validates the results using news-based indexes and a subsample representing the post-global financial crisis period.

This paper examines the relationship between blockholder coalitions and the probability of completing a cross-border merger and acquisition. Using different power indices based on Shapley-Shubik values for cooperative games for a sample of acquirers' firms from Latin America, our findings indicate an inverted-U-shaped relationship between the voting power of the largest blockholder and the likelihood of completing a cross-border deal. This relationship is strengthened by the number of active blockholders and the participation of institutional investors within coalitions among the top four blockholders, particularly pension fund administrators. Consequently, we observe that colluding blockholders in acquirer firms are more inclined to pursue risky cross-border acquisitions, but only when they possess relatively low levels of voting rights. Additionally, the study highlights a positive moderating effect of cross-border deals with coalition agreements on the long-term value performance of acquiring firms, suggesting that coalition agreements promote overseas acquisitions that enhance value.