Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance最新文献

We investigated the effects of the growth of credit unions, which by law are non-profit entities, on the return on assets and equity of Brazilian commercial banks. We also assess the impacts on commercial banks’ main revenue and expense lines. Data from 2000 to 2021 were used and dynamic panel models, System-GMM, were estimated. The results indicate that the greater the participation of credit unions, the greater the return on assets and equity of commercial banks. As for the impact on expenses, we noticed that the greater the participation of credit unions, the lower the expenses with funding by commercial banks. The results found bring a different perspective from what could be expected: the entry of a non-maximizing agent (credit unions) in a given market can reduce the profitability of the incumbent agents. Moreover, the relationship between commercial banks and credit unions can be one of complementarity and not substitutes. The results are robust for several specifications.

Incompatible with standard capital structure theories, zero-leverage (ZL) firms are becoming increasingly common in recent decades. In this study, we examine whether shareholders consider a firm’s ZL policy value-enhancing or value-reducing. Using Faulkender and Wang’s (2006) methodology, we find that shareholders place a positive value on the event of a firm switching to zero debt. Furthermore, this valuation is not affected by whether the firm faces a managerial entrenchment problem, but is affected significantly by whether it is financially constrained before becoming debt-free. We find that shareholders place no value on a financially constrained firm following a ZL policy, but place a positive value on an unconstrained firm doing so, indicating that they only consider the latter as a value-enhancing policy. We also show that our finding still holds even when conducting an event study with short-term event windows. We infer that shareholders’ positive valuation on financially unconstrained firms is related to the financial flexibility of ZL policies.

This paper examines the impact of three global risk factors (geopolitical risk (GPR), economic policy uncertainty (EPU), and crude oil volatility (OVX)) on the returns and variance of commodity, Islamic stock, and green bond markets across quantile distributions and various time horizons. To this end, Granger causality tests in quantiles and distributions along with wavelet-based correlation and causality approaches are applied to daily data from February 1, 2013 to June 30, 2023. The results of the Granger causality in quantiles tests show strong evidence that all three global risk factors Granger-cause returns across all quantiles, except the lowest and middle quantiles. The Granger causality is significant for both returns and variances, where GPR is the least predictor and OVX is the most predictor. Evidence of causation in risk spillovers is in the right tail and center of the distribution rather than the left tail, indicating no evidence of down-to-down risk spillover. The upside risk of OVX causes both the upside and downside risk of asset returns. The positive volatility of EPU and GPR drives the positive and negative volatility of the green bond and Islamic stock markets, respectively. Green bond markets are completely immune to risk spillover from geopolitical risks. The effects of risk factors are negligible at the lower and somewhat middle quantiles but strengthen with varying magnitude and significance for the remaining quantiles. The results of the wavelet analysis indicate that asset returns co-move with the global risk factors in the short term but decouple in the longer term. Risk factors exert short-lived causal impacts in the short term, but the duration of significant causal periods rises with time and the effect intensifies during crisis periods.

This paper estimates the efficiency of Ecuadorian commercial banks from 2007 to 2017, considering multiple inputs and outputs, several factors explaining inefficiency, technological unobserved heterogeneity, and time-varying efficiency. To do this, we used an output distance function stochastic frontier model in a Bayesian framework and considered the profitability approach. In general, the results show evidence of unobserved cross-bank heterogeneity and time-varying inefficiencies, the latter of which presented scores which were high and stable over time. One factor that significantly explains inefficiency is foreign ownership, however internal factors such operating profitability and Central Bank policy reserve requirements did not. Finally, estimated returns to scale show bimodality indicating the existence of two bank groups associated with decreasing and constant returns to scale.

We examine whether and how venture capital investors (VCs) affect corporate financialization in post-IPO stages using China’s A-share non-financial listed firms from 2007 to 2019. We find that the presence of VCs reduces the level of corporate financialization. The negative relationship is more pronounced in VCs with private ownership and portfolio firms with poor corporate governance. Further evidence shows that the negative effect of VCs on corporate financialization is driven by VCs through stronger corporate governance engagement, indicating a monitoring channel. We also find that VCs exhibit a high level of failure tolerance and innovation promotion by decreasing the sensitivity of CEO turnover to compensation performance, and promoting R&D investment in firms with a stronger arbitrage incentive, suggesting another innovation channel.

We examine the previously documented effect between a firm’s FSCORE and book-to-market ratio proposed by Piotroski and So (2012) and analyze the authors’ expectation errors hypothesis from a present value perspective. We find a strong value premium which is concentrated among firms where book-to-market implied expectations are incongruent with underlying fundamental strength. Using the decomposition of variation in book-to-market ratios motivated by Cohen et al. (2003), we show that the observed effect between a firm’s FSCORE and book-to-market ratio is attributable to mispricing as the variation is mostly due to variation in expected returns rather than variation in expected profitability.

We examine the impact of economic policy uncertainty on bank stability post-2007–2008 global financial crisis and how bank size, capital, and liquidity mitigate this relationship. We use 176,477 quarterly observations for US commercial banks over the period from 2011Q1 to 2020Q3 and find consistent and robust evidence that bank stability decreases as the level of economic policy uncertainty increases. We show that bank size, capital, and liquidity matter, i.e., the negative impact of policy uncertainty on bank stability is stronger for larger banks and weaker for highly capitalized banks as well as for more liquid banks. Our channel analysis shows that the increase in the level and volatility of lending and deposit rates, and the decrease in risk-adjusted capitalization and risk-adjusted profitability might to some extent explain the decrease in bank stability in times of higher economic policy uncertainty. Additional analysis reveals that higher market power mitigates the negative impact of EPU on bank stability. Our findings support the Basel II and III regulatory reforms aimed at tightening the capital levels with stricter rules for the larger banks and the implementation of the newly introduced liquidity rules.

This study examines linkages between the stock market and uncertainty in the real economy generated by unpredictability of economic policies. We investigate the asymmetric effect of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on India’s stock market performance through the non-linear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) approach for the period ranging from 2003 to 2022. A sub-sample analysis of the pre-covid period is also done to confirm that EPU had an impact on the stock market even prior to the pandemic. Our findings support the existence of asymmetry in the variables as the stock prices’ response to rising and declining EPU is not identical in both sample periods. It is observed that falling EPU’s positive impact on stock prices is greater than rising EPU’s adverse impact. The study suggests that government officials and policymakers must ensure consistency in policymaking and prevent the adverse effects of EPU as it impedes the long-term development of the securities market.

In this study, we conduct a novel exploration of the time-frequency quantile dynamics between global crypto-currency market volatility and financial instability, using the recently introduced Cryptocurrency VIX indicator from a macro perspective. Taking into account the impact of Covid-19 and the Russian-Ukrainian war shocks, the results from the wavelet coherence analysis, the novel quantile wavelet coherency approach, and the non-parametric causality test reveal a strong dependence between the US financial stress and the volatility of the global cryptocurrency market. This dependence is likely to persist over the long-term and in extreme market conditions, but weaken in the short-term. Additionally, the study finds that while cryptocurrencies are not effective for hedging against risks associated with the banking sector and systemic risk, they can be used to hedge against stock market risk in the short term and under stable market conditions. However, the study shows a mutual transmission of financial risk between the stock market and the cryptocurrency market over the medium run. Tested against the alternative method of quantile connectedness, these findings further reaffirm their robustness.

Chonsei, an exceptional but prevalent housing rental system in the Republic of Korea, functions as private loans between individuals, and its implicit interest rate is called the “chonsei to monthly rent conversion rate”. Although the chonsei to monthly rent conversion rate is much higher than the interest rate of savings accounts or mortgage loans, making chonsei a more expensive channel of financing, chonsei remains a dominant type of rent in Korea. This study provides a novel theoretical model in a continuous-time portfolio selection framework that allows a lessor, given borrowing constraints, to optimally choose between chonsei and monthly rent contracts to show a possible solution to this situation. We investigate the optimal choice between chonsei and the monthly rent of lessors using a rigorous theoretical model and find a closed-form solution to the model. We analyze how credit availability in the banking sector affects the choice problem, showing that the lessor may prefer the chonsei contract over the monthly rent contract, given the borrowing limit from a bank. In addition, we analyze the impact of other major factors, such as the market price of risk, the amount of chonsei deposit, the monthly rental rate, and the income rate, on the lessor’s optimal decision between chonsei and monthly rent.