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Business’s accelerated globalization has weakened regulatory capacity of the law and scholars have been paid attention to fraud detection in recent years. In this study, we introduced Random Forest (RF) for financial fraud technique detection and detailed features selection, variables’ importance measurement, partial correlation analysis and Multidimensional analysis. The results show that a combination of eight variables has the highest accuracy. The ratio of debt to equity (DEQUTY) is the most important variable in the model. Moreover, we applied four statistic methodologies, including parametric and non-parametric models to construct detection models and concluded that Random Forest has the highest accuracy and the non-parametric models have higher accuracy than non-parametric models. However, Random Forest can improve the detection efficiency significantly and have an important practical implication.

The financial turmoil that we have been living with since August 2007 has left central banks, regulators, politicians, and economists with two big, overriding questions: How do we best get out of the crisis and how should banks be regulated and markets organized to avoid such crises in the future. This paper deals with the second question. Specifically, the paper deals with the third pillar of Bank supervision under Basel II, namely market discipline. The idea of this pillar, as summarized by Emmons, Gilbert, and Vaughan (2001), is for supervisors and regulators to make use of information about the financial health of banks that is contained in securities prices. In particular, as explained by Emmons et al: “The recent market discipline discussion centers on proposals to require some banks to issue a standardized form of subordinated debt.” Flannery (1998) discusses this more broadly and reviews the evidence on the effectiveness of using market information in prudential supervision. My proposal here is that the market discipline approach could usefully look for information about banks’ financial health outside of the securities markets. The market that I would suggest is especially valuable is the market for liquidity. This is motivated by the simple observation that the financial crisis of 07/08 has manifested itself in -- and rippled outwards from -- this market. Below, I briefly outline some features of the market for liquidity during the crisis and draw some comparisons to times of normalcy, before turning to my proposal. Some of what we see during the crisis period arguably can be explained by imperfections such as adverse selection, leading to credit rationing and relatively high unsecured rates. There are also imperfections present in the market for liquidity during times of normalcy (see, e.g., Bindseil, Nyborg, and Strebulaev~(2008)). Thus, as new regulation gets shaped in the wake of the crisis, it would appear that it is valuable to put measures in place to control these imperfections so that they do not flare up again. The suggestions I make in this paper are motivated by this concern.

Balkan countries, block of Albania, Serbia, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Romania, Montenegro, Macedonia have somewhat specific path toward future economic growth . Although some of them are part of EU community ( Bulgaria Romania ) and they have experienced the highest GDP growth rate 2014/2000 , significant number of countries still wait to become member of EU and to be able to further form a bridge toward Asia, Middle East, Africa. Ways to make further progress in such a heterogeneous environment, consequences of 2008 crises and ways how to incorporate predictions in GDP reasoning are some of points that this paper tackles.

This paper considers Google’s creation of investment value through its focus on technological advances that lead to job creation. By creating innovations that result in increased employment, Google contributes to macroeconomic expansion while increasing the long-term demand for its own stock. This strategy leads to the continuation of Google as a solid long-term investment.

Using a new daily dataset for all stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange from 1905 to 1910, we provide the first in-depth, microstructure analysis of the Panic of 1907 - one of the most severe financial crises of the 20th century - and quantify the critical role of asymmetric information in the generation of panic conditions. We first show that quoted equity bid-ask spreads rose six-fold, from 0.5% to 3%, during the peak weeks of the crisis. We then implement a spread decomposition procedure and pinpoint the source of the illiquidity spike in the adverse selection component; that is, the fear of informed trading. Moreover, we show that information costs rose most steeply in the mining sector - the origin of the panic rumors - and in other sectors with opaque corporate reporting standards. In addition to wider spreads and tight money markets, we find other hallmarks of information-based liquidity freezes: trading volume dropped and price impact rose. Importantly, despite shortterm cash infusions into the market, and abatement of the run, we find that the market remained relatively illiquid for several months following the panic. We go on to show that rising illiquidity enters positively in the cross section of stock returns. Thus, our findings demonstrate how opaque markets can easily transmit an idiosyncratic rumor into a long-lasting, market-wide crisis. Our results also demonstrate the usefulness of illiquidity measures to alert market participants to impending market runs.

This paper explores financial stability policies for the shadow banking system. I tie policy options to economic mechanisms for shadow banking that have been documented in the literature. I then illustrate the role of shadow bank policies using three examples: agency mortgage real estate investment trusts, leveraged lending, and captive reinsurance affiliates. For each example, the economic mechanisms are explained, the potential risks emanating from the activities are described, and policy options to mitigate such risks are listed. The overarching theme of the analysis is that any policy prescription for the shadow banking system is highly specific relative to the particular activity.

Individual behaviors such as smoking, fashion, and the adoption of new products is influenced by taking account of others' actions in one's decisions. We study social influence in a heterogeneous population and analyze the long-run behavior of the dynamics. We distinguish between cases in which social influence arises from responding to the number of current adopters, and cases in which social influence arises from responding to the cumulative usage. We identify the equilibria of the dynamics and show which equilibrium is observed in the long-run. We find that the models exhibit different behaviour and hence this differentiation is of importance. We also provide an intuition for the different outcomes.

We estimate the equity risk premium (ERP) by combining information from twenty models. The ERP in 2012 and 2013 reached heightened levels—of around 12 percent—not seen since the 1970s. We conclude that the high ERP was caused by unusually low Treasury yields.

Hoarding by large speculators is often blamed for contributing to commodity market panics and bubbles. Using supermarket scanner data on US household purchases during the 2008 Rice Bubble, we show that hoarding is in fact more systemic, affecting even households who have no resale motive. Export bans led to a spike in prices worldwide in the first half of 2008, which spilled over into US markets. Anticipating shortages, US households with previous purchases of rice, especially those of Asian ethnicity, nearly doubled their buying around the peak of the bubble. We document transmission mechanisms through over-extrapolation from high prices and contagion, as many households bought rice for the first and last time during the bubble.

The arrival of news plays an extremely important role in the stock market because it mainly drives the movement of the stock market. In this paper, therefore, we would like to investigate how the Vietnamese stock market responses to the arrival of news via applying the AR – EGARCH in Mean model. Our research result indicates that the arrival of bad news has a greater impact on the conditional volatility than the arrival of good news does. We also found that there exists a positive tradeoff between the stock market returns and conditional volatility in the Vietnamese stock market.

The various financial crisis incidents during the two last decades and particularly since the 2007-2008 Global Financial Crisis has revealed the complexity of the interaction between bank market structure, regulation and the stability of the banking industry. Due to its effects on financial stability, banking market structure has been a focus of academic and policy debates of which we prefer the market power paradigm. More precisely, the impact of competition and market concentration on the probability of financial crisis emerges as a crucial topic. Despite their importance, little is known about the relationship between Banking Market Power and Bank Soundness from banks of MENA region. This paper tries to overcome the tradeoff between banking market power and financial (in)stability among 157 commercial banks chosen from 18 countries of MENA region between 2000 and 2008. The results indicate that although the banks operate in a competitive market, they suffer from financial instability. The results also revealed a non-significant negative relationship between the rather low degree of market power and financial instability. In other words, we concluded that financial instability is not affected by competition in the banking market in the MENA region.

We document the cyclical properties of the balance sheets of different types of intermediaries. While the leverage of the bank sector is highly procyclical, the leverage of the nonbank financial sector is acyclical. We propose a theory of a two-agent financial intermediary sector within a dynamic model of the macroeconomy. Banks are financed by issuing risky debt to households and face risk-based capital constraints, which leads to procyclical leverage. Households can also participate in financial markets by investing in a nonbank “fund” sector where fund managers face skin-in-the-game constraints, leading to acyclical leverage in equilibrium. The model also reproduces the empirical feature that the banking sector’s leverage growth leads the financial sector’s asset growth, while leverage in the fund sector does not precede growth in financial-sector assets. The procyclicality of the banking sector is due to its risk-based funding constraints, which give a central role to the time variation of endogenous uncertainty.

Economists assess the efficiency of financial markets in absolute, all-or-nothing terms. However, this is at odds with a no-nonsense physics approach. Here, I describe how the relative efficiency of markets can be gauged taking advantage of algorithmic complexity theory. This is not physics-envy because the approach is superior in considering the proper randomness present in complex financial markets.

Climate change policies that rapidly curtail fossil fuel consumption will lead to structural adjustments in the business operations of the energy industry. Due to an uncertain global climate and energy policy framework, it is difficult to determine the magnitude of fossil energy reserves that could remain unused. This ambiguity has the potential to create losses for investors holding securities associated with any aspects of the fossil fuel industry. Carbon bubble risk is understood as financial exposure to fossil fuel companies that would experience impairments from assets stranded by policy, economics or innovation. A grassroots divestment campaign is pressuring institutions sell their fossil fuel company holdings. By September 2014, investors had responded by pledging to divest US $50 billion of portfolios. Though divestment campaigns are primarily focused on a moral and political rationale, they also regularly frame divesting as a strategy for mitigating stranded asset risk. We review aspects of the divestment movement alongside the context of carbon bubble risk. Several common hypotheses on reducing stranded carbon asset exposure through divestment are critically examined. We find that institutional investors are limited in their ability to reduce exposure to carbon through divesting and that the financial sector is likely to absorb many ¡®fossil free¡¯ funds.

This paper explores the impact of foreign bank entry on interest-rate pass-through for a panel of 57 emerging and developing economies over 1995-2009. The paper tests for possible thresholds in terms of foreign bank presence that differentially impact interest-rate pass-through. The empirical results suggest that there are strong threshold effects in that foreign bank entry tends to enhance interest-rate pass-through only in countries with greater degree of foreign bank presence compared to those with limited entry. The paper also finds that when foreign bank entry leads to greater banking concentration, it significantly lowers the extent of interest rate transmission.

This paper provides a unified framework for endogenizing two distinct organizational structures of financial intermediation. In one structure, called Bank, the intermediary is financed by issuing debt contracts to investors, and thus resembles commercial banks. In the other structure, called Fund, the intermediary is financed by issuing equity contracts to investors, thus resembling private-equity funds. The paper finds that in the former incentives can be provided in a less costly way, but the latter is more robust to negative shocks on the asset side. Our model predicts that relative to banks, private equity funds are more involved in the running of the firms that they finance, contribute more to the success of these firms, and provide funds to higher-risk, higher-return firms.

This paper provides a tractable continuous-time constant-absolute-risk averse (CARA)-Gaussian framework to explore how the interactions of fundamental uncertainty, model uncertainty due to a preference for robustness (RB), and state uncertainty due to information-processing constraints (rational inattention or RI) affect strategic consumption-portfolio rules and precautionary savings in the presence of uninsurable labor income. Specifically, after solving the model explicitly, I compute and compare the elasticities of strategic asset allocation and precautionary savings to risk aversion, robustness, and inattention. Furthermore, for plausibly estimated and calibrated model parameters, I quantitatively analyze how the interactions of model uncertainty and state uncertainty affect the optimal share invested in the risky asset, and show that they can provide a potential explanation for the observed stockholding behavior of households with different education and income levels.

Academics' view of the benefits of finance vastly exceeds societal perception. This dissonance is at least partly explained by an under-appreciation by academia of how, without proper rules, finance can easily degenerate into a rent-seeking activity. I outline what finance academics can do, from a research point of view and from an educational point of view, to promote good finance and minimize the bad.

The 2007-8 global financial crisis has shown the failure of private finance to efficiently allocate capital to finance real capital development. The resilience and stability of Brazil’s financial system has received attention, since it navigated relatively smoothly through the Great Recession and the collapse of the shadow banking system. This raises the question of whether it is possible that the alternative approaches followed by some developing countries might provide an indication of more stable regulatory approaches generally. There has been much discussion about how to support private long-term finance in order to meet Brazil’s growing infrastructure and investment needs. One of the essential functions of the financial system is to provide the long-term funding needed for long-lived and expensive capital assets. However, one of the main difficulties of the current private financial system is its failure to provide long-term financing, as the short-termism in Brazil’s financial market is a major obstacle to financing long-term assets. In its current form, the National Economic and Social Development Bank (BNDES) is the main source of long-term funding in the country. However, BNDES has been subject to a range of criticisms, such as crowding out private sector bank lending, and it is said to be hampering the development of the local capital market. This paper argues that, rather than following the traditional approach to justify the existence of public banks — and BNDES in particular, based on market failures — finding an effective answer to this question requires a theory of financial instability.

In this paper, we examine the performance of male and female students participating in a unique and successful high school program called Keys to Financial Success. Using the Financial Fitness for Life High School Test (FFFL-HS) results from 965 students enrolled in a one-semester Keys course, we discover no gender gap at the overall pretest level. We find, however, a significant gender gap favoring female students at the overall posttest level, a result that is also consistent with the overall performance of students participating in the norming of the FFFL-HS Test. We conclude by suggesting that the use of a carefully designed personal finance course, taught by instructors trained on the specific curriculum covered in that course, is essential for providing equal learning opportunities to both male and female high school students.

Many public pension systems worldwide are experiencing difficult economic period as its economy is in the period of financial crisis which affected to the social budget sustainability. Population aging and last decade economic circumstances are the factors the pension systems should overcome for maintaining either appropriate level of benefit amount for decent life in the developed countries or minimum subsistence allowances in developing and poor countries. The only prescription how to keep the pension system resistible is its periodical renovation by testing the system on (i) soundness and effectiveness within national financial and economic system, (ii) appropriateness of its organization and administration, (iii) compliance of parameters with international standards. The article presents Cohesive Testing System – new method of national pension systems testing and indexing based on international standards of pension security and new CTS indices of the researched set of pension systems. This record was migrated from the OpenDepot repository service in June, 2017 before shutting down., {"references":["Baroni Eliza (2007), \"Pension Systems and Pension Reform in an Aging Society: an Introduction to the Debate\", InstitutetförFramtidsstudier.\nBarr Nicolas (2001), \"The welfare state as piggy bank. Informmation, risk, uncertainty and the role of the state\", Oxford University Press.\nBerghman Jos (1986), Invisible Social Security Revisited, LANNOO CAMPUS, 23-46. \nHagenaars Jackues and Wim van Oorschot (2014), \"Measuring and comparing solidarity across Europe: The use of latent structure model\", Invisible social security revisited, 305-320. \nHolzmann Robert (2000), \"The World Bank Approach to Pension Reform\". \nRobert Holzmann and Richard Hinz together with Hermann von Gersdorff, Indermit Gill, Gregorio Impavido, Alberto R. Musalem, Robert Palacios, David Robolino, Michal Rutkowski, Anita Schwarz, Yvonne Sin, Kalanidhi Subbarao (2001), \"Old-Age Income Support, in the 21st Century An International Perspective on Pension Systems and Reform\", World Bank, Washington DC. \nPieters Danny (2006), \"Social Security: An introduction to the Basic Principles\", Kluwer Law International BV, Netherlands, 51-58. \nEconomic Policy Committee (2002), \"Reform challenges facing public pension systems: the impact of certain parametric reforms on pension expenditure\".\nPension systems in the 27 EU-countries and 3 countries of the European Economic Area (2011), Delta Lloyd Publication.\nCouncil of the European Union, \"Social Protection Committee's Pension Adequacy Report 2012: Report on pension adequacy 2010-2050 - Country Profiles\" (2012), 10488/12 ADD 2, SOC 426, ECOFIN 445. \nC102 - Social Security (Minimum Standards) Convention (1952) (No. 102), NORMLEX, Information System on International Labour Standards, http://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_ILO_CODE:C102\nPension watch, Social Pensions Database, http://www.pension-watch.net/about-social-pensions/about-social-pensions/social-pensions-database/ \nEurostat database, Expenditure on pensions, current prices (%GDP), http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&language=en&pcode=tps00103&plugin=1 \nPension Fund Online country profiles, http://www.pensionfundsonline.co.uk/content/country-profiles/ \nEconomic Policy Committee, 2002, Reform challenges facing public pension systems: the impact of certain parametric reforms on pension expenditure."]}

An important dimension of the effects of foreign bank entry on financial sector development relates to that of financial inclusion. Despite its policy significance, the empirical literature offers little evidence on the impact of bank competition generally or foreign bank entry specifically on financial inclusion. This paper examines the relationship between foreign bank entry and financial inclusion for a panel of 57 emerging and developing economies over the period 2004-2009. The empirical findings suggest that foreign banks have a positive impact in furthering financial inclusion, though the relationship turns negative when foreign bank entry is followed by greater banking concentration.

U radu Gardijan, M., Kojić, V., Šego, B. (2012) Trajanje obveznica: pravila i primjene. Zbirna znanstvena knjiga (urednici: Aljinović, Z., Marasović, B.), Sveučilište u Splitu, Ekonomski fakultet, Split, ISBN 978-953-281-049-3, str. 5-26 (1. poglavlje) analizirana su svojstva trajanja kuponskih obveznica kao jedne od temeljnih mjera rizičnosti. Druga vrlo bitna mjera rizičnosti je svakako konveksnost obveznice, pa je u skladu s tim bitno poznavati svojstva konveksnosti. Iako se u literaturi ta svojstva deskriptivno objašnjavaju, analitički izvodi i dokazi relevantnih zaključaka gotovo da i nema. Stoga je cilj ovog rada dati pregledan opis svojstava konveksnosti obveznica, te ih matematički dokazati. Jedan od načina dokazivanja je svakako primjenom diferencijalnog računa. Međutim, primjena diferencijalnog računa neizbježno vodi na komplicirane međurezultate koji su nužni kako bi se došlo do krajnjeg zaključka, pa se stoga dokazi provode na elementaran, algebarski način, razumljiv i široj publici koja nema nužno predznanje iz područja matematičke analize., In the paper Gardijan, M., Kojić, V., Šego, B. (2012) Bond Duration: Propositions and Applications. In: Aljinović, Z., Marasović, B., ed., in Mathematical models in analysis of the Croatian financial market, an analysis of cupon bond duration has been given, which is one of the primary risk measures. Another very important risk measure is bond convexity. To the best of our knowledge, the literature gives only descriptive explanations of bond convexity, without mathematical proofs. Thus, the aim of this paper is to give bond convexity analysis, and also give corresponding mathematical proofs. Since the use of calculus is very complicated, the bond convexity properties are proved by using elementary algebra, which is easier to understand to those who are not familiar with mathematical analysis.

We provide new evidence on consumer demand for ethical products from experiments conducted in a U.S. grocery store chain. We find that sales of the two most popular coffees rose by almost 10% when they carried a Fair Trade label as compared to a generic placebo label. Demand for the higher-priced coffee remained steady when its price was raised by 8%, but demand for the lower-priced coffee was elastic: a 9% price increase led to a 30% decline in sales. While consumers attach value to ethical sourcing, there is significant heterogeneity in willingness to pay for it. © 2015 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Global financial regulators are currently reflecting on the nature of the insurance business. Specifically, they are trying to classify insurance into ‘traditional’ and ‘non-traditional’ activities, and to distinguish them from ‘non-insurance’ activities. Subsequently, they will seek to apply different regulatory treatments to these categories to achieve better control of systemic risk in the global financial system. This means that one of the most important current questions in international finance is ‘what is insurance and where does insurance end?’ This paper aims to elaborate on the economics of insurance and its borders with general finance. It argues that the classification challenge by regulators partly stems from terminological confusion between insurance activities and more general financial activities. Insurance and finance both use the same terms – in particular the ubiquitous notion of risk – but attach fundamentally different meanings to them. With the proper terminology at hand and a clear distinction between insurance products, product management activities and balance sheet management activities, the limits of insurance can be re-established. Such delineation is essential to determine appropriate systemic risk regulation.

Findings show that the incidence of non-tariff measures (NTMs) in ASEAN is moderate in comparison with other regions of the world. The econometrically estimated ad valorem equivalents also seem comparable with other countries. The challenge is to design NTMs so as to maximize their effectiveness in responding to consumer concerns while minimizing the induced economic inefficiency and the interference from self-interested lobbies. This paper proposes that the way forward is not to follow traditional “notify-negotiate-eliminate†approaches but instead to bring the issue to the country level and imbed them in regulatory-reform agendas in the efforts to improve trade and investment climate. © 2015 The Earth Institute at Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Les ménages continuent de s’endetter, tout en accumulant des actifs financiers, et portent leur taux d’endettement à un niveau historique. Les sociétés non financières augmentent nettement leur recours aux crédits bancaires.

En estos tiempos, todo el mundo habla de la calidad o hemos escuchado hablar de la ella. Se entregan premios, certificaciones, acreditaciones y un sinfín de reconocimientos a instituciones y/o individuos que demuestran de alguna forma que sus acciones realizadas dentro de su ambiente laboral son de calidad. El gobierno federal, durante este sexenio lo tomó como política para la repartición de recursos. "a mayor calidad, más recursos", nuestro instituto está certificado en la norma ISO9001:2000, tiene seis de sus carreras de licenciatura acreditadas, cuatro de sus posgrados están en el Padrón Nacional de Posgrado del CONACYT y parte de la plantilla docente de la licenciatura en administración está certificada, pero ante todo esto ¿Qué es la calidad?

Las Instituciones Educativas tendrán que realizar un esfuerzo para hacer y crecer con calidad y bajo costo. La eficiencia y eficacia se deberán aplicar en cada proceso administrativo, sin menoscabo de la calidad de los servicios que ofrece, para formar profesionistas exitosos. Este desarrollo tecnológico alcanzado hoy en día se debe aprovechar para dar respuesta oportuna a las necesidades de nuestros alumnos; es deber de la administración apoyarse en esas tecnologías para eficientar los procesos administrativos En este contexto y en el marco de la revisión de la estructura organizacional de los Institutos Tecnológicos, se propone la revisión crítica de la forma como hemos trabajado hasta ahora y, como resultado de ello, sugerir alguna alternativa que, aunada al apoyo tecnológico, redunde en un mejor sistema administrativo. Por lo anterior, se pone a consideración del lector la creación de la Unidad de Servicios Estudiantiles Integrales, en un afán de transparentar los esfuerzos de mejora continua de nuestra Institución.

El presente trabajo corresponde a un seguimiento de la evolución de la aplicación del Microcrédito en México, que nace como una alternativa económica para las personas que viven en pobreza extrema en nuestro país. De esta manera pueden, mediante el autoempleo, mejorar sus ingresos y su calidad de vida. Se revisa también el tratamiento otorgado tanto por el Gobierno como por parte de la Banca privada, analizando los aspectos positivos y negativos.

The PGBM model for a couple of counteracting, exponentially growing capital flows is presented: the available capital stock $X(t)$ evolves according to a variant of inhomogeneous geometric Brownian motion (GBM) with time-dependent drift, in particular, to the stochastic differential equation $dX(t)=[pX(t)+\rho_1\exp(q_1 t)+\rho_2\exp(q_2 t)]dt+\sigma X(t) dW(t)$, where $W(t)$ is a Wiener process. As a paragon, we study a continuous-time model for a nine-parameter Ponzi scheme with an exponentially growing number of investors. Investors either maintain their investment or withdraw it after some fixed investment span and quit the system. The first two moments of the process and hence a closed-form solution for the mean path are given. The capital stock exhibits a dynamic lognormal probability distribution as long as the system remains solvent. The assumed stochastic performance allows for earlier or later collaps of the investment system as compared to the deterministic analogy ($\sigma = 0$). Allowing also for negative capital values the system's default probability can be calculated at any time by numerically solving the corresponding Kolmogorov forward equation. We use the finite difference method and obtain results in accordance with those of simple Monte-Carlo simulations. Finally, a minor modification of the payout function provides a toy model for a social security system exhibiting critical behaviour. Depending on whether some parameter value violates a weak no-Ponzi game condition or not, the system represents either a non-lasting Ponzi game or a lasting no-Ponzi game in the weak sense.

En términos financieros una firma arbitra flujos de fondos en su origen y aplicación, con el objetivo que la renta de la aplicación le permita repagar en exceso los costos financieros que esperan obtener en contraprestación los proveedores de capital. Los impuestos en Argentina afectan a la firma no solo por su significativo efecto en el estado de resultados de las mismas, sino también a nivel financiero. Esto sucede debido a que la regulación impositiva lleva a que la firma en algunos casos deba distraer recursos operativos de su actividad hacia gestionar los regímenes de retención, percepción y pagos a cuenta sin recibir beneficios; por otro lado los créditos fiscales implican adelantos de dinero al Estado sin una contraprestación específica. Todo esto sucede en un contexto de mercados de capitales y de créditos poco desarrollados y poco profundos, donde la absorción de fondos para adelantar el pago de impuestos incrementa las necesidades de financiamiento con poca variedad de proveedores de capital, y afecta de manera negativa la rentabilidad de los proyectos de inversión Finalmente, en situaciones de restricciones de acceso al crédito, la acumulación de deudas impositivas por el uso de esta fuente de financiamiento genera distorsiones en los proceso de asignación de recursos para inversiones, dando lugar a lo que se conoce en la literatura como “debt overhang”, y afecta los incentivos a mantener el capital intangible, las fuentes de trabajo y el crecimiento.

Bank liquidity shortages associated with the growth of wholesale-funded credit intermediation has motivated the implementation of liquidity regulations. We analyze a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model in which liquidity and capital regulations interact with the supply of risk-free assets. In the model, the endogenously time varying tightness of liquidity and capital constraints generates intermediaries’ leverage cycle, influencing the pricing of risk and the level of risk in the economy. Our analysis focuses on liquidity policies’ implications for households’ welfare. Within the context of our model, liquidity requirements are preferable to capital requirements, as tightening liquidity requirements lowers the likelihood of systemic distress without impairing consumption growth. In addition, we find that intermediate ranges of risk-free asset supply achieve higher welfare.

We combine self-collected historical data from 1867 to 1907 with CRSP data from 1926 to 2012, to examine the risk and return over the past 140 years of one of the most popular mechanical trading strategies — momentum. We find that momentum has earned abnormally high risk-adjusted returns — a three factor alpha of 1 percent per month between 1927 and 2012 and 0.5 percent per month between 1867 and 1907 — both statistically significantly different from zero. However, the momentum strategy also exposed investors to large losses (crashes) during both periods. Momentum crashes were predictable — more likely when momentum recently performed well (both eras), interest rates were relatively low (1867–1907), or momentum had recently outperformed the stock market (CRSP era) — times when borrowing or attracting return chasing “blind capital” would have been easier. Based on a stylized model and simulated outcomes from a richer model, we argue that a money manager has an incentive to remain invested in momentum even when the crash risk is known to be high when (1) he competes for funds from return-chasing investors and (2) he is compensated via fees that are convex in the amount of money managed and the return on that money.

In this paper, we describe a new multi-country open economy SDGE model named “SIGMA" that we have developed as a quantitative tool for policy analysis. We compare SIGMA's implications to those of an estimated large-scale econometric policy model (the FRB/Global model) for an array of shocks that are often examined in open-economy policy simulations. We show that SIGMA's implications for the near-term (2-3 year) responses of key variables are generally similar to those of FRB/Global. Two features of our modeling framework, including rational expectations with learning, and the inclusion of some non-Ricardian agents, play an important role in giving SIGMA more flexibility to generate responses akin to the econometric policy model; nevertheless, some quantitative disparities between the two models remain due to certain restrictive aspects of SIGMA's optimization-based framework. We conclude by using long-term simulations to illustrate some areas of comparative advantage of our SDGE modeling framework. These include linking model responses to underlying structural features of the economy, and fully articulating the endogenous channels through which “imbalances" arising from various shocks are alleviated.

The paper examines the influence of Modigliani's contributions to the theory of finance. As for the term structure of interest rates, the preferred habitat theory, had a mixed fortune: it was utilized by financial managers for a rather long time, before being discarded in the 1980s and, perhaps, being somewhat resumed in our days. The Modigliani-Miller theorem is considered as a landmark in finance theory, even if the controversies over both its assumptions and conclusions had indeed been very strong. By contrast, financial managers completely disregarded the thesis of an irrational undervaluation of stocks in inflationary periods. But most economists appreciate the proof that, for rather long periods, the market can be inefficient in channelling the resources towards the most productive utilizations.

In den späten achtziger Jahren kam eine neue Prognosetechnik zur Anwendung: die Veranstaltung so genannter "experimenteller Aktienmärkte". Diese Technik wurde zunächst vorrangig im Bereich der Wahlprognose eingesetzt, später fand sie auch in anderen Bereichen Anwendung, so z.B. bei der betriebsinternen Projektüberwachung oder der Voraussage des Ausgangs von Referenden. Der vorliegende Beitrag stellt die grundlegende Idee der Veranstaltung experimenteller Prognosemärkte dar und gibt einen Überblick über die bisher vorliegende empirische Evidenz. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass experimentelle Prognosemärkte eine sinnvolle Ergänzung zu existierenden Prognosemethoden sein können und sich auch zur Prognose makroökonomischer Eckdaten eignen. Insofern könnten sie in der Zukunft eine Ergänzung des traditionellen Konjunkturprognose-Instrumentariums darstellen.

We consider the term structure of lease rates in a general setting where both the interest rate and the short rent are stochastic. Our framework is applicable to any leasing market, but we focus on real estate. We find that the “expectations hypothesis” of lease rates, i.e. that the forward rent is an unbiased estimator of the future short rent, requires similar assumptions as in interest rate theory to hold. To study the magnitude of the bias we parameterize our general framework. The simulations show that different realistic parameter values for risk aversion and interest rate stochastics can generate widely different shapes of the rental term structure, holding the objective rental expectations constant. As a result, an expected increase in rent may very well be consistent with a downward-sloping term structure and vice versa.

This paper studies financial statement information from the 50 largest international oil and gas companies during 1992 to 2011 and evaluates their relation to market values. In particular, we examine how this relationship is affected by accounting method choice (successful efforts versus full cost accounting) and vertical integration. We find that net income is more value relevant for full cost companies compared to companies that use the successful efforts accounting method. Furthermore, the value relevance of oil and gas reserves is different among successful efforts and full cost companies. Larger reserves among successful efforts companies are awarded a premium by stock markets. The value relevance of book value is significantly lower for integrated companies than for pure upstream companies. We also find that the value relevance of oil and gas reserves is different for upstream and integrated companies.

Las firmas poseen un valor en función de su capacidad de generar flujos de fondos futuros. El concepto de valor llave refleja la diferencia entre el valor de mercado de una colección de activos y su valor de libros, siendo este último asociado a su valor de incorporación neto del uso de los mismos, o alternativamente por su costo de reposición. Esta diferencia puede ser positiva y proviene del hecho que los activos combinados bajo una dirección o gestión pueden valer más que la simple adición de sus valores de incorporación, debido que el concepto de valor se origina en la posibilidad de obtener flujos de fondos en el futuro, que traídos a valor presente a una tasa de descuento (que refleje apropiadamente las condiciones de riesgo y de oportunidades de inversión alternativas) sustentan el valor obtenido. Este activo intangible se origina en elementos que a veces no son capturados por la contabilidad tradicional, tales como calidad y motivación del capital humano, fidelidad y lealtad de los clientes, reconocimiento de marca, etc. En activos que poseen cotización pública es más fácil determinar el valor llave o del intangible a través de los múltiplos de valor de mercado de la firma o de la acción con respecto a su valor de libros. En activos que no poseen cotización pública, el valor llave o intangible puede obtenerse en transacciones de compra venta de empresas, por la diferencia entre el precio pagado por los activos y el valor de libros de los mismos. Esta determinación se hace más difícil cuando no existen cotizaciones públicas de los activos, o cuando no se realizan transacciones; sin embargo esto no significa que el valor llave o intangible no existe. La contabilidad tradicional ha quedado superada por el cambio en la utilización de recursos en la gestión de una firma, exponiendo diferencias aún en el caso de empresas exactamente iguales que solo poseen diferente intensidad de utilización en los recursos (recursos físicos respecto a recursos humanos). La falta de reconocimiento de un activo intangible como el valor llave puede llevar a confusiones en la lectura de la realidad de la firma a través de los estados contables tradicionales. La posibilidad de reconocer un valor llave en la exposición de la información económica y financiera de la firma puede significar un mejor reconocimiento de su realidad, siempre y cuando el mismo sea efectuado por profesionales especialistas e idóneos, de similar manera a un perito tasador de arte que es contratado para determinar el verdadero valor de una obra de arte bajo consideración.

We develop a structural credit risk model to examine how the interactions of liquidity and default risk affect corporate bond pricing. By explicitly modeling debt rollover and by endogenizing the holding costs via collateralized financing, our model generates rich links between liquidity risk and default risk. The introduction of macroeconomic risks helps the model capture realistic time variation in default risk premia and the default-liquidity spiral over the business cycle. Across different credit ratings, our calibrated model can simultaneously match the average default probabilities, credit spreads, and bond liquidity measures including Bond-CDS spreads and bid-ask spreads in the data. Through a structural decomposition, we show that the interactions between liquidity and default risk account for 25∼40% of the observed credit spreads and up to 55% of the credit spread changes over the business cycle. As an application, we use this framework to quantitatively evaluate the effects of liquidity-provision policies for the corporate bond market.

This paper explores how a put option changes the probability distribution of portfolio value. The paper extends the model introduced in Bell (2014) by allowing both the quantity and strike price to vary. I use the 5% quantile from the portfolio distribution to measure riskiness and compare different put options. I report a so-called ‘quantile surface’ that shows the quantile across different combinations of quantity and strike price. I find that it is possible to maximize the quantile by purchasing a put with quantity equal to one and strike deep in the money; however, the distribution with such a put option collapses to a single point because the option hedges all variation in stock price. This result is analogous to full-insurance in insurance economics, but has practical limitations. The quantile surface also shows that certain put options will decrease the quantile, which is equivalent to increasing the riskiness of the portfolio, and leads me to ask: what return will an investor receive in return for bearing that extra risk? I find that one such put option will cause the distribution to have an asymmetric shape with positive skewness, which is interesting to some speculators.

Building on recent research in social psychology, this paper analyzes the link between the precision of initial cash offers and M&A outcomes. About one-half of the offers are made at the precision of one or five dollars per share, and an additional one-third at the precision of half dollar or one quarter. The practice of making offers at granular price per share levels is associated with the following unfavorable outcomes for the bidder: (1) higher purchase price for target shares, (2) lower probability to complete the deal, and (3) lower announcement return. A median-sized offer made at the precision of one or five dollars per share is associated with a 45 million dollars higher expected transaction price than one made at a precision greater than one quarter. Our results are consistent with the idea that bidders have learned to avoid making offers at the most granular level.

El impuesto a los ingresos brutos actualmente no debería existir, al menos en su forma actual. Es un impuesto general al consumo, acumulativo y plurifásico que se superpone, en principio, en su base imponible con el impuesto al valor agregado (lo que significa cobrar dos impuestos sobre la misma base dados por los ingresos por ventas, prestaciones o locaciones) y que origina distorsiones económicas por efecto “cascada” al acumularse en la forma de un gasto operativo en las diferentes etapas del proceso productivo o cadena de valor. Asimismo, considerar que es un impuesto trasladable al consumidor depende de manera significativa de los aspectos de elasticidad precio de la demanda. Por otra parte los regímenes de pago, retenciones y percepciones dan lugar a la existencia de créditos fiscales que en contexto de alta inflación y acceso restringido a los mercados de crédito afectan la competitividad de las firmas y la eficiencia en la asignación de recursos, afectando por extensión los procesos de inversión, crecimiento y generación de empleo en el largo plazo. El gravamen no es neutral frente a la organización de los negocios, como lo es el impuesto al valor agregado, pues discrimina a favor de la integración vertical de las empresas eliminando – real o ficticiamente- la existencia de agentes económicos intermedios para morigerar el impacto del tributo, lo cual en un contexto de restricciones de acceso a los mercados de crédito o de capitales genera distorsiones. Las distorsiones económicas y financieras provocan procesos de sub inversión dadas las restricciones de acceso a los mercados de crédito, y conlleva la inmovilización ineficiente de recursos sin una contraprestación operativa. Esta situación no es consistente con procesos de crecimiento económico y creación de empleo en el largo plazo. En oportunidad del Pacto Fiscal de 1993 se reconoció la existencia de distorsiones planteándose su eliminación para ser sustituido por un impuesto general al consumo (ventas a consumidor final), que tuviese neutralidad económica, objetivo que no solo no fue conseguido, sino que por el contrario, con el tiempo el impuesto terminó incrementando su participación en las finanzas provinciales, inclusive hasta su incorporación en la ley penal tributaria, que en principio solo debiera alcanzar cuestiones vinculadas a tributos nacionales, lo cual implica desde lo conceptual y económico una nacionalización de hecho del impuesto objeto de análisis, sin perjuicio de su diferenciación en cuanto a sus aspectos operativos (agentes recaudadores y fiscalizadores, jurisdicciones, etc.).

This paper studies the reactions of commercial banks to the changes in monetary policy tools in mid-1994, when the Federal Reserve Bank altered its policy implicitly targeting the Federal Funds Rate (FFR). Prior to 1994, the FFR had affected, with a considerable lag, the Prime Rate. However, after the move by the Fed in 1994, commercial banks responded immediately by changing their Prime lending rate to the Federal Funds Rate plus a three-percent spread. Based on the response of commercial banks, it is evident that a more transparent monetary policy can, in fact, more effectively achieve its underlying objectives.

Review of the book titled 'Rethinking Housing Bubbles The Role of Household and Bank Balance Sheets in Modeling Economic Cycles' by Steven D. Gjerstad and Vernon L. Smith. Published by Cambridge University Press in May 2014.

__Abstract__ Given the enormous impact of the 2007-2010 worldwide financial crisis on societies, one may wonder what the impact was on individual consumer behavior concerning financial products and services. A natural expectation would be that the crisis made people aware of the risks and consequently that they should become increasingly prudent when their own finances are at stake. Prudency can appear in gathering more information, more frequently asking for advice and higher reluctance to buy higher risk and unknown products. In this paper we hold statements of recent buyers of financial products and services against those of a representative group of already long term owners of financial decision makers. Interestingly, based upon detailed data covering the period 2007-2013 we find only small differences between recent closers and the representative group. In fact, in most cases these differences point towards less prudent behavior. Moreover, we find that these differences cannot be explained by GDP growth. We also find that higher educated consumers show more prudence. In sum, we document that consumer behavior is relatively indifferent to changes at a macroeconomic level.

Asset pricing theory has long recognized that financial markets compensate investors who are exposed to some components of uncertainty. This is where macroeconomics comes into play. The economy-wide shocks, the primary concern of macroeconomists, by their nature are not diversifiable. Exposures to these shocks cannot be averaged out with exposures to other shocks. Thus returns on assets that depend on these macroeconomic shocks reflect “risk†premia and are a linchpin connecting macroeconomic uncertainty to financial markets. A risk premium reflects both the price of risk and the degree of exposure to risk. I will be particularly interested in how the exposures to macroeconomic impulses are priced by decentralized security markets.  Â

We propose a new method of testing asset pricing models that relies on using quantities rather than prices or returns. We use the capital flows into and out of mutual funds to infer which risk model investors use. We derive a simple test statistic that allows us to infer, from a set of candidate models, the model that is closest to the model that investors use in making their capital allocation decisions. Using this methodology, we find that of the models most commonly used in the literature, the Capital Asset Pricing Model is the closest. The finding that investors’ revealed preferences are most aligned with the Capital Asset Pricing Model despite the fact that the model has been shown to perform poorly relative to other models in explaining cross sectional variation in expected returns, is an important puzzle for future research. We also document that a large fraction of mutual fund flows remain unexplained.

Una firma inmoviliza recursos con el objetivo de obtener rentas explotando una oportunidad de negocios. En ello la información contable y financiera es de suma importancia para la toma de decisiones, ya que le sirve a los ejecutivos para gestionar la firma, a los accionistas para evaluar la rentabilidad de su inversión, a los acreedores para evaluar la capacidad crediticia de la firma, a los empleados para conocer los riesgos de sustentabilidad y al estado para cobrar los respectivos impuestos. La cartera de activos y pasivos que maneja la firma apuntan a generar rentas operativas y financieras, y dentro de estas últimas se incluyen las ganancias (pérdidas) de capital, por efecto de los cambios en el valor de activos y pasivos bajo administración. En un contexto de estabilidad de precios, la hoja de balance de la situación económica y financiera de una empresa y su estado de resultados reflejan razonablemente la realidad de negocios de la misma. En contextos de inflación, los estados contables, al reflejar la realidad de negocios desde lo nominal, dan lugar a distorsiones originadas en las diferencias entre ganancias (y pérdidas) de capital nominales y reales, siendo que en economía las variables relevantes a los efectos de toma de decisiones son reales (libres de ilusión monetaria). Entre los efectos de esta situación se observa que la rentabilidad no refleja la realidad económica, y que en la determinación del impuesto a las ganancias la falta de expresión en moneda homogénea dan lugar al cálculo del impuesto sobre ganancias (y pérdidas) de capital nominales y no reales, al asimilar de manera indirecta al patrimonio neto como un pasivo monetario que no debe ser ajustado, frente al hecho que las acciones o certificado de participación representan derechos reales sobre el patrimonio de la firma. Bajo esta situación, la determinación del impuesto a las ganancias termina afectando no solo ganancias del ejercicio, sino también aportes de capital y ganancias retenidas de ejercicios anteriores. Mostramos este resultado en un ejemplo simple, y evaluamos sus potenciales consecuencias, tales como que desde el punto de vista de la estructura de financiamiento, incentiva el uso de deuda.