Credit risk transfer and contagion

Some have argued that recent increases in credit risk transfer are desirable because they improve the diversification of risk. Others have suggested that they may be undesirable if they increase the risk of financial crises. Using a model with banking and insurance sectors, we show that credit risk transfer can be beneficial when banks face uniform demand for liquidity. However, when they face idiosyncratic liquidity risk and hedge this risk in an interbank market, credit risk transfer can be detrimental to welfare. It can lead to contagion between the two sectors and increase the risk of crises. Klassifikation: G21, G2

Mark-to-market accounting and liquidity pricing

When liquidity plays an important role as in times of financial crisis, asset prices in some markets may reflect the amount of liquidity available in the market rather than the future earning power of the asset. Mark-to-market accounting is not a desirable way to assess the solvency of a financial institution in such circumstances. We show that a shock in the insurance sector can cause the current value of banks’ assets to be less than the current value of their liabilities so the banks are insolvent. In contrast, if historic cost accounting is used, banks are allowed to continue and can meet all their future liabilities. Mark-to-market accounting can thus lead to contagion where none would occur with historic cost accounting. Klassifizierung: G21, G22, M4

Credit Risk Transfer and Contagion

Some have argued that recent increases in credit risk transfer are desirable because they improve the diversification of risk. Others have suggested that they may be undesirable if they increase the risk of financial crises. Using a model with banking and insurance sectors, we show that credit risk transfer can be beneficial when banks face uniform demand for liquidity. However, when they face idiosyncratic liquidity risk and hedge this risk in an interbank market, credit risk transfer can be detrimental to welfare. It can lead to contagion between the two sectors and increase the risk of crises.Financial Innovation, Pareto Inferior, Banking, Insurance

Mark-to-Market Accounting and Liquidity Pricing

When liquidity plays an important role as in times of financial crisis, asset prices in some markets may reflect the amount of liquidity available in the market rather than the future earning power of the asset. Mark-to-market accounting is not a desirable way to assess the solvency of a financial institution in such circumstances. We show that a shock in the insurance sector can cause the current value of banks’ assets to be less than the current value of their liabilities so the banks are insolvent. In contrast, if historic cost accounting is used, banks are allowed to continue and can meet all their future liabilities. Mark-to-market accounting can thus lead to contagion where none would occur with historic cost accounting.Mark-to-market, Historical Cost, Incomplete Markets

Competition and stability: what's special about banking?

This paper examines the relationship between competition policies and policies to preserve stability in the banking sector. Market structures and the relative importance of the three classical antitrust areas for banking are discussed, showing the predominance of merger review considerations for loan and deposit markets as well as the relevance of cartel considerations for payment systems. A core part of the paper is an analysis of the relative roles of competition and supervisory authorities in the review of bank mergers for the G-7 industrialised countries. A wide variety of approaches emerges, with some countries giving a stronger role to prudential supervisors than to competition authorities and other countries doing it the other way round. In search for explanations for this diversity the theoretical and empirical literature on the competition-stability nexus in banking is surveyed. It turns out that the widely accepted trade-off between competition and stability does not generally hold. JEL Classification: G21, G28, G34, K21, L4antitrust policies, Bank competition, banking supervision, financial stability, mergers & acquisitions

Financial Regulation Going Forward

The financial sector is heavily regulated in order to prevent financial crises. The recent crisis showed how ineffective this regulation and other types of government intervention were in achieving this aim. We argue that the crisis was primarily caused by housing price bubbles. These occurred because of too loose monetary policies and the easy availability of credit resulting from the build up of large foreign exchange reserves by Asian central banks. A number of regulatory reforms are suggested. It is also argued that central banks need to have more checks and balances. Finally, the international financial architecture needs to be changed so that Asian countries do not feel the need to accumulate large foreign exchange reserves.Bubbles, Monetary Policy, Global Imbalances

Credit market competition and capital regulation

Market discipline for financial institutions can be imposed not only from the liability side, as has often been stressed in the literature on the use of subordinated debt, but also from the asset side. This will be particularly true if good lending opportunities are in short supply, so that banks have to compete for projects. In such a setting, borrowers may demand that banks commit to monitoring by requiring that they use some of their own capital in lending, thus creating an asset market-based incentive for banks to hold capital. Borrowers can also provide banks with incentives to monitor by allowing them to reap some of the benefits from the loans, which accrue only if the loans are in fact paid o.. Since borrowers do not fully internalize the cost of raising capital to the banks, the level of capital demanded by market participants may be above the one chosen by a regulator, even when capital is a relatively costly source of funds. This implies that capital requirements may not be binding, as recent evidence seems to indicate. JEL Classification: G21, G3

The economic impact of merger control legislation

Based on a unique dataset of legislative changes in industrial countries, we identify events that strengthen the competition control of mergers and acquisitions, analyze their impact on banks and non-financial firms and explain the different reactions observed with specific regulatory characteristics of the banking sector. Covering nineteen countries for the period 1987 to 2004, we find that more competition-oriented merger control increases the stock prices of banks and decreases the stock prices of non-financial firms. Bank targets become more profitable and larger, while those of non-financial firms remain mostly unaffected. A major determinant of the positive bank returns is the degree of opaqueness that characterizes the institutional setup for supervisory bank merger reviews. The legal design of the supervisory control of bank mergers may therefore have important implications for real activity

Evaluating the 2013 Euro CAC Experiment

On January 1, 2013, it became mandatory that every new sovereign bond issued by a member of the European Monetary Union include a new contract clause called a Collective Action Clause or CAC. This, we believe, constituted the biggest one-time change to the terms of sovereign debt contracts in history, impacting a market of many trillions of euros. And it was not just that the change was big in terms of the size of the market it impacted; it was big in terms of its impact on the documentation of each individual Euro area sovereign bond contract. To illustrate, prior to January 1, 2013, all of the terms of a local-law Irish sovereign bond fitted on about a page and a half; the full document was about three pages long. After January 1, 2013, the document was twenty pages long; almost all of that space taken by the new CAC term. In terms of words on the page, it was a big change. But did it do anything meaningful? And, more importantly, did it do what it was intended to do

The Photographic Eye: Poetry and the Visual in 1950s and 1960s Italian Experimental Writers

This PhD thesis argues that, in the 1950s and 1960s, several Italian experimental writers developed photographic and cinematic modes of writing with the aim to innovate poetic form and content. By adopting an interdisciplinary framework, which intersects literary studies with visual and intermedial studies, this thesis analyses the works of Antonio Porta, Amelia Rosselli, and Edoardo Sanguineti. These authors were particularly sensitive to photographic and cinematic media, which inspired their poetics. Antonio Porta’s poetry, for instance, develops in dialogue with the photographic culture of the time, and makes references to the photographs of crime news. Furthermore, his poetry relies on the technique of poetic montage, and juxtaposes photographic and cinematic sequences through the use of percussive meter and frequent punctuation. Amelia Rosselli, on the other hand, refers to photography as a medium to capture and record her life story. Her poetry seems to work like a camera, recording a precise personal experience in both space and time. The still camera and film camera also inspire her metrical system, presented in her manifesto of poetics Spazi metrici. Finally, Edoardo Sanguineti claims to see the world photographically through a camera eye as well as through a cinematic mind. His poetry also borrows formal techniques from other artistic practices – such as collage and montage – and aims to deconstruct normative syntax as a form of resistance to bourgeois hegemony. This thesis intends to provide new and unexplored perspectives on the work of the authors analysed. It also suggests that there is a broader interrelation of literary and photographic cultures beyond the presented case studies. In post-war Italy, experimental and neo-avant-garde writers reshaped their poetry in direct dialogue with both photography and cinema. By recognising that the interactions between literature, photography, and cinema lay at the core of the poetic research of several authors in the 1950s and 1960s, this thesis aims to fill a gap in Italian Studies scholarship on poetry and calls for further research in this area