European development banks and the political cycle

This paper investigates whether the lending activity of European development banks is affected by opportunistic political behavior, by looking at the change in loans extended by these entities in election years. The empirical analysis leverages on a unique manually collected dataset that includes all the development banks headquartered in Europe, for the period 2002\u20132015. A comparison with the rest of the European banking system reveals that while the political view of development banks cannot be supported as a general rule, it finds empirical evidence in flawed democracies, where large development banks actually tend to increase their lending activity in election years

Il mercato dei prestiti personali e il fenomeno del sovra-indebitamento

Analisi del mercato dei prestiti personali in Europa, analisi del sovraindebitamento delle famiglie e implicazioni di policy

Stock markets’ bubbles burst and volatility spillovers in agricultural commodity markets

Our paper focuses on commodity financialization and the gradual integration between commodity and financial markets, investigating to what extent shocks in stock markets impact commodity price volatility, and the persistency of the phenomenon. To this end, we estimate Volatility Impulse Response Function from stock markets to agricultural commodity markets over a symmetric window before and after two of the most important bubble bursts since the new millennium, the 2000 dot.com bubble and the 2008 financial crises. Results highlight that volatility spillover increased significantly after the 2008 financial crises, signalling a rising interconnection between financial and agricultural commodity markets

Credit bureaus between risk-management, creditworthiness assessment and prudential supervision

"This text may be downloaded for personal research purposes only. Any additional reproduction for other purposes, whether in hard copy or electronically, requires the consent of the author. If cited or quoted, reference should be made to the full name of the author, the title, the working paper or other series, the year, and the publisher."This paper discusses the role and operations of consumer Credit Bureaus in the European Union in the context of the economic theories, policies and law within which they work. Across Europe there is no common practice of sharing the credit data of consumers which can be used for several purposes. Mostly, they are used by the lending industry as a practice of creditworthiness assessment or as a risk-management tool to underwrite borrowing decisions or price risk. However, the type, breath, and depth of information differ greatly from country to country. In some Member States, consumer data are part of a broader information centralisation system for the prudential supervision of banks and the financial system as a whole. Despite EU rules on credit to consumers for the creation of the internal market, the underlying consumer data infrastructure remains fragmented at national level, failing to achieve univocal, common, or defined policy objectives under a harmonised legal framework. Likewise, the establishment of the Banking Union and the prudential supervision of the Euro area demand standardisation and convergence of the data used to measure debt levels, arrears, and delinquencies. The many functions and usages of credit data suggest that the policy goals to be achieved should inform the legal and institutional framework of Credit Bureaus, as well as the design and use of the databases. This is also because fundamental rights and consumer protection concerns arise from the sharing of credit data and their expanding use

State-Owned Enterprises: Rationales for Mergers and Acquisitions

The paper contributes to the empirical literature on M&A deals performed by SOEs with a detailed analysis of the reported rationales from a sample of SOE-led acquisitions over the last decade. The sample includes 355 worldwide M&A deals performed by SOEs as acquirers over the period 2002-2012. The data set was obtained by combining firm-level information from two sources, Zephyr and Orbis (Bureau Van Dijk). The analysis is on a case-by-case basis for the rationales of the sample. Overall, the most important message arising from our analysis is that rescue of firms in financial distress is a relatively minor one role played by contemporary SOEs in spite of the Great Recession, while shareholder value maximization and long term strategic goals are more frequently the objective of the observed deals

Volatility spillover between water, energy and food

Water, energy, and food and are strongly interconnected, and the sustainability of the whole world depends on this link. The aim of this article is to analyze the volatility spillovers between indexes representing the financial component of this nexus. We use a multivariate Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model with daily data in which the water variable is proxy by equity index that represents the performance of the industry involved in water business both at the global and local levels. For the food and energy sectors, we use two sub-indexes of the S & P Goldman Sachs (GS)-Commodity Index. Our results highlight the existence of a financial nexus between water, energy, and food that was particularly exacerbated during 2008 crisis. Evidence therefore suggests the need to better investigate the policy options that can be used to reduce price volatility in a framework of the rising relevance of sustainability issues

SWFs in banks during the crisis

SWFs are characterized by their large size and limited level of transparency, which might worsen the potentially politicized nature of their investments. During the latest financial crisis, SWFs have started getting interested in financial companies and have become key players, also entering the capital of large US and European banks. The literature and the industry have analyzed the potential pros and cons of the participation of SWFs into the financial industry, but no conclusive answer has been provided, especially with reference to the effects of the presence of SWFs on the performance of their targets. This paper aims at evaluating this latter aspect, by measuring the performance of SWF banks, through the use of four performance ratios. When comparing the performance of SWF banks with a sample of non-SWF banks in three time periods (2004-2006, 2007-2008 and 2009-2014) we find no statistical differences in performances, but during the acute crisis period, when SWF activity in the banking industry was at its top. During this phase, SWF banks performed worse than their peer. Nevertheless, regression results confirm that the presence of a SWF cannot be per se considered the determinant of this performance

A cointegration analysis of wine stock indexes

This paper analyzes price patterns and long-run relationships for both fine wine and non-fine wine, with the aim to highlight price dynamics and co-movements between series, and to exploit potential diversification benefits. Data are from Liv-Ex 100 Fine Wine for fine wine, the Mediobanca Global Wine Industry Share Price for normal wine, and the MSCI World Index as a proxy of the overall stock market. Engle-Granger and Johansen tests were used to detect whether and to what extent the series co-move in the long run and which one of the variables contributes proactively to such an equilibrium by reacting to disequilibria from the long-run path. The estimates highlight that i) the two wine indexes have a higher Sharpe ratio compared to the general stock market index, revealing wine stocks as a profitable investment per se, and ii) the absence of cointegration among the three series and the existence of possible diversification benefits. In fact, in the long-run price do not move together and, therefore, investors may be better off by including wine stocks into investment portfolios and take advantage of diversification

State-Owned Banks: Acquirers in M&A deals

Between 2003 and 2013, according to Zephyr (BvD) data, 22% of M&A deals between banks have involved state-owned banks, either as targets (12%) or as acquirers (10%). The behavior of state-owned banks in the market control is, however, under-researched. The standard Inefficient Management Hypothesis suggests that more efficient managerial teams target less performing firms. The IMH, however, has never been tested for deals involving state-owned banks, nor the pre-deal operating characteristics of state-owned banks involved as acquirers in M&A deals. We build up a unique dataset of 3,682 deals between banks that allows us to classify M&As into four categories, depending on the ownership of the acquirer and the target: 1) public re-organization (deals between two state-owned banks), 2) publicization (a state-owned bank acquiring a private bank) 3) privatization and 4) private re-organization (deals between two private banks). Our findings confirms for the first time the IMH also for state-owned banks. We also find that state- owned banks active as acquirers in the market for corporate control have a better pre-deal performance compared to the private benchmark; this evidence is stronger for development banks