The performance effects of board heterogeneity: What works for EU banks?

We examine the impact of board heterogeneity on the performance of EU listed banks in the wake of the global financial crisis. In a comprehensive set-up, we consider standard board features (type, tenure, size, and age of board members) as well as board diversity features (gender diversity, employee representation, internationalisation, and age diversity). We propose a diversity index, which summarises the different dimensions of diversity and control for unobserved heterogeneity and reverse causality. Our analysis uncovers a complex relationship between board heterogeneity and bank performance, which is influenced by market conditions and by national culture. Overall board diversity does not seem to affect bank performance, but it does decrease performance variability during the Eurozone crisis and in countries culturally more open to diversity. Different board and diversity features have a positive impact on bank performance (size, tenure, and employee representation); the relationship is non-linear, with the effect of diversity being more relevant when there is a significant proportion of minority representatives. While substantial board internationalisation has a negative impact on bank performance, the presence of foreign directors appears to be less detrimental during the Eurozone crisis and in countries that are more welcoming towards diversity

On forecasting daily stock volatility: the role of intraday information and market conditions

Several recent studies advocate the use of nonparametric estimators of daily price vari- ability that exploit intraday information. This paper compares four such estimators, realised volatility, realised range, realised power variation and realised bipower variation, by examining their in-sample distributional properties and out-of-sample forecast ranking when the object of interest is the conventional conditional variance. The analysis is based on a 7-year sample of transaction prices for 14 NYSE stocks. The forecast race is conducted in a GARCH framework and relies on several loss functions. The realized range fares relatively well in the in-sample .t analysis, for instance, regarding the extent to which it brings normality in returns. However, overall the realised power variation provides the most accurate 1-day-ahead forecasts. Fore- cast combination of all four intraday measures produces the smallest forecast errors in about half of the sampled stocks. A market conditions analysis reveals that the additional use of intraday data on day t .. 1 to forecast volatility on day t is most advantageous when day t is a low volume or an up-market day. The results have implications for value-at-risk analysis.

The anatomy of sovereign risk contagion

The channels for the cross-border propagation of sovereign risk in the international sovereign debt market are analysed. Identifying sovereign credit events as extraordinary jumps in CDS spreads, we distinguish between the immediate effects of such events and their longer term spillover effects. To analyse “fast and furious” contagion, we use daily CDS data to conduct event studies around a total of 89 identified credit events in a global country sample. To analyse “slow-burn” spillover effects, we apply a multifactor risk model, distinguishing between global and regional risk factors. We find that “fast and furious” contagion has been primarily a regional phenomenon, whilst “slow-burn” spillover effects can often be global in scope, especially those of the recent European debt crisis. The global risk factors are found to be driven by investor risk appetites and debt levels, whilst the regional factors depend on economic fundamentals of countries within a region

The role of correlation dynamics in sector allocation

This paper assesses the economic value of modeling conditional correlations for mean–variance portfolio optimization. Using sector returns in three major markets we show that the predictability of models describing empirical regularities in correlations such as time-variation, asymmetry and structural breaks leads to significant performance gains over the static covariance strategy. Investors would be willing to pay a fee of up to 983 basis points to switch from the static to the dynamic correlation portfolio and about 100 basis points more for capturing asymmetries and shifts in correlations. The gains are robust to the crisis, transaction costs and are most pronounced for monthly rebalancing

Dependence in Credit Default Swap and Equity Markets: Dynamic Copula with Markov Switching

Theoretical credit risk models à la Merton (1974) predict a non-linear negative link between the default likelihood and asset value of a firm. This motivates us to propose a flexible empirical Markov-switching bivariate copula that allows for distinct time-varying dependence between credit default swap (CDS) spreads and equity prices in “crisis” and “tranquil” periods. The model identifies high-dependence regimes that coincide with the recent credit crunch and the European sovereign debt crises, and is supported by in-sample goodness-of-fit criteria relative to nested copula models that impose within-regime constant dependence or no regime-switching. Value-at-Risk forecasts that aim to set day-ahead trading limits for the hedging of CDS-equity portfolios reveal the economic relevance of the model from the viewpoints of both regulatory and asymmetric piecewise linear loss functions

Return and Volatility Spillover among Banks and Insurers: Evidence from Pre-Crisis and Crisis Periods

We investigate the return and volatility interdependencies among the US, the UK, the EU, and Japanese banks and insurers during the period of 2003 to 2009. We find strong return and volatility transmissions within and across banking and insurance industries, strengthened contagious spillover effects during the crisis of 2007 to 2009, and a leading role played by the US financial institutions as information providers in global markets. Furthermore, we find that firm characteristics such as size and leverage drive the interdependencies among major banking firms. Our findings have important implications for effective hedging and diversification strategies, asset pricing and risk management, and the formulation of regulatory and monetary policies

ECB policy and Eurozone fragility: Was De Grauwe right?

Paul De Grauwe's Eurozone fragility hypothesis states that sovereign debt markets in a monetary union without a lender-of-last-resort are vulnerable to self-fulfilling dynamics fuelled by pessimistic investor sentiment that can trigger default. We test this contention by applying an eclectic methodology to a two-year window around Mario Draghi's “whatever-it-takes” pledge that can be understood as the implicit announcement of the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) program. A principal components analysis reveals that the perceived commonality in default risk among peripheral and core Eurozone sovereigns increased after the announcement. An event study reveals significant pre-announcement news transmission from Spain to Italy, France, Belgium and Austria that clearly dissipates post-announcement. Country-specific regressions of CDS spreads on systematic risk factors reveal frequent days of large adverse shocks affecting simultaneously those five Eurozone countries, but only during the pre-announcement period. Altogether these findings support the fragility hypothesis and endorse the OMT program

Modeling and forecasting international credit risk : the case of sovereign loans

This thesis investigates the relative merits of econometric modeling, statistical and judgmental techniques for predicting debt crises and assessing the risk of credit migration. The increased reliance on econometric or statistical approaches and credit rating systems in risk management has intensified the need for more rigorous analysis of their finite sample properties. A better understanding of the available tools has implications for credit risk management, regulation and policy decision-making. The thesis contributes to the extant sovereign risk literature in three areas. First, it addresses the question of whether controlling for unobserved heterogeneity is important for predicting debt crises and explores a pervasive inference problem in Early Warning Systems (EWSs). Second, it addresses the development of an `optimal' EWS for sovereign debt crises that accommodates the decision maker's preferences. Third, it considers the measurement of sovereign credit migration matrices using different estimators and explores non Markov effects in the rating dynamics. Chapter 2 confronts competing models of sovereign default that differ in how country-, region- and time-specific effects are treated. Statistical tests and information criteria overwhelmingly favour more complex models with country heterogeneity that possibly changes over time. However, simplicity beats complexity in terms of forecasting. Simple pooled logit parameterization, that control either for regional heterogeneity or for time effects produce the most accurate forecasts and outperform several naive predictors. Chapter 3 investigates the severity of the autocorrelation problem in EWS of sovereign default. This stems from seeking to provide crisis warnings over a horizon that is longer than the frequency at which the forecasts are updated and from the sluggishness of the typical exogenous indicators. Neglecting residual serial autocorrelation in such models is shown to be far from innocuous. Inferences are overturned when using a correction. This phenomenon is generally clearer for the macroeconomic ratios that are more persistent. Chapter 4 combines three fundamentally different classification techniques - econometric, statistical and judgmental- to produce an EWS for sovereign default. The optimal choice of crucial EWS elements is shown to depend on the decision-makers' preferences. The forecast ranking of classifiers is found to be unstable and overall the classifiers appear to have different strengths. Payoffs from forecast combination are documented and the combining scheme is shown to depend on the decision-makers' loss function. Chapter 5 turns to the estimation of sovereign transition probability matrices and evaluates the popular discrete multinomial estimator against two continuous hazard rate methods that differ in their treatment of time-heterogeneity. Bootstrap simulations of the rating generating process reveal interesting insights. Hazard rate estimators yield more reliable default probabilities. Efficiency is further enhanced upon relaxing homogeneity. Downgrade momentum and duration effects are found to be present in the rating process

Banks’ equity performance and the term structure of interest rates

Using an extensive global sample, this paper investigates the impact of the term structure of interest rates on bank equity returns. Decomposing the yield curve to its three constituents (level, slope and curvature), the paper evaluates the time-varying sensitivity of the bank’s equity returns to these constituents by using a diagonal dynamic conditional correlation multivariate GARCH framework. Evidence reveals that the empirical proxies for the three factors explain the variations in equity returns above and beyond the market-wide effect. More specifically, shocks to the long-term (level) and short-term (slope) factors have a statistically significant impact on equity returns, while those on the medium-term (curvature) factor are less clear-cut. Bank size plays an important role in the sense that exposures are higher for SIFIs and large banks compared to medium and small banks. Moreover, banks exhibit greater sensitivities to all risk factors during the crisis and postcrisis periods compared to the pre-crisis period; though these sensitivities do not differ for market-oriented and bank-oriented financial systems

How did the ECB save the Eurozone without spending a single euro?

Recent debt crises have brought the fragility of the Eurozone into focus. It has been argued that members are vulnerable to sudden changes in market sentiment. This column examines how debt markets reacted to an ECB announcement that it would serve as a lender of last resort, finding that recent debt crises have strong self-fulfilling dynamics