Spending Policies of Italian Banking Foundations

Italian banking foundations are important institutional investors and not-forprofit institutions in Italy. Foundations finance their activities with the returns they get by investing their endowments on the financial markets. The financial management of foundations has to meet two conflicting aims: maintaining a consistent and sufficient spending level in the short run and preserving the real value of the endowment fund in the long run. During the financial crisis, the tension between these aims has strongly emerged. This paper is about the results of an analysis of the spending decisions of ten main foundations, from 2004 to 2016, based on balance sheet and market value data. We propose an error-component model that allows to evaluate the relative importance of spending stability versus preserving the endowment value. Our estimates reveal that, on average, foundations followed stable spending policies across the financial crises, as they did not change their long-term rate of consumption of assets but gradually started to smooth spending over the short term. Because their granting activity sharply declined from 2008 to 2012, the joint effect of these decisions was to persistently reduce spending until 2016. This conservative stance, if carried over beyond the short-term, may violate intergenerational neutrality

Attitudes, personality factors and household debt decisions: A study of consumer credit

A fairly extensive literature from the field of empirical psychology has provided evidence that personality factors and attitudes toward credit may influence individuals' debt financing decisions. This paper investigates the importance of these factors by analysing the results of an original survey about the recourse to consumer credit, conducted on a wide sample of Italian households. Three main research questions are addressed. Is there any relationship between personality, attitude and recourse to consumer credit? Are there any differences in psychological profiles of credit users and non-users that can be associated with the motivations for using consumer credit? Does the psychological profile affect the preferred way of financing consumption? According to our analyses, the influence of psychological factors on consumer credit decisions cannot be rejected. Attitudes toward debt appear to play an important role and are significantly related to motivations for using credit and to the preferred form of financing. Personality factors do not emerge as having a clearcut effect on the decision to taking on debt. While this is in line with some previous research findings, when personality's features make a difference this is in the opposite direction of what is commonly found, as more fatalistic individuals are less likely to use consumer credit

Is public information really public? The role of newspapers.

Our paper offers evidence that printed media can affect stock prices by covering public news (nonevents) even without resorting to spin or emphasis. However, the price reaction is limited to small caps, suggesting that small investors still obtain public information mainly through newspapers. The absence of spin or emphasis is the core element that differentiates our study from existing evidence, making it unique, to the best of our knowledge, in the financial literature on the media and asset pricing

The Forecasting Performance of Dynamic Factor Models with Vintage Data

We present a comparative analysis of the forecasting performance of two dynamic factor models, the Stock and Watson (2002a, b) model and the Forni, Hallin, Lippi and Reichlin (2005) model, based on vintage data. Our dataset that contains 107 monthly US “first release” macroeconomic and financial vintage time series, spanning the 1996:12 to 2017:6 period with monthly periodicity, extracted from the Bloomberg database† . We compute real-time one-month-ahead forecasts with both models for four key macroeconomic variables: the month-on-month change in industrial production, the unemployment rate, the core consumer price index and the ISM Purchasing Managers’ Index. First, we find that both the Stock and Watson and the Forni, Hallin, Lippi and Reichlin models outperform simple autoregressions for industrial production, unemployment rate and consumer prices, but that only the first model does so for the PMI. Second, we find that neither models always outperform the other. While Forni, Hallin, Lippi and Reichlin’s beats Stock and Watson’s in forecasting industrial production and consumer prices, the opposite happens for the unemployment rate and the PMI

State Ownership, Legal Institution, and Independent Director Compensation: An Exploratory Study in China

This study examines the determinants of independent director compensation in China, with particular interest in the impact of state ownership and legal institutions. Controlling for the characteristics of directors, boards, and firms, we find independent director compensation is positively related to attributes of a director’s human and social capital such as education, effort, professional expertise, and connections (guanxi). We show that independent director pay is determined differently across ownership structures. Independent directors are paid less in companies owned by local government units, and independent directors in such companies are paid less in a region with more greatly developed legal institutions. This study contributes to the limited literature on independent director compensation by extending beyond the market economies to explore the determinants of independent director compensation in a transitional economy such as China. It also adds to the literature on legal institutions by examining the impact of legal development on compensation. Finally, this study informs the public of the current compensation practice, which will facilitate future policy making

Platforms' partner networks: the missing link in crowdfunding performance

Purpose: A network of partners helps and assists a crowdfunding platform (CFP) in scouting, assessing and selecting projects. This cooperation increases the number of successful projects by attracting a sizable number of investors, proponents and attracting marginal investors when a campaign falls short of the threshold for success. This study examines the role of partner networks in a platform ecosystem, specifically in terms of number of different partners and their diversity in the performance of the crowdfunding campaign. Design/methodology/approach: Using logistic and linear regressions, we analyze a sample of 233 projects, both funded and not funded, launched by 10 Italian equity CFPs between 2014 and 2018. Findings: Our findings indicate that the variety of partners in a platform's network influence the probability of campaign success and how much capital the proponent company raises. CFPs are resource-constrained new ventures, and a network with a wider variety of partners ensures the strategic resources and competencies that are required in an early stage market, thus facilitating campaign funding. Practical implications: The variety of partner networks could help CFPs to offer unique and strategic value propositions and define the competitive positioning of platforms. Originality/value: This study provides a deeper understanding of the determinants of equity crowdfunding campaign performance by emphasizing the role of CFP's network of partners on the entire crowdfunding ecosystem and its underlying organizational elements

Rischio di insolvenza e congiuntura economia nell'industria della provincia di Modena

Il contributo si pone all\u2019interno del filone di ricerca relativo alla capacit\ue0 predittiva dei modelli di rating, al fine di prevenire le crisi aziendali. Dopo aver articolato un\u2019esaustiva rassegna delle ricerche sul tema delle insolvenze aziendali in Italia, \ue8 stato presentato un modello di rating originale, sviluppato per valutare il rischio di insolvenza e la probabilit\ue0 di default nel caso di imprese industriali. Alla base della procedura di valutazione vi \ue8 un ampio campione originale di societ\ue0 di capitali italiane, la cui rilevazione ha coperto il quinquennio 2003-2007. Il modello utilizzato, di tipo Logit, ha impiegato tre tipi di variabili per stimare il fenomeno delle insolvenze: indici di bilancio, caratteristiche anagrafiche (dimensione, localizzazone, et\ue0), la congiuntura economica nazionale. Dal confronto con altri modelli e con la letteratura affermatasi, le capacit\ue0 predittive e interpretative del modello si sono collocate su livelli eccellenti