Banking Operational Cost in the Balkan Region under a Quadratic Loss Function

This paper presents of theoretical specification of a quadratic loss function based on forward looking rational expectations to model the underlying dynamics of operational performance of the banking industry. As an empirical application we examine the determinants of total operating costs within a dynamic panel analysis in the Balkan region that is the South East Europe (SEE) over the period 1998-2005. Results show that operating performance is positively related to loan quality and the asset size or the bank’s market share, whilst the speed of adjustment to the long run operational cost is substantial in magnitude.Forward looking rational expectations, banking operating costs.

An Analysis of the Impact of Public Infrastructure on Productivity Performance of Mexican Industry

It has been frequently quoted in the literature that one decisive cause of the productive performance of an economy might be infrastructure investment. This paper provides a dual profit theoretical framework of measuring the effects of infrastructure on economic performance in terms of gains in profits, cost savings, as well as in terms of productivity growth enhancement. In an empirical application, we opt for Mexican industry data. The results show that returns to infrastructure capital are significant and positive, though some variability across time exists. Moreover, the decomposition of total factor productivity growth reveals that the economic performance could be enhanced by investing in infrastructure capital.profit function, productivity growth, public infrastructure, Mexican manufacturing

Towards a common EU policy on income distribution: the case of social benefit expenditures

The observed "soft" coordination at European and national level has hindered progress in terms of raising social welfare and reducing the risk of poverty in EU. This is a source of concern given that the fruits of economic efficiency should be shared by the individuals and Member States of EU in an equitable manner. Raising social welfare would assist the process of building up the necessary social consensus in favour of structural reforms in product and capital markets, which in turn would further enhance economic efficiency. This paper focuses on a key indicator of social policy in national agendas which is the social expenditure as a percent of the GDP so as to assess whether there is convergence in social policy across European countries. The empirical analysis utilises information from 18 European countries over the period 1990-2004 and appropriate methodological tools of absolute ó-convergence and analysis of distribution dynamics

What are the driving factors behind the rise of spreads and CDSs of Euro-area sovereign bonds? A FAVAR model for Greece and Ireland

This paper examines the underlying dynamics of selected euro-area sovereign bonds by employing a factor-augmenting vector autoregressive (FAVAR) model for the first time in the literature. This methodology allows for identifying the underlying transmission mechanisms of several factors; in particular, market liquidity and credit risk. Departing from the classical structural vector autoregressive (VAR) models, it allows us to relax limitations regarding the choice of variables that could drive spreads and credit default swaps (CDSs) of euro-area sovereign debts. The results show that liquidity, credit risk, and flight to quality drive both spreads and CDSs of five years’ maturity over swaps for Greece and Ireland in recent years. Greece, in particular, is facing an elastic demand for its sovereign bonds that further stretches liquidity. Moreover, in current illiquid market conditions spreads will continue to follow a steep upward trend, with certain adverse financial stability implications. In addition, we observe a negative feedback effect from counterparty credit risk

Towards a Common EU Policy on Income Distribution: the case of Social Benefit Expenditures

The observed “soft†coordination at European and national level has hindered progress in terms of raising social welfare and reducing the risk of poverty in EU. This is a source of concern given that the fruits of economic efficiency should be shared by the individuals and Member States of EU in an equitable manner. Raising social welfare would assist the process of building up the necessary social consensus in favour of structural reforms in product and capital markets, which in turn would further enhance economic efficiency. This paper focuses on a key indicator of social policy in national agendas which is the social expenditure as a percent of the GDP so as to assess whether there is convergence in social policy across European countries. The empirical analysis utilises information from 18 European countries over the period 1990-2004 and appropriate methodological tools of absolute ó-convergence and analysis of distribution dynamics.

Labour Market Dynamics in Greek Regions: a Bayesian Markov Chain Approach Using Proportions Data

This paper focuses on Greek labour market dynamics at a regional base, which comprises of 16 provinces, as defined by NUTS levels 1 and 2 (Eurostat, 2008), using Markov Chains for proportions data for the first time in the literature. We apply a Bayesian approach, which employs a Monte Carlo Integration procedure that uncovers the entire empirical posterior distribution of transition probabilities from full employment to part employment, unemployment and economically unregistered unemployment and vice a versa. Our results show that there are disparities in the transition probabilities across regions, implying that the convergence of the Greek labour market at a regional base is far from being considered as completed. However, some common patterns are observed as regions in the south of the country exhibit similar transition probabilities between different states of the labour marketGreek Regions, Employment, Unemployment, Markov Chains

Operating performance of the banking industry: an empirical investigation of the south eastern European region

This paper examines the operating performance of the South Eastern European(SEE) banking industry over the period 1998-2003. To this end, we investigate the empirical relationship between operating expenses and bank, market and country specific characteristics. Operating performance is found to be positively related to loan quality and the asset size or the bank’s market share, and negatively related to liquidity, the loan ratio and bank’s age

Decomposing total factor productivity while treating for misspecification

Decomposing firm performance has been challenging for some time. Yet the importance of accurately measuring performance is unequivocal. We propose a flexible functional of total factor productivity (TFP) that measures firm performance and treats misspecification. We argue that measuring bank productivity at global level, which is provided by our model based on bank micro-foundations, is better suited than other measures. Our results suggest that there is not much convergence in TFP across the world, though the technology has positively contributed to bank TFP growth. However, nonperforming loans have had the opposite effect. Furthermore, we show that bank risk-taking and raising capital by equity are negatively related to TFP growth; instead, liquidity has a positive impact

Revisiting the returns of public infrastructure in Mexico: A limited information local likelihood estimation

This paper revisits the issue of accurately decomposing productivity growth to the impact of public infrastructure at firm level for Mexican industry whether the underlying functional form is a profit or a cost function. Our framework decomposes productivity growth into different components, and in particular the contribution of public infrastructure. We also propose a novel limited information local likelihood (LILL) estimation method that adequately deals with the issue of the endogeneity and model misspecification. The reported evidence shows that public infrastructure enhances productivity growth through profit gains and cost savings in all ten two-digit Mexican industries, though some variability across time exists, notably in the nineties and the 2000s when a shortage of infrastructure is observed

Testing for persistence in US mutual funds’ performance: a Bayesian dynamic panel model

We provide a Bayesian panel model to consider persistence in US funds’ performance while we tackle the important problem of errors in variables. Our modelling departs from prior strong assumptions such as error terms across funds being independent. In fact, we provide a novel, general Bayesian model for (dynamic) panel data that is stable across different priors as reported from the mapping of the prior to the posterior of the Bayesian baseline model with the adoption of different priors. We demonstrate that our model detects previously undocumented striking variability in terms of performance and persistence across funds categories and over time, and in particular through the financial crisis. The reported stochastic volatility exhibits a rising trend as early as 2003-2004 and could act as an early warning of future crisis