Keep the faith in banking:new evidence for the effects of negative interest rates based on the case of Finnish cooperative banks

Abstract This paper analyses the profitability of Finnish cooperative banks during the period of negative nominal interest rates. Contrary to expectations, the continuous decline in money market interest rates between 2009 and 2014, and the following negative rate era, did not have adverse effects on the profitability of banks at the beginning of negative interest rate period. Based on especially using a risk-adjusted measure for bank profitability, these results contrast with previous findings. In our findings, the increasing wholesale funding (WSF) ratio seems to be an important factor. However, after 2017 the banks have not been able to improve especially their risk-adjusted profitability so strongly anymore, because the WSF and the development of other than net interest margin returns have been in negative connection to it. In addition, the unconventional monetary policy actions seem not to improve profitability in the most recent observations of our data. These results raise serious concerns for the future of bank profitability during the prolonged period of negative interest rates

Personality traits and stock market participation

Abstract We analyze the relationship between personality traits and stock market participation. Our sample comes from combining personality trait scores and socioeconomic status information from the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 with data from Finnish Central Securities Depository, the official register of stock holdings in Finland. We find the traits, and especially the subscales of the traits, to be significant predictors of stock market participation. In particular, exploratory excitability, extravagance, sentimentality, and dependence have large effects. One-standard-deviation changes in the subscale scores have marginal effects of up to 4 percentage points on the probability of participating in the stock market