Spill Over Effects of Futures Contracts Initiation on the Cash Market: A Comparative Analysis

This paper investigates possible spill over effects on the Spot Market due to the initiation of Futures contracts in three different financial markets. According to many analysts there still exists a puzzle regarding the stabilization or destabilization effects of futures contracts. Although the speculative forces (uninformed investors) tend to destabilize the market, rational hedging strategies and the transition of risk allow for stabilization shift. In order to investigate this issue, many researchers during the last decade, have utilized the GARCH framework enriched to capture many stylized financial features, such as the asymmetric response to news and leptokurtosis. However, in this paper the GARCH framework is extended to allow for skewness in the distribution of returns and to examine the timing of possible structural changes, while the conditional mean of the process is adjusted to account for time-varying risk premia and for the day of the week effects decomposition. Furthermore, the distinguishing feature of this paper is the SWARCH econometric model, which enables a dynamic regime shifting through a Markov Chain transition matrix. According to the empirical findings for the UK, Spanish and Greek Capital markets, there exist a significant stabilization effect either in the long run or in the short run, which is negatively associated with the level of efficiency and completeness of these capital markets.Index Futures Contracts, AP-GARCH-M, SWARCH-L

Informational efficiency and spurious spillover effects between spot and derivatives markets

Derivatives markets produce the means for price discovery as leading indicators in the transmission of new information. Examining volatility spillovers between spot and derivatives markets without accounting for possible disequilibria in the long term relationship could potentially result in spurious spillover effects. Our paper aims to contribute in this literature by controlling for possible disturbances in the long-run equilibrium relationship between the two markets. By application of a regime shift approach we provide evidence of a time varying spillover effect from derivatives to spot markets. However, this effect is inconclusive in the absence of a significant (1 − 1) cointegration relationship

The role of net stable funding ratio on the bank lending channel: evidence from European Union

This paper is motivated by the ongoing debate about the Basel III impact on the efficient functioning of the banking sector. We empirically examine the effect that the implementation of the net stable funding ratio has on real economy. Using data from the EU banking sector, we conduct a retrospective analysis by simulating and investigating historically the NSFR index and its role in the implementation of a common monetary policy. We intervene on the traditional bank lending channel of Bernanke and Blinder (Am Econ Rev 82:901–921, 1992) by incorporating the interaction term between liquidity and interest rates. The analysis is conducted both at an aggregated loan supply level and by loan category while it incorporates, additionally to the interaction term, conventional asset pricing approaches with the adoption of self-financing trading strategies detecting nonlinearities in the relationship between liquidity provisions and bank lending channel. According to our findings, there is evidence of a heterogeneous response of financial intermediaries’ loan supply (due to changes of interest rates) across different NSFR levels. Banks with higher NSFR respond positively to an interest rate increase, by restructuring their loans’ portfolios to achieve higher risk-adjusted returns, conditional on the presence of an efficient asset allocation. On the contrary, low NSFR banks reduce loan supply as a response to higher interest rates

Is stock liquidity transferred and upgraded in acquisitions? Evidence from liquidity synergies in US freeze-outs

This paper investigates the value successful bidders generate from acquiring less liquid targets. This synergy is traced with both theoretical and empirical evidence from the squeeze-out stage of going private transactions, when bidders hold sizeable toeholds in target shares. By transferring their superior liquidity, acquirers can add value to the valuation of their toeholds in fully acquired target assets. We use a sample of US delisted targets from globally listed acquirers over 25 years, and, in line with our theoretical analysis, a nonlinear relation is evidenced between the expected added value from liquidity transfer and illiquidity differences. The adjustment of target market prices for the attached option to participate in the bid in a new stochastic volatility framework reveals that the bulk of deal-generated wealth depends on the offered option. Although the market penalizes the mean acquirer with negative abnormal returns, those with higher liquidity differences from their targets are suffering less because of their greater potential of liquidity transfer synergy. The analysis of the probability that the offered option gets in the money reveals that liquidity transfer acts as a catalyst for successfully concluding the deal and underlies underbidding

Volatility co-movements and spillover effects within the Eurozone economies: A multivariate GARCH approach using the financial stress index

The Eurozone crisis is one the most important economic event in recent years. At its peak, the effects of the crisis have put at serious risk the outcome of the euro project, exposing the inherent weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the monetary union. As the degree of economic and financial integration of these countries is significant, we aim to investigate in details the potential cross-covariance and spillover effects between the Eurozone economies and financial markets. In order to do this, we employ financial stress indexes, as systemic risk metrics in a multivariate GARCH model. This method is able to capture markets’ dependencies and volatility spillovers and is employed on a single market level as well as on the full spectrum of Eurozone markets. The empirical results have shown the important and intensive stress transmission on banking and money markets. Moreover, the role of peripheral countries as stress transmitter is verified, but only for particular periods. The significant spillover effects from core countries are also evident, indicating their important role in the Euro Area and its overall financial stability. The “decoupling” hypothesis is empirically verified, underling the gradually decreasing intensity of spillovers between Euro Area countries. Overall, this paper exhibits the complex structure of spillover effects for Eurozone, along with a clustering effect in the most recent times

The informational content of unconventional monetary policy on precious metal markets

This paper investigates the informational content of unconventional monetary policies and its effect on commodity markets, adopting a nonlinear approach for modeling volatility. The main question addressed is how the Bank of England, Bank of Japan, and European Central Bank's (ECB's) announcements concerning monetary easing affect two major commodities: gold and silver. Our empirical evidence based on daily and high-frequency data suggests that relevant information causes ambiguous valuation adjustments as well as stabilization or destabilization effects. Specifically, there is strong evidence that the Japanese Central Bank strengthens the precious metal markets by increasing their returns and by causing stabilization effects, in contrast to the ECB, which has opposite results, mainly due to the heterogeneous expectations of investors within these markets. These asymmetries across central banks' effects on gold and silver risk–return profile imply that the ECB unconventional monetary easing informational content opposes its stated mission, adding uncertainty in precious metals markets

Spill Over Effects of Futures Contracts Initiation on the Cash Market: A Comparative Analysis

This paper investigates possible spill over effects on the Spot Market due to the initiation of Futures contracts in three different financial markets. According to many analysts there still exists a puzzle regarding the stabilization or destabilization effects of futures contracts. Although the speculative forces (uninformed investors) tend to destabilize the market, rational hedging strategies and the transition of risk allow for stabilization shift. In order to investigate this issue, many researchers during the last decade, have utilized the GARCH framework enriched to capture many stylized financial features, such as the asymmetric response to news and leptokurtosis. However, in this paper the GARCH framework is extended to allow for skewness in the distribution of returns and to examine the timing of possible structural changes, while the conditional mean of the process is adjusted to account for time-varying risk premia and for the day of the week effects decomposition. Furthermore, the distinguishing feature of this paper is the SWARCH econometric model, which enables a dynamic regime shifting through a Markov Chain transition matrix. According to the empirical findings for the UK, Spanish and Greek Capital markets, there exist a significant stabilization effect either in the long run or in the short run, which is negatively associated with the level of efficiency and completeness of these capital markets

An investigation of systemic stress and interdependencies within the Eurozone and Euro area countries

One of themost challenging issues that economists are dealingwith is the investigation of the financial turmoil in Eurozone economies. Particularly, the issue of exposing the potential crisis transmission channels has attracted considerable interest. Aiming to contribute to this literature, we construct financial stress indices on a country level and explore further the potential inter-reactions between the root causes of systemic risk. The countryspecific index consists of a wide number of series drawn from the money, equity and bond markets, as well as from the banking sector of each Eurozone country. A Euro Area stress index is also provided, exploring the evolution of financial conditions for this group of countries. The investigation of the potential transmission channels is implemented through a multivariate analysis and the corresponding impulse responses' dynamics. The empirical findings suggest that countries aremostly responsive to their own financial shocks, while a degree of regionalism is also evident. That is, the peripheral countries are more susceptible to their financial stress,while the same holds for the core Eurozone countries. Additionally, in contrast to common wisdom, financial conditions in Greece and Portugal do not seem to affect the rest of the Euro Area, at least in the degree that Italy and Ireland do. These results are consistent under alternative model and sample specifications