Systemic implications of the bail-in design

The 2007-2008 financial crisis forced governments to choose between the unattractive alternatives of either bailing out a systemically important bank (SIB) or allowing it to fail disruptively. Bail-in has been put forward as an alternative that potentially addresses the too-big-to-fail and contagion risk problems simultaneously. Though its efficacy has been demonstrated for smaller idiosyncratic SIB failures, its ability to maintain stability in cases of large SIB failures and system-wide crises remains untested. This paper’s novelty is to assess the financial-stability implications of bail-in design, explicitly accounting for the multilayered networked nature of the financial system. We present a model of the European financial system that captures all five of the prevailing contagion channels. We demonstrate that it is essential to understand the interaction of multiple contagion mechanisms and that financial institutions other than banks play an important role. Our results indicate that stability hinges on the bank-specific and structural bail-in design. On one hand, a welldesigned bail-in buttresses financial resilience, but on the other hand, an ill-designed bail-in tends to exacerbate financial distress, especially in system-wide crises and when there are large SIB failures. Our analysis suggests that the current bail-in design may be in the region of instability. While policy makers can fix this, the political economy incentives make this unlikely

Corporate legacy debt, inflation, and the efficacy of monetary policy

The COVID-19 pandemic has coincided with a rapid increase in indebtedness. Although the rise in public debt and its policy implications have received much attention recently, the rise in corporate debt has received less so. We argue that high levels of corporate debt may impede the transmission mechanism of monetary policy and make it less effective in controlling inflation. In an environment with working capital financing requirements, when firms’ indebtedness is sufficiently high, the income effect of higher nominal interest rates offsets or even dominates its usual negative substitution effect on aggregate demand and is quantitatively important. This mechanism is independent of standard financial and nominal frictions and enhances the trade-off between inflation and output stabilisation

EU children in Brexit Britain: re‐negotiating belonging in nationalist times

© 2019 The Authors. International Migration © 2019 IOM This article contributes to debates on identification, home and belonging by focusing on EU children in Brexit times. The article combines attention to the emotional and affective side of integration with a focus on the effects of the discursive practices of the state on these processes. The article explores how Italian children and their parents navigate the increasingly neo-assimilationist pressures in Britain. Specifically, it looks at children's ways of accommodating their parents’ values of mobility, multilingualism and transnationalism with the revived nationalist logic now dominant. The article argues for renewed scrutiny into the role of public discourses on migrants’ experiences, which illuminate the redrawing of the boundaries between inclusion and exclusion at moments of crisis

A new perspective on the ripple effect in the UK housing market: Comovement, cyclical subsamples and alternative indices

An alternative perspective is provided on the existence of a ripple effect in the UK housing market. In contrast to previous studies, the analysis involves consideration of information on the changes in house prices to which the hypothesis of house price diffusion posited by the ripple effect relates, rather than their levels. In an examination of changes in house prices in London relative to other regions of the UK, directional forecasting methods are employed to establish the extent of the relationship between geographical proximity and comovement across the three month window provided by quarterly data. Consequently, the analysis provides a direct examination of the ripple effect which refers to changes in prices rather than the convergence of levels which has become a feature of the empirical literature. The literature is extended further by both the application of dating techniques to perform the analysis across cycles and phases of cycles (recovery and recessionary periods) in the UK housing market, and the use of data from two alternative house price index providers. Striking results in support of the presence of a ripple effect are noted, particularly for the less commonly considered Halifax price index where the most significant results for comovement with London are exhibited by its contiguous regions. In addition, the cyclical subsamples considered indicate comovement to be greater during upturns, rather than downturns in the market. This is consistent with previous research showing London to correct – that is, exhibit differing behaviour to other regions – during downturns

Price adjustment in the London housing market

Recent research into the dynamic adjustment of prices within the London housing market is extended via the application of a novel two-step procedure. Combining the non-parametric analysis of the ranking distributions of the levels and changes in house prices with the application of a cross-sectional convergence technique, the analysis results in the detection of a three-tier system in which highly significant convergence clubs are identified within borough-level data. These findings contrast with both the divergence apparent when considering all boroughs and the failure of previous research to identify convergent groupings. The novelty of the empirical methods is supplemented by a discussion of various theoretical factors such as gentrification, displaced demand, immigration, foreign investment and criminal activity in relation to the findings obtained

Suburban ethnicities: Home as the site of interethnic conviviality and racism

This is the final version. Available on open access from Wiley via the DOI in this recordThis article explores the ways in which the white working class residents of a suburban English town reflect on their relationships with their British Asian Pakistani Muslim neighbours. Its focus is on how everyday constructions of home become sites for the intermingling of discourses of intercultural conviviality and racism. My contention is that the idea of home has not yet been given the detailed critical attention that it deserves in the sociological literature on everyday manifestations of multiculturalism, conviviality and racism. My supposition is that a special focus on the idea of home as the site of conviviality offers a productive avenue to analyse how intercultural relationships are formed and how the norms of neighbourliness are thought to break down, opening a space for commonplace racialized and racist stereotypes to take hold. The idea of home is central to the rhythm and landscape of the English suburbs. It conjures-up the idea of a uniform and aspirational white space. Drawing on this imaginary of home, I shall trace how ‘white working class’ ‘English’, ‘Scottish’ and ‘Anglo-Italian’ residents’ everyday constructions of home become embroiled with their relationships with their British Asian Pakistani Muslim neighbours.Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC

Of Gold and Paper Money

We consider the role of money as a means of payment, store of value and medium of exchange. I outline a number of quantitative and qualitative experiences of monetary management. Successful regimes have sprung up in a variety of surprising places, and been sustained with state (centralised) interventions. Although the link between state and money, and its standard of identity and account may be clear, particularly in earlier stages of economic development, the extent to which the state is widely felt to hold responsibility for 'sound money' is less clear in modern democracies, where there are many other public responsibilities implying ongoing trade-offs

Consumer credit information systems: A critical review of the literature. Too little attention paid by lawyers?

This paper reviews the existing literature on consumer credit reporting, the most extensively used instrument to overcome information asymmetry and adverse selection problems in credit markets. Despite the copious literature in economics and some research in regulatory policy, the legal community has paid almost no attention to the legal framework of consumer credit information systems, especially within the context of the European Union. Studies on the topic, however, seem particularly relevant in view of the establishment of a single market for consumer credit. This article ultimately calls for further legal research to address consumer protection concerns and inform future legislation

Sand in the wheels, or oiling the wheels, of international finance? : New Labour's appeal to a 'new Bretton Woods'

Tony Blair’s political instinct typically is to associate himself only with the future. As such, his explicit appeal to ‘the past’ in his references to New Labour’s desire to establish a “new Bretton Woods” is sufficient in itself to arouse some degree of analytical curiosity (see Blair 1998a). The fact that this appeal was made specifically in relation to Bretton Woods is even more interesting. The resonant image of the international economic context established by the original Bretton Woods agreements invokes a style and content of policy-making which Tony Blair typically dismisses as neither economically nor politically consistent with his preferred vision of the future (see Blair 2000c, 2001b)