Financial Markets, Institutions & Instruments

Publisher:: Wiley
Publication date:: 2021-02-01

ISBN:: 0963-8008

Issue Number

Latest documents

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A skeptical appraisal of the bootstrap approach in fund performance evaluation
It has become standard practice in the fund performance evaluation literature to use the bootstrap approach to distinguish “skills” from “luck”, while its reliability has not been subject to rigorous statistical analysis. This paper reviews and critiques the bootstrap schemes used in the literature, and provides a simulation analysis of the validity and reliability of the bootstrap approach by applying it to evaluating the performance of hypothetical funds under various assumptions. We argue that this approach can be misleading, regardless of using alpha estimates or their t‐statistics. While alternative bootstrap schemes can result in improvements, they are not foolproof either. The case can be worse if the benchmark model is misspecified. It is therefore only with caution that we can use the bootstrap approach to evaluate the performance of funds and we offer some suggestions for improving it.
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The interplay between quantitative easing, risk and competition: The case of Japanese banking
The Japanese economy is infamous for the magnitude of bank nonperforming loans that have originated back in the 1990s, whereas they are still causing controversies. Japan is also known for an extended quantitative easing programme of unprecedented scale. Yet the links between risk‐taking activities, quantitative easing and bank competition are largely unexplored. This paper employs, for the first time, the Boone indicator to measure bank competition in Japan to examine these underlying linkages. Given the scale of nonperforming loans, we explicitly measure bank risk‐taking based on a new data set of bankrupt and restructured loans. The dynamic panel threshold and panel Vector Autoregression analyses show that enhancing quantitative easing and competition would reduce bankrupt and restructured loans, but it would negatively affect financial stability. Given the recent adoption of negative rates in January 2016 by the Bank of Japan, our study provides new insights as clearly there is a trade‐off between quantitative easing and financial stability beyond a certain threshold. Caution, therefore, regarding further scaling up quantitative easing is warranted.
The rise of China's securitization market
We study the development of asset securitization markets in China. We manually collect all asset securitization projects and securities data from 2005 to 2015. Inspection of this sample combined with related policy changes reveals distinct characteristics and some potential problems. At the macro level, asset securitization market in China is policy driven, regulation‐segmented, and highly illiquid. At the micro level, the underlying assets are mainly corporate loans or assets, rather than mortgage or consumption loans as in the US and European markets. State owned commercial banks and enterprises enjoy significantly lower interest rates when issuing securitization bonds. Finally, risk‐isolation and credit enhancing techniques significantly improve the rating of asset‐backed securities.
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Do multinational banks create or destroy shareholder value? A cross‐country analysis
We question whether the international diversification of multinational banks creates or destroys shareholder value. Based on a sample of 384 listed banks from 56 countries we provide new and robust evidence that bank cross‐border activities create shareholder value, as shown by an economically and statistically significant premium for international diversification. Our results are confirmed controlling for bank fixed effects, time‐varying bank characteristics, reverse causality, functional diversification, and instrumenting for the choice to expand abroad. The increase in shareholder value is slightly larger for banks in the middle range of international diversification and in the case of expansion towards less developed countries.
Does political pressure matter in bank lending? Evidence from China
Using provincial data from China between 2002 and 2011, we find substantial evidence indicating a positive association between the growth of bank loans issued by commercial banks and the political pressures faced by provincial leaders. This association is particularly true for state‐owned banks, which are much more politically pressurized than others, but is relatively attenuated in provinces with a more developed banking sector. We also find that bank loans issued under greater political pressures are less commercially oriented and have lower quality. Our findings are robust to a variety of sensitivity analyses and alternative measures of political pressure. Overall, our study contribute to a growing literature emphasizing the role of the political incentives of government officials in fuelling economic growth through credit allocation.
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Too big to fail: Measures, remedies, and consequences for efficiency and stability*
This paper evaluates whether reform efforts addressing “too big to fail” actually enhance the stability of the financial system, and whether trade‐offs exist between stability and efficiency. We also present and discuss various measures of bank size and complexity since such measures are essential for implementing appropriate corrective remedies. As we will show, there are no unambiguous measures of size or complexity that can fully capture a bank's contribution to systemic risk. Their effects on efficiency are also impossible to capture with certainty. While we recognize the need for additional research and empirical evidence, we do identify weaknesses and strengths of proposed and implemented reforms that could have consequences for bank stability and efficiency.