Search

We model the term structure of interest rates that results from the interaction between investors with preferences for specific maturities and risk‐averse arbitrageurs. Shocks to the short rate are transmitted to long rates through arbitrageurs' carry trades. Arbitrageurs earn rents from transmitting the shocks through bond risk premia that relate positively to the slope of the term structure. When the short rate is the only risk factor, changes in investor demand have the same relative effect on interest rates across maturities regardless of the maturities where they originate. When investor demand is also stochastic, demand effects become more localized. A calibration indicates that long rates underreact to forward‐guidance announcements about short rates. Large‐scale asset purchases can be more effective in moving long rates, especially if they are concentrated at long maturities.

Das vorliegende Buch beschäftigt sich anhand einer Sammlung von realen Fällen, die in Aufgabenform formuliert sind, mit dem leider oft gestörten Verhältnis von Theorie und Praxis in der rechtsgeprägten Unternehmensbewertung. Es weist ähnlich wie „normale“ Fallsammlungen die jeweiligen Aufgabenstellungen und die zugehörigen Lösungen aus. Die eigentlichen Fragestellungen in den Aufgabentexten sind durch kurze Erläuterungen eingerahmt, damit jeder Fall als solcher von einem mit Bewertungsfragen halbwegs Vertrauten relativ leicht verstanden und in seiner Bedeutung eingeordnet werden kann. Dieses Vorgehen ähnelt wiederum Lehrbüchern, die Inhalte über Fälle vermitteln, nur dass hier nicht hypothetische Fälle das jeweils idealtypisch richtige Vorgehen zeigen, sondern Praxisfälle plakative Verstöße contra legem artis., The book is a collection of cases concerning valuation in legally defined occasions. These cases, mostly taken from real German law suits, are formulated as questions and problems (inclusively a separate solution chapter), each with framing introductions and conclusions. They highlight the regrettably often disturbed relationship between theory and practice in this area of valuation. This procedure resembles to textbooks which use cases to communicate content, but there is a fundamental difference: No hypothetical cases show the right approach, but real cases demonstrate striking violations contra legem artis.

The 14th Annual Meeting of the Sponsoring Group Reinsurance was held 25 June 2021. Due to COVID-19, the event was held in an online format again this year. Some 80 representatives of the (re)insurance companies involved in the Sponsoring Group took part in the meeting, along with guests. Offered for the seventh time as part of the Annual Meeting, the Researchers’ Corner gave the seven academic researchers at the Cologne Research Centre for Reinsurance an opportunity to deliver a presentation on the research project in which each is involved in 2021. Over the course of three sessions, the most important results of the scientific studies by the Cologne Research Centre for Reinsurance were presented and discussed. The heterogeneity of the topics presented reflects the dovetailing of Cologne Research Centre with reinsurance practice.

Am 25. Juni 2021 fand die 14. Jahrestagung des Förderkreises Rückversicherung statt. Durch Covid-19 bedingt fand in diesem Jahr die Veranstaltung wieder im Online-Format statt. Etwa 90 Repräsentanten der in dem Förderkreis mitwirkenden (Rück-) Versicherungsunternehmen und Gäste nahmen daran teil. Im Rahmen der Jahrestagung wurde zum siebten Mal der Researchers‘ Corner durchgeführt, in dessen Verlauf die sieben wissenschaftlichen Forscher*innen der Kölner Forschungsstelle Rückversicherung je einen Vortrag zu dem jeweils bearbeiteten Forschungsprojekt 2021 hielten. In drei Sessions wurden die wichtigsten Ergebnisse der wissenschaftlichen Untersuchungen der Kölner Forschungsstelle Rückversicherung präsentiert und diskutiert. Die Heterogenität der vorgetragenen Themen spiegelt die Verzahnung der Kölner Forschungsstelle mit der Rückversicherungspraxis wider.

We study the design features of disclosure regulations that seek to trigger the green transition of the global economy and ask whether such regulatory interventions are likely to bring about sufficient market discipline to achieve socially optimal climate targets. We categorize the transparency obligations stipulated in green finance regulation as either compelling the standardized disclosure of raw data, or providing quality labels that signal desirable green characteristics of investment products based on a uniform methodology. Both categories of transparency requirements can be imposed at activity, issuer, and portfolio level. Finance theory and empirical evidence suggest that investors may prefer “green” over “dirty” assets for both financial and non-financial reasons and may thus demand higher returns from environmentally-harmful investment opportunities. However, the market discipline that this negative cost of capital effect exerts on “dirty” issuers is potentially attenuated by countervailing investor interests and does not automatically lead to socially optimal outcomes. Mandatory disclosure obligations and their (public) enforcement can play an important role in green finance strategies. They prevent an underproduction of the standardized high-quality information that investors need in order to allocate capital according to their preferences. However, the rationale behind regulatory intervention is not equally strong for all categories and all levels of “green” disclosure obligations. Corporate governance problems and other agency conflicts in intermediated investment chains do not represent a categorical impediment for green finance strategies. However, the many forces that may prevent markets from achieving socially optimal equilibria render disclosure-centered green finance legislation a second best to more direct forms of regulatory intervention like global carbon taxation and emissions trading schemes. Inherently transnational market-based green finance concepts can play a supporting role in sustainable transition, which is particularly important as long as first-best solutions remain politically unavailable.

We present a novel empirical benchmark for analyzing credit risk using “pseudo firms” that purchase traded assets financed with equity and zero-coupon bonds. By no-arbitrage, pseudo bonds are equivalent to Treasuries minus put options on pseudo firm assets. Empirically, like corporate spreads, pseudo bond spreads are large, countercyclical, and predict lower economic growth. Using this framework, we find that bond market illiquidity, investors' overestimation of default risks, and corporate frictions do not seem to explain excessive observed credit spreads but, instead, a risk premium for tail and idiosyncratic asset risks is the primary determinant of corporate spreads. (JEL E23, E32, E44, G13, G24, G32)

We conduct beauty contest experiments, using close to 2,000 subjects to study the facial traits of CEOs. In one experiment we use pairs of photographs and find that subjects rate CEO faces as appearing more "competent" and less "likable" than non-CEO faces. Another experiment matches CEOs from large firms against CEOs from smaller firms and finds large-firm CEOs look more competent and likable. In a third experiment, subjects numerically rate the facial traits of CEOs. We find that executive compensation is linked to these perceived "competence" ratings. Our analysis explores these findings in more detail and shows that the facial-trait rating can be explained by a quantitative scoring of the "maturity" or "baby-facedness" of the CEO. That is, more mature looking CEOs are assigned higher "competence" scores. This finding is potentially worrisome because psychology research shows that baby-faced-looking people often possess qualities opposite to those projected by their facial traits. Accordingly, we find no evidence that the firms of competent looking CEOs perform better. Essentially, the "look" of competence says very little about effective competence.

At the beginning of the past financial crisis sponsoring banks rescued their structured investment vehicles (SIVs) despite of lack of contractual obligation to do so. I show that this outcome may arise as the equilibrium of a signaling game between banks and their debt investors when a negative shock affects the correlated asset returns of a fraction of banks and their sponsored vehicles. The rescue is interpreted as a good signal and reduces the refinancing costs of the sponsoring bank. If banks’ leverage is high or the negative shock is sizable enough, the equilibrium is a pooling one in which all banks rescue. When the aggregate financial sector is close to insolvency, banks’ expected net worth would increase if rescues were banned. The model can be extended to discuss the circumstances in which all banks collapse after rescuing their vehicles.

This article proposes new model checks for dynamic count models. Both portmanteau and omnibus-type tests for lack of residual autocorrelation are considered. The resulting test statistics are asymptotically pivotal when innovations are uncorrelated but possibly exhibit higher order serial dependence. Moreover, the tests are able to detect local alternatives converging to the null at the parametric rate T− 1/2, with T the sample size. The finite sample performance of the test statistics are examined by means of Monte Carlo experiments. Using a dataset on U.S. corporate bankruptcies, the proposed tests are applied to check if different risk models are correctly specified. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

We show that economic conditions when managers enter the labor market have long-run effects on their career paths and managerial styles. Managers who began their careers during recessions become CEOs more quickly, but at smaller firms. They also have more conservative styles, such as lower investment in capital expenditures and research and development, more cost cutting, and lower leverage and working capital needs. These recession effects appear to be largely driven by the characteristics of the CEO’s first job (recession CEOs tend to start in smaller or private firms), which suggests that the early work environment is important to the formation and selection of managers.

US data display aggregate external financing and savings waves. Firms can allocate costly external finance to productive capital, or to liquid assets with low physical returns. If firms raise costly external finance and accumulate liquidity, either the cost of external finance is relatively low or the total return to liquidity accumulation, including its shadow value as future internal funds, is particularly high. We formalize this intuition by estimating a dynamic model of firms׳ financing and savings decisions, and use our model along with firm level data to construct an empirical estimate of the average cost of external finance from 1980 to 2014.

Das vorliegende Buch beschäftigt sich anhand einer Sammlung von realen Fällen, die in Aufgabenform formuliert sind, mit dem leider oft gestörten Verhältnis von Theorie und Praxis in der rechtsgeprägten Unternehmensbewertung. Es weist ähnlich wie „normale“ Fallsammlungen die jeweiligen Aufgabenstellungen und die zugehörigen Lösungen aus. Die eigentlichen Fragestellungen in den Aufgabentexten sind durch kurze Erläuterungen eingerahmt, damit jeder Fall als solcher von einem mit Bewertungsfragen halbwegs Vertrauten relativ leicht verstanden und in seiner Bedeutung eingeordnet werden kann. Dieses Vorgehen ähnelt wiederum Lehrbüchern, die Inhalte über Fälle vermitteln, nur dass hier nicht hypothetische Fälle das jeweils idealtypisch richtige Vorgehen zeigen, sondern Praxisfälle plakative Verstöße contra legem artis., The book is a collection of cases concerning valuation in legally defined occasions. These cases, mostly taken from real German law suits, are formulated as questions and problems (inclusively a separate solution chapter), each with framing introductions and conclusions. They highlight the regrettably often disturbed relationship between theory and practice in this area of valuation. This procedure resembles to textbooks which use cases to communicate content, but there is a fundamental difference: No hypothetical cases show the right approach, but real cases demonstrate striking violations contra legem artis.

Das vorliegende Buch beschäftigt sich anhand einer Sammlung von realen Fällen, die in Aufgabenform formuliert sind, mit dem leider oft gestörten Verhältnis von Theorie und Praxis in der rechtsgeprägten Unternehmensbewertung. Es weist ähnlich wie „normale“ Fallsammlungen die jeweiligen Aufgabenstellungen und die zugehörigen Lösungen aus. Die eigentlichen Fragestellungen in den Aufgabentexten sind durch kurze Erläuterungen eingerahmt, damit jeder Fall als solcher von einem mit Bewertungsfragen halbwegs Vertrauten relativ leicht verstanden und in seiner Bedeutung eingeordnet werden kann. Dieses Vorgehen ähnelt wiederum Lehrbüchern, die Inhalte über Fälle vermitteln, nur dass hier nicht hypothetische Fälle das jeweils idealtypisch richtige Vorgehen zeigen, sondern Praxisfälle plakative Verstöße contra legem artis., The book is a collection of cases concerning valuation in legally defined occasions. These cases, mostly taken from real German law suits, are formulated as questions and problems (inclusively a separate solution chapter), each with framing introductions and conclusions. They highlight the regrettably often disturbed relationship between theory and practice in this area of valuation. This procedure resembles to textbooks which use cases to communicate content, but there is a fundamental difference: No hypothetical cases show the right approach, but real cases demonstrate striking violations contra legem artis.

Stock prices are more informative when the information has less social value. Speculators with limited resources making costly (private) information production decisions must decide to produce information about some firms and not others. We show that producing and trading on private information is most profitable in the stocks of firms with poor corporate governance -- precisely because it will not be acted upon -- and less profitable at firms with better corporate governance. To the extent that the information in the stock price is used for disciplining the CEO by the board of directors, the informed trader has a reduced incentive to produce the information in the first place. We test our model using the probability of informed trading (PIN) and the probability of forced CEO turnover in a simultaneous-equation system. The empirical results support the model predictions. Stock prices are efficient, but there is a limit to the disciplining role they can fulfill. We apply the model to evaluate the effects of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

In this paper, we examine the circumstances under which so-called "independent" directors voice their independent views on public boards in a sample of Chinese firms. First, we ask why independent directors dissent, i.e. how they justify such dissent to public investors. We find that when independent directors dissent, they tend to offer mild, subjective justifications. Overt criticism of the management is rare. Next, we ask when an independent director is more likely to dissent and who is more likely to dissent. Controlling for firm and board characteristics, we find that dissent is significantly correlated with breakdown of social ties between the independent director and the board chair who locates at the center of the board bureaucracy in China. Dissent is more likely to occur when the board chair who appointed the independent director has left the board. Dissent also tends to occur at the end of board "games", defined as a 60-day window prior to departure of the board chair or departure of the independent director herself. The endgame effect is particularly strong, seeing 27% of the dissent issued at board "endgames" which represents only 4% of independent directors' average tenure. While directors with foreign experience are more likely to dissent, we do not find that academics, accountants and lawyers are significantly more active in voicing dissent. Lastly, we show that dissent is consequential to both the director and the firm. For directors, dissent significantly increases one's likelihood of exiting the director labor market, which translates to a more-than-10% estimated loss of annual income. For firms, we document an economically and statistically significant cumulative abnormal return of -0.97% around announcement of dissent. Although the literature has suggested that dissent might be reflective of diverse viewpoints, and perhaps beneficial in and of itself through reduction of firm variability, we do not find this offsetting beneficial effect to be strong.

This paper draws on network theory to investigate European banks’ sovereign debt exposures. Banks’ holdings of sovereign debt build a network of financial linkages with European countries that exhibits a long-tail distribution of node degrees. A highly connected network core of 15 banks is identified. These banks accounted for the majority of sovereign debt investments between December 2010 and December 2013 but exhibited only average and sometimes even below average capitalizations. Consequently, they constituted a potential source and transmission channel of systemic risk, especially due to their proneness to portfolio contagion. In a complementary regression analysis, the effect of counterparty risk on Credit Default Swap (CDS) spreads of 15 EU sovereigns is investigated. Among the banks exposed to the debt of a particular issuer, the biggest institutions in terms of their own asset sizes are identified and some of their balance sheet characteristics included into the regression. The analysis finds that the banks’ implied volatilities had a significant and increasing effect on CDS spreads during the recent crisis years, providing evidence of the presence of counterparty risk and its effect on EU sovereign debt pricing. Furthermore, the role of the domestic financial sectors is assessed and found to have affected the CDS spreads.

The value of information regarding risk class for a monopoly insurer and its customers is examined in both symmetric and asymmetric information environments. A monopolist always prefers contracting with uninformed customers as this maximizes the rent extracted under symmetric information while also avoiding the cost of adverse selection when information is held asymmetrically. Although customers are indifferent to symmetric information when they are initially uninformed, they prefer contracting with hidden knowledge rather than symmetric information since the monopoly responds to adverse selection by sharing gains from trade with high-risk customers when low risks are predominant in the insurance pool. However, utilitarian social welfare is highest when customers are uninformed, and is higher when information is symmetric rather than asymmetric.

There is mounting evidence of the influence of personal characteristics of CEOs on corporate outcomes. In this paper we analyze the relation between military service of CEOs and managerial decisions, financial policies, and corporate outcomes. Exploiting exogenous variation in the propensity to serve in the military, we show that military service is associated with conservative corporate policies and ethical behavior. Military CEOs pursue lower corporate investment, are less likely to be involved in corporate fraudulent activity, and perform better during industry downturns. Taken together, our results show that military service has significant explanatory power for managerial decisions and firm outcomes.

In this short paper, we study the asymptotics for the price of call options for very large strikes and put options for very small strikes. The stock price is assumed to follow the Black-Scholes models. We analyze European, Asian, American, Parisian and perpetual options and conclude that the tail asymptotics for these option types fall into four scenarios.

Using a two-account model with event risk, we model life insurance contracts taking into account both guaranteed and non-guaranteed payments in participating life insurance as well as in unit-linked insurance. Here, event risk is used as a generic term for life insurance events, such as death, disability, etc. In our treatment of participating life insurance, we have special focus on the bonus schemes “consolidation” and “additional benefits”, and one goal is to formalize how these work and interact. Another goal is to describe similarities and differences between participating life insurance and unit-linked insurance. By use of a two-account model, we are able to illustrate general concepts without making the model too abstract. To allow for complicated financial markets without dramatically increasing the mathematical complexity, we focus on economic scenarios. We illustrate the use of our model by conducting scenario analysis based on Monte Carlo simulation, but the model applies to scenarios in general and to worst-case and best-estimate scenarios in particular. In addition to easy computations, our model offers a common framework for the valuation of life insurance payments across product types. This enables comparison of participating life insurance products and unit-linked insurance products, thus building a bridge between the two different ways of formalizing life insurance products. Finally, our model distinguishes itself from the existing literature by taking into account the Markov model for the state of the policyholder and, hereby, facilitating event risk.

Due to the strong complexity of financial markets, economics does not have a unified theory of price formation in financial markets. The most common assumption is the Efficient-Market Hypothesis, which has been attacked by a number of researchers, using different tools. There were varying degrees to which these tools complied with the formal definitions of efficiency and predictability. In our earlier work, we analysed the predictability of stock returns at two time scales using the entropy rate, which can be directly linked to the mathematical definition of predictability. Nonetheless, none of the above-mentioned studies allow any general understanding of how the financial markets work, beyond disproving the Efficient-Market Hypothesis. In our previous study, we proposed the Maximum Entropy Production Principle, which uses the entropy rate to create a general principle underlying the price formation processes. Both of these studies show that the predictability of price changes is higher at the transaction level intraday scale than the scale of daily returns, but ignore all scales in between. In this study we extend these ideas using the multiscale entropy analysis framework to enhance our understanding of the predictability of price formation processes at various time scales.

New risk-based solvency requirements for insurance companies across European markets have been introduced by Solvency II and will come in force from 1 January 2016. These requirements, derived by a Standard Formula or an Internal Model, will be by far more risk-sensitive than the required solvency margin provided by the current legislation. In this regard, a Partial Internal Model for Premium Risk is developed here for a multi-line Non-Life insurer. We follow a classical approach based on a Collective Risk Model properly extended in order to consider not only the volatility of aggregate claim amounts but also expense volatility. To measure the effect of risk mitigation, suitable reinsurance strategies are pursued. We analyze how naïve coverage as conventional Quota Share and Excess of Loss reinsurance may modify the exact moments of the distribution of technical results. Furthermore, we investigate how alternative choices of commission rates in proportional treaties may affect the variability of distribution. Numerical results are also figured out in the last part of the paper with evidence of different effects for small and large companies. The main reasons for these differences are pointed out.

Several pioneering studies have established that the effect of exchange rate exposure to corporate entities in periods of the financial crisis is no longer linear. To this end, this study explores the position of this argument in a developing country like Nigeria and investigates if the phenomenon could lead to the escalation of corporate survival threats, particularly in crisis and non-crisis periods. In order to ensure this, we analyzed the data of 102 companies consisting of indigenous and multinationals entities’ from 20 sectors of the Nigerian economy from1980-2011. The study employed the ARDL bounds test approach to cointegration and the “U” test methodologies in determining the linear and non-linearity effects of the exposural position of the selected entities’ value. The findings of the study established the existence of non-monotonic relationships between the indigenous entities values and the exchange rate position. The “U” shape relationship was discovered to be the most aggravating agent to these entities survival threats. Surprisingly the relationship between the corporate value of multinational companies in Nigeria and official exchange rate (ERS) is only having a linear relationship. This means that these entities are not heavily exposed to the vagaries of exchange rate changes, meaning they cannot be threatened by bankruptcy in both the crisis and non-crisis periods, which is in contrast to the findings on indigenous entities. As a result of these findings, we recommend to policy makers, the establishment of exchange rate frame-work that is feasible towards enhancing productivity in the real sector corporate entities of the country. ­­

The study based on a sample of 61 UAE listed companies examines the determinants of value creation. Size in terms of total assets of a firm is inversely related to value creation. Value as measured by market to book value of equity is negatively related to the size measured by total assets. Larger the size in terms market capitalization, higher would be the value created. Higher earnings relative to price signify higher value creation. Firms having higher risk are expected to have higher returns. The study finds statistical support for the fact that increasing leverage increases the risk of equity shareholders. Hence leverage increases leads to increased expected returns to account for increased risk for equity shareholders. The study also suggests that the average market returns is inversely related to earnings to price ratio. Lower average stock returns are predicted for firms with low market value of equity relative to their earnings. Riskier firms tend to have lower earnings relative to their market value of equity.

This paper compares the “simplesum” monetary aggregates - M2) (M1 andpublished by the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) with the new monetary aggregates (D1 andD2)—known as the Divisia monetary indexes. The former aggregates are constructed from a simple accounting identity, whereas the Divisia aggregates are constructed using statistical index number theory and aggregation theory. The findings suggest that both D1 and M1 are identical, given the perfect substitutab ility of the monetary components within those aggregates. For the broader monetary aggregates where perfect substitutability assumption is not realistic, the two monetary indexes differ substantially. SAMA could benefit by using both monetary indexes simultaneously to better monitor liquidity in the market. Keywords: monetary aggregation; Divisia monetary aggregates; index number theory JEL Classifications: E41; E51; E52; E58 1. Introduction Simple-sum monetary aggregates (widely denoted by M1, M2, and M3) are commonly used by central banks worldwide. Those monetary indexes are derived from a simple accounting identity. The implicit assumption made when using simple -sum monetary aggregates is that all components are perfect

Publicly provided long-term care (LTC) insurance with means-tested benefits is suspected to crowd out either private saving or informal care. This contribution predicts crowding-out effects for both private saving and informal care for policy measures designed to relieve the public purse from LTC expenditure such as more stringent means testing and increased taxation of inheritance. These effects result from the interaction of a parent who decides on the amount of saving in retirement and a caregiver who decides on the effort devoted to informal care which lowers the probability of admission to a nursing home. Double crowding-out effects are also found to be the consequence of exogenous influences, notably a higher opportunity cost of caregiving.

Insurance companies use conservative first order valuation bases to calculate insurance premiums and reserves. These valuation bases have a significant impact on the insurer’s solvency and on the premiums of the insurance products. Safety margins for systematic biometric and financial risk are in practice typically chosen as time-constant percentages on top of the best estimate transition intensities. We develop a risk-oriented method for the allocation of a total safety margin to the single safety margins at each point in time and each state. In a case study, we demonstrate the suitability of the proposed method in different frameworks. The results show that the traditional method yields an unwanted variability of the safety level with respect to time, whereas the variability can be significantly reduced by the new method. Furthermore, the case study supports the German 60 percent rule for the technical interest rate.

Over the course of February 2015, the MICEX Index continued to grow and hit its four-year record high of 1,809.6 points. The stock market’s capitalization index as of 25 February amounted to Rb 27.4 trillion (or 38.6% of GDP). As before, the situation in Russia’s domestic corporate bond market was unfavorable – mostly due to the eff ects of adverse external factors. The main negative feature of that market continued to be the high rate of weighted average effective yield on corporate bond issues, although it displayed a moderate downward trend (especially in the hi-tech sector). On the whole, the key indices of the Russian domestic corporate bond market, including the market volume and the market index, and the activity of the market’s biggest bond emitiers and investors, showed a positie trend. The emitiers were becoming less punctual in fulfi lling their obligations to their bond holders.

Taxpayers who carried out individually or in a form of association income from self-employment, income from the lease of property, income from agricultural activities determined in real system are required to file a statement of income received from the competent tax authority for each fiscal year no later than 15 May of the year following that of income. The statement of income (tax declaration) must be completed for each source and category of income. For the income obtained in a form of Association, stated income will be the loss of net income distributed from the association.

This paper is aimed to explore and compare disclosure on corporate governance mechanisms in the annual reports of commercial banks for two emerging countries: Romania and Malaysia. There were selected 34 banks situated in Romania and Malaysia, in order to highlight the influence of culture and the impact of the size, profitability on corporate governance disclosure practices. Another objective is to determine the quality of the web sites of these banks and their ability to support the access to corporate governance elements. It is found that Malaysian banks provide more corporate governance information than Romanian banks, the quality of web sites being higher in case of Romanian banks. The conducted study highlights the tendency of more profitable banks to disclose more information on corporate governance than less profitable financial institutions, while the size of the banks does not appear to influence the value of the corporate governance disclosure index.

The dynamics of the MICEX Index saw no drastic movements last month1, avaraging 1650 index points, with a 1.2% fall at month’s end. The rest of the MICEX Sector Indices, except the MICEX Telecommunications Index, de monstrated negative dynamics too. The MICEX daily average turnover kept shrinking and amounted to Rb 30.4bn. The situation in the Russian domestic corporate bond market in June was relatively normalized. The key market indicators such as the market volume and the corporate bond market index saw moderately positive dynamics; investors’ activity remained high in the primary and secondary markets (particularly in the fi nancial segment). Growth in the weighted average yield rate of bond issuances was an adverse trend. The problem with the failure to meet obligations to bondholders is still there.

We develop a theoretical model of managerial myopia based on the Q theory of investment. In this model, the manager chooses both investment quantity and the investment horizon. The manager may be myopic, causing an excess weight to be placed by the manager on short term profits, relative to firm-value maximizing behavior. In such a case, investments may be expected to be of a shorter time horizon, even if there are advantages to longer term investing. Our model yields a new important testable implication. The sensitivity of investment to growth opportunities is lower for myopic managers.

Среднее значение индекса ММВБ в мае было на уровне 1679 пунктов, по итогам месяца его падение составило 1,5% относительно предшествующего периода. Основное негативное влияние на индекс оказало снижение цен на нефть. Средний дневной оборот биржи сократился почти на 20% по сравне- нию с первым кварталом 2015 г. и составил 31,3 млрд руб. На внутрироссийском рынке корпоратив- ных облигаций сложилась относительно благоприятная конъюнктура рынка, несмотря на неблаго- приятный внешний фон, сложную ситуацию в экономике и традиционный сезонный спад. Позитивной динамикой отличились такие ключевые показатели рынка, как объем и индекс рынка корпоративных облигаций, ставка средневзвешенной доходности эмиссий (особенно в технологичном сегменте), ак- тивность инвесторов на первичном и вторичном рынках. Несмотря на высокие финансовые риски в последние месяцы, крупным эмитентам удается успешно размещать долгосрочные займы. Сложной остается ситуация с исполнением эмитентами своих обязательств перед держателями облигаций.

Investment income comprises the law 571/2003, as amended: dividends, taxable income from interest, income from transfer of securities represented by any securities, units in a unit trust or other financial instrument such qualified by CNVM including derivatives and shares, income from operations of sale of foreign currency forward contract and other similar operations and income from the liquidation of a legal person. Are considered interest income, interest on its bonds, interest earned on deposits, including certificates of deposit, amounts received as interest on loans and other revenues from debt. Revenues in the form of proceeds obtained from the sale of foreign currency forward contract, and any other such operations are favorable exchange differences resulting from these operations, the moment of operation and highlighting the customer’s account. Annual net income is determined as the difference between gains and losses during that year from such operations. Annual net income is calculated based on the income statement.

The MICEX Index skyrocketed in January 2015, gaining 16.44% in the period between the 5th and 26th of January. The Index hit its highest 1671.8 points on the 23th of January. At the sametime, the crude oil Brent futures price dropped to 48,1 US dollars a barrel in the same month. The stock market capitalization by the 26th of January amounted to Rb 25,6 trillion (36.1% of GDP) (Rb 22,3 trillion as of the 19th of December last year). Both the accelerati ng dynamics of average weighted bond yield, tending towards deceleration though, and the deteriorated investment environment in the secondary market remained the key downtrend factors in the corporate bond market in January. The volume and the index of the corporate bond market saw positive dynamics while bond issuers and investors were highly active in the primary market. The situation with issuers’ failure to discharge their obligations to bondholders saw some worsening early in the year.

This paper uses the data from Casablanca Stock Exchange to document whether the value relevance of ownership structure changed as the market conditions changed. We show that the performance (average returns, Sharpe ratios, Sortino ratios, information ratios and CAPM alpha) of portfolios comprising of firms with concentrated ownership structure deteriorate significantly during the post-crisis period – the period characterized by lack luster market conditions. We show relatively poor performance of these portfolios relative to portfolios comprising of firms with dispersed ownership structure during the post-crisis period. We argue that lack luster performance of the Casablanca Stock Exchange during the post-crisis period, increased the incentives for controlling shareholders to expropriate. Investors recognized these incentives and discounted firms that were more likely to expropriate.

The attention toward social and environmental impacts of companies on stakeholders is not new. In the past years, the interest as regard the companies’ impact on stakeholders increased due to pressing global problems like climate change and poverty. Companies are regarded as important players given their activities and global influence where they confront a range of issues, stakeholders, in both home and host countries as well. Companies’ potential in being not a part of the problem, but rather a solution where other institutions fail, is increasingly acknowledged and has attracted the researchers interest in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and sustainable development (SD). The relation between CSR and SD has been studied just a little and their inclusion in the literature as two concepts as part of the same model has been lacking. This paper studies both concepts, respectively CSR and SD, and proposes a theoretical framework for developing countries as further research in this area.

This paper explores the relationship between financial reforms, financial liberalization and the quality of banking regulation and supervision for financial fragility by applying a dynamic two-step system generalized method of moments GMM panel estimator technique. The finding of this study is that the financial vulnerability of the banking sector could be affected, not only by bank-specific and macro-specific variables, but also by financial liberalization and banking regulations and supervision policies. The empirical results of this study confirm the evidence that financial reforms and financial liberalization significantly enhance the likelihood of financial fragility while strong banking regulations and supervision have an inverse relationship with financial fragility. The results of this study also explain that the lag value of loan growth and unemployment contribute to enhancing financial fragility while equity to assets ratio, natural log of total assets and share of foreign banks reduce financial vulnerability.

The capital structure of banks has become the focus of an extended debate among policy-makers, regulators and academics. The seminal Modigliani-Miller (1958) theorem is seen as supportive of regulators' drive to require higher equity capital to banks. This raises the question on to what extent does Modigliani-Miller theorem hold for banks. This article brings a new insight of the Modigliani-Miller theorem by considering the implicit government guarantee offered to banks. Our theorem shows that a bank does not satisfy the Modigliani-Miller theorem. The main result indicates that banks will favor leverage instead of equity.

Being active in both the insurance sector and the banking sector, financial conglomerates intrinsically increase the interconnections between the banking sector and the insurance sector. We address two main concerns about financial conglomerates using a unique database on bilateral exposures between 21 French financial institutions. First, we investigate to what extent to which the insurers that are part of financial conglomerates differ from pure insurers. Second, we show that in the presence of sovereign risk, the components of a financial conglomerate are better off than if they were distinct entities. Our empirical findings bring a new perspective to the previous results of the literature based on using different types of data.

We explore how changes in ownership affect the productivity and profitability of producers. Using detailed data from the Japanese cotton spinning industry at the turn of the last century, we find that acquired firms’ production facilities were not on average less physically productive than the plants of the acquiring firms before acquisition. They were much less profitable, however, due to higher inventory levels and lower capacity utilization—differences that reflected problems in managing the uncertainties of demand. After acquisitions, less profitable acquired plants saw drops in inventories and gains in capacity utilization that raised both their productivity and profitability levels. (JEL D24, G32, G34, L11, L25, L66, N65) The influence of changes in corporate control of assets on productivity has been a focus of theoretical and empirical research for some time. In principle, mergers and acquisitions can reallocate control of productive assets to entities that are able to apply them more efficiently. Besides increasing the productivity of the individual production units that are merged or acquired, a broader process of such reallocations can also lead to aggregate productivity growth. Such a mechanism therefore has the potential to explain patterns of productivity at both the micro- and macro-levels. Implicit in the story of this mechanism—though not often treated explicitly in the empirical work on the subject—is the notion that productivity growth occurs when changes in ownership and control put assets in more able managers’ hands. 1

ESG investment, a new form of portfolio allocation that takes into consideration the non-financial factors of firms such as environmental (E), social (S), and corporate governance (G) issues in business, has gained prominence in the capital market. However, empirical evidence on the attractiveness to investors and resultant stock price reaction toward ESG-oriented firms has been scarce both inside and outside Japan. This study performs event study analysis to explore stock market reaction to the announcement of the “ESG Brand†consisting of firms that are judged to make serious efforts in favor of ESG aspects in business among the companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The Brand selection was conducted after positive screening by a third party in an objective manner. Our finding reveals little evidence of a positive and significant stock price reaction to the Brand announcement around the event day. In addition, the result is not altered in terms of cumulative abnormal returns over a longer term. We conclude that the stock market did not respond to the announcement of the ESG Brand.

The MICEX index fell to 1413.8 points by the 17th of December, following the fi ve-year highs early in December. It is only VTB’s shares that demonstrated growth among highly liquid shares during the same month. The stock market capitalization as of the 19th of December amounted to Rb 22,3 trillion (34.4% of GDP). The domestic corporate bond market in December saw a downtrend induced by both external and internal trends. Rapid growth in the average weighted bond yield, as well as decrease in the market index and investing activities in the secondary market (especially in the production sector) became the key adverse factors in the market. The situation with bond issuers being able to fulfi ll their fi nancial obligations before bondholders remained tense and made a certain contribution to the growth in bond yields.

После достижения в начале декабря пятилетнего Maksimума индекс ММВБ к 17 декабря снизился до 1413,8 пунктов. В течение месяца среди высоколиквидных акций только акции «ВТБ» демонстри- ровали рост стоимости. Капитализация фондового рынка на 19 декабря составила 22,3 трлн руб. (34,4% ВВП). На внутрироссийском рынке корпоративных облигаций в декабре сохранялась неблагопри- ятная конъюнктура по причинам как внешнего, так и внутреннего характера. Основными негатив- ными явлениями на рынке стали резкий рост средневзвешенной доходности эмиссий, а также сниже- ние индекса рынка и инвестиционной активности на вторичном рынке (особенно в производственном секторе). Ситуация с исполнением эмитентами своих обязательств перед держателями облигаций оставалась напряженной и внесла определенный вклад в рост доходностей.

This study examines whether the long-run purchasing power parity (PPP) holds in transition economies (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Russia) using monthly data over the 1995 - 2011 period. We apply a recently introduced panel stationary test, which accounts for sharp breaks and smooth shifts. The results indicate that the PPP holds only in two countries (i.e., Lithuania and Poland).

In many Western countries, local community sport clubs are important providers of leisure, sport, and social programs. These sport clubs are nonprofit organizations, which operate in an increasingly challenging environment. This study considers a club’s direct local environment, i.e., the community the club is located in. The open systems model and the resource dependence represent the theoretical framework. The purpose of this research is to examine the effect of the financial and economic environment in the community on the resource situation of sport clubs (human, infrastructure, and financial resources). The empirical evaluation is undertaken using data from a nationwide survey of non-profit sport clubs in Germany (organizational level, n = 19,345), which are combined with secondary data on community characteristics (community level, n = 3153). Given the hierarchical data structure, multi-level analyses are applied. The results show that volunteer problems are smaller among clubs in communities with high unemployment. Facility and financial problems are greater in large communities. Sport clubs located in communities that could break even were also more likely to break even themselves. The findings show that resource problems are not necessarily due to poor club management, since higher-level (community) factors significantly affect the resource situation of sport clubs too.

This article presents an overview of the history of corporate governance in the United States, emphasizing the period before the advent of federal securities laws and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Recent research has overturned many widely accepted beliefs about corporate governance during this period. In particular, the evolution of American corporate governance has not followed a simple, linear trajectory, beginning with small, well-governed firms and ending with large, poorly governed ones. Over time, economic and institutional changes have given rise to successive generations of corporations with their own governance problems and their own mechanisms to address those problems. When existing governance mechanisms failed, the United States experienced corporate governance crises—episodes that shattered investors’ faith in corporate management and the legal institutions intended to protect their rights. The resolutions of these crises have sometimes been found in legal innovations and, in other cases, in institutional or market-based solutions.

The importance of the concept of sustainability for the organizations increases gradually. Sustainability is an instrument of measurement of current social, economic and environmental resources, which would add value to the organizations. The strategies taking these three main factors into account provide a better chance of competition for organizations and also increase the life of organizations and competition. The control of sustainability includes the integration and control of all responsibility, knowledge and strategies, which strategically support meeting of the needs of all stakeholders. In this study, how organizations maintain the stability between economic, social and environmental strategies, how they shift towards taking preventive measures against differences found in measurements and controls and how they provide the possibility of comparison between other organizations as a result of performance assessment are investigated. This record was migrated from the OpenDepot repository service in June, 2017 before shutting down.

This paper studies stability of the exponential utility maximization when there are small variations on agent's utility function. Two settings are considered. First, in a general semimartingale model where random endowments are present, a sequence of utilities defined on R converges to the exponential utility. Under a uniform condition on their marginal utilities, convergence of value functions, optimal payoffs and optimal investment strategies are obtained, their rate of convergence are also determined. Stability of utility-based pricing is studied as an application. Second, a sequence of utilities defined on R_+ converges to the exponential utility after shifting and scaling. Their associated optimal strategies, after appropriate scaling, converge to the optimal strategy for the exponential hedging problem. This complements Theorem 3.2 in \textit{M. Nutz, Probab. Theory Relat. Fields, 152, 2012}, which establishes the convergence for a sequence of power utilities., Comment: Keywords: utility maximization, exponential utility, stability, semimartingales, utility-based prices

We introduce a bivariate Markov chain counting process with contagion for modelling the clustering arrival of loss claims with delayed settlement for an insurance company. It is a general continuous-time model framework that also has the potential to be applicable to modelling the clustering arrival of events, such as jumps, bankruptcies, crises and catastrophes in finance, insurance and economics with both internal contagion risk and external common risk. Key distributional properties, such as the moments and probability generating functions, for this process are derived. Some special cases with explicit results and numerical examples and the motivation for further actuarial applications are also discussed. The model can be considered a generalisation of the dynamic contagion process introduced by Dassios and Zhao (2011).