Suchergebnisse

The eurozone has a single short-term nominal interest rate, but monetary policy conditions measured by real short-term interest rates varied substantially across countries in the period 2003 - 2010. We use this cross-country variation in the (local) tightness of monetary policy to examine its influence on equity and money market flows. In line with a powerful risk-shifting channel, we find that fund investors in countries with decreased real interest rates shift their portfolio investment out of the money market and into the riskier equity market - causing significant equity price inflation in countries where investment home bias is the strongest.

We examine evidence for a systematic underperformance of Germany's state-owned banks in the current financial crisis and study if the bank losses can be traced to the quality of bank governance. For this purpose, we examine the biographical background of 593 supervisory board members in the 29 largest banks and find a pronounced difference in the finance and management experience of board representatives across private and state-owned banks. Measures of boardroom competenceʺ are then related directly to the magnitude of bank losses in the recent financial crisis. Our data confirms that supervisory board (in-)competence in finance is related to losses in the financial crisis. Improved bank governance is therefore a suitable policy objective to reduce bank fragility.

"This paper presents new stylized facts on the distribution of the home bias at the fund level. We find (i) a large heterogeneity in the degree of home bias across mutual funds; (ii) a positive correlation between the size of funds and home bias; and (iii) a positive correlation between the size of funds, the number of foreign countries and the number of sectors in which they invest. These facts constitute a challenge for existing theories"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

"The dramatic increase in gross stock of foreign assets and liability has revived interest in the portfolio balance theory of international investment. Evidence on the validity of this theory has always been scarce and inconclusive. The current paper derives testable empirical implications from microeconomic foundations, which we confront with a new comprehensive data set on the stock allocations of approximately 6,500 international equity funds domiciled in four different currency areas. The disaggregated data structure allows us to examine whether foreign exchange and equity risk measures trigger the predicted rebalancing behavior at the fund and stock level. The data provide strong support for portfolio rebalancing behavior aimed at reducing both exchange rate and equity risk exposure"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site