Suchergebnisse

A common European bond would yield a common European Monetary Union risk free rate. We present tentative estimates of this common risk free for the European Monetary Union countries from 2004 to 2009 using variables motivated by a theoretical portfolio selection model. First, we analyze the determinants of EMU sovereign yield spreads and find significant effects of the credit quality, macro, correlation, and liquidity variables. However, their effects are different before and after the current financial crisis, being stronger in the latter period. Robustness tests with different data frequencies, benchmarks, liquidity variables, cross section regressions and balanced panels confirm the initial results. We propose four different estimates of the common risk free rate and show that, in most cases, this common rate could imply savings in borrowing costs for all the countries involved.

AbstractWe examine whether the source of debt financing is important for assessments of firms' default risk. This study reveals that during the 2007–2010 financial crisis, firms that depend mainly on financing from banks suffer higher increases in default risk than do firms with no such dependence. Conversely, firms that rely solely on financing from public debt markets do not experience significant increases in default risk. These findings suggest that the bank supply shock theory explains the transmission of financial shocks to the real economy. Finally, firms that depend on bank financing cannot offset the adverse impacts of bank lending shocks by substituting bank loans with publicly traded debt.

We build a Real Options model to assess the importance of private provisionand the impact of expropriation risk on investment timing, investmentvolumes, governmental costs and social welfare. We consider two types ofbusinesses (essential and non essential businesses) and two stages (operatingand investment opportunities), and answer questions regarding three maintopics: the firm's reaction to expropriation risk, the government drivers toexpropriate, and the costs this generates in terms of welfare. We find thatthe firm makes suboptimal investment decisions. When we endogenize thereputational costs of expropriation, results show that the decision of the governmentregarding the level of political risk will largely depend on the typeof business. However, in terms of welfare it is never optimal to expropriate