{"title":"The Costs of Public Audit Oversight: Evidence from the EU","authors":"Annita Florou, Y. Shuai","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3595454","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3595454","url":null,"abstract":"We examine the audit pricing consequences of auditor inspections under the public oversight regime in the EU. Employing a staggered difference-in-differences design, we document an inspections audit fee premium during the post-inspection period when companies’ auditors are inspected by the national Public Oversight Body (POB). However, this effect masks significant cross-sectional variation. Specifically, we find that the increase in audit fees attributable to inspections is concentrated among POBs with sufficient human resources, where inspections occur both at the auditor’s and the regulator’s premises. Also, the effect of inspections on audit fees is evident only when the POB prohibits inspectors from joining an audit firm immediately after their departure or when the oversight system is funded by multiple stakeholders. Overall, our findings suggest that audit costs increase for clients of inspected auditors but only when inspections are more laborious, independent, and rigorous.","PeriodicalId":233958,"journal":{"name":"European Finance eJournal","volume":"218 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132615241","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cryptocurrencies, DLT and Crypto Assets – the Road to Regulatory Recognition in Europe","authors":"Agata Ferreira, Philipp G. Sandner, Thomas Dünser","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3891401","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3891401","url":null,"abstract":"With Bitcoin, a new type of technology was born in 2008 when Satoshi Nakamoto released the white paper for a new cash payment system (Nakamoto 2008), which effectively invented blockchain technology. By 2015 the technology already gained a lot of interest among startups, financial institutions, and industrial enterprises. Besides Bitcoin, many other crypto assets emerged with various design approaches such as stablecoins, utility tokens, security tokens, decentralized finance (DeFi), and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Many of these tokens have an identifiable issuer to whom existing regulatory frameworks could potentially apply. However, other types of assets that are based on fully decentralized protocols are governed entirely by technology and either do not have an issuer (like in the case of Bitcoin) or the initiators designed the technology in an ‘issuerless’ way - and have no relation to any ‘real-world asset’. It is the latter class of assets that are truly new and that have recently attracted increasing attention from regulatory authorities, international organizations, standard-setting bodies, and the like. On the part of regulators and policymakers, interest in and the activity surrounding cryptocurrencies, crypto assets, and stablecoins peaked in 2019 so far. Of the several key regulators and policymakers at the supra-national level, nearly all issued a report, warning, study, or recommendations on some aspect of blockchain technology in financial markets. This spike in interest is related to the increasing business activity in this area and growing interest of investors and consumers. The exponential rise in the price of Bitcoin also attracted the interest of a wider audience (Edwards et al. 2019). The increasing business activity always preceded the actions of regulators and policymakers, thus rendering the activities of the latter a ‘reaction’ to the market developments. According to the Financial Stability Board (FSB), crypto assets reached an estimated total market capitalization of $830 billion on January 8, 2018, before falling sharply in subsequent months (Financial Stability Board 2018). While the global value of the crypto assets market is still relatively small compared to the entire financial system, its absolute value and daily transaction volume are substantial, and its rapid development continues, gaining increasing market acceptance (Basel Committee on Banking Supervision 2019). This paper seeks to analyze regulators’ and policymakers’ efforts to understand and develop an adequate regulatory approach to crypto assets, tokens, and the distributed ledger technology (DLT) in general. After several years of innovation in the space of decentralized technologies, several principles became clear on how to treat both issuer-based tokens and issuerless tokens. However, when regulators and policymakers tried at first to understand these new decentralized technologies and the assets they enable, it was not clear to them from the begin","PeriodicalId":233958,"journal":{"name":"European Finance eJournal","volume":"100 3-4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132983022","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Euro Area Equity Risk Premia and Monetary Policy: A Longer-Term Perspective","authors":"Daniela Kapp, K. Kristiansen","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3824860","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3824860","url":null,"abstract":"This study analyses the effects of euro area monetary policy on equity risk premia (ERP). We find that changes in equity prices during periods of accommodative monetary policy mainly reflected adjustments in the discount factor and economic activity – rather than fluctuations in investors’ required risk compensation. Furthermore, the ERP appears to not have declined much since the introduction of unconventional monetary policy and stands higher than prior to the GFC. Use of identified monetary policy shocks points to insignificant effects of monetary policy on the ERP. Further breakdown of these shocks reveals that monetary policy has a significant upwards impact on the ERP if it is perceived as a negative information surprise, while the opposite prevails in the case of a genuine accommodative monetary policy surprise. Accumulating these effects over time suggests that the two might have largely offset each other since the introduction of unconventional monetary policy. JEL Classification: E22, E52, G12","PeriodicalId":233958,"journal":{"name":"European Finance eJournal","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127799424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Features of Insurance Risks’ Classification as the Basis of Risk Management of Insurance Companies in the Financial Crisis","authors":"N. Bondar, V. Fursova","doi":"10.21303/2613-5647.2021.001770","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21303/2613-5647.2021.001770","url":null,"abstract":"Since the global financial crisis had impacted on all aspects of insurance companies' activities, it became necessary to focus on the activities of insurers and further improve the integrated risk and capital management of global and regional insurers. The purpose of the research is to analyze differences between national and European standards for risk identification in Ukrainian insurance companies, and to provide suggestions for improving the mechanism of risk insurance management. Using the method of comparative analysis and the method of content analysis of national and international solvency standards for insurance companies, the national characteristics of the types of insurance risks and the organization of the implementation of European legislation in domestic practice were determined. By the method of generalization and deduction, the key challenges for improving the effectiveness of insurance risk management in Ukrainian practice were identified. The results of the study shows the necessity to implement a unified system of insurance risk management in Ukrainian practice, which contents national and global characteristics of the functioning of insurance markets. The results of the research have significant practical implications for insurance companies and state government insurance market and can serve as a basis for improvement of theoretical principles concerning the identification of insurance risks and implementing European experience of insurance companies in national practice.<br><br>","PeriodicalId":233958,"journal":{"name":"European Finance eJournal","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125842746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Solving the Equity Premium Puzzle by Unifying Economics and Finance","authors":"Didier Vanoverberghe","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3809302","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3809302","url":null,"abstract":"The Equity risk-premium and volatility puzzle - is it possible to have a high equity premium and a low risk-free rate with a plausible risk aversion- have received a great deal of attention but beyond this question, the fundamental issues of that puzzle are the followings: what are the economic representations that can provide such results? What are the relevant links between finance and economics? And what should be the consequences for economic decisions makers?<br><br>The classic ways to model the financial economy with a representative agent placed in a Lucas tree model, i.e. maximizing consumption-based utility, where fruit is equivalent to dividend and consumption, failed to explain a high equity premium and a low risk free rate. Even more, simple changes in reasoning failed to provide a consistent macroeconomic and finance representation that sticks to reality. <br><br>This paper presents a new eco-financial approach based on three major changes: the definition of Wealth and wealth increment and their utility for any agent instead of consumption, a permanent change of equilibrium theory, a more realistic model in which the agents fear much more crises than ordinary fluctuations. <br><br>This model borrows two key principles from the model developed in Modigliani and Miller’s seminal papers: firstly an economy with investment opportunities in the market of goods and services and secondly an economy where rational agents always prefer more wealth to less and are indifferent as to whether a given increment to their wealth takes the form of dividend or growth in value .Main changes come from, we generalized this wealth approach to any agent, in a changing of equilibrium world, where crises are much more dreaded than ordinary negative events.<br><br>We will show that it is a way to solve the equity premium and to make consistent: macro, micro, finance and reality.","PeriodicalId":233958,"journal":{"name":"European Finance eJournal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131222902","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"210 errores en valoraciones de empresas (210 Errors in Valuations of Companies)","authors":"Pablo Fernández","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3803995","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3803995","url":null,"abstract":"<b>Spanish Abstract:</b> Este documento contiene 210 errores cometidos en distintas valoraciones de empresas.<br><br>La mayor parte de las valoraciones proceden de arbitrajes, procesos judiciales, compras y ventas de empresas a los que el autor ha tenido acceso. Casi todos los nombres de personas, empresas y ciudades se han modificado.<br><br>Los errores se clasifican en 7 categorías: 1) Errores acerca de la tasa de descuento y del riesgo de la empresa; 2) Errores al calcular o prever los flujos esperados; 3) Errores al calcular el valor terminal; 4) Inconsistencias y errores conceptuales; 5) Errores al interpretar la valoración; 6) Errores al interpretar la contabilidad; y 7) Errores de organización.<br><br><b>English Abstract:</b> This paper contains a collection and classification of 210 errors seen in company valuations performed by financial analysts, investment banks and financial consultants.<br><br>The author had access to most of the valuations referred to in this paper in his capacity as a consultant in company acquisitions, sales, mergers, and arbitrage processes.<br><br>We classify the errors in seven main categories: 1) Errors in the discount rate calculation and concerning the riskiness of the company; 2) Errors when calculating or forecasting the expected cash flows; 3) Errors in the calculation of the residual value; 4) Inconsistencies and conceptual errors; 5) Errors when interpreting the valuation; 6) Errors when interpreting financial reports; and 7) Organizational errors.<br>","PeriodicalId":233958,"journal":{"name":"European Finance eJournal","volume":"89 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132423372","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Impact of Providing Information about the ECB's Instruments on Infation Expectations and Trust in the ECB: Experimental Evidence","authors":"Nils Brouwer, J. de Haan","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3805708","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3805708","url":null,"abstract":"We use a random controlled trial among Dutch households to analyze whether communication about monetary policy instruments impacts inflation expectations and trust in the ECB. All participants in the survey receive information about the ECB’s goal, but only a subset also receives information about how the ECB tries to achieve this. Our results suggest that individuals who are informed about policy instruments have inflation expectations closer to the ECB’s target inflation than individuals who only receive information about the ECB’s objective. Our evidence also indicates that communication about the ECB’s instruments does not impact average trust in the ECB.","PeriodicalId":233958,"journal":{"name":"European Finance eJournal","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116259892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Dynamic Effects of the ECB’s Asset Purchases: A Survey-Based Identification","authors":"Stéphane Lhuissier, Benoît Nguyen","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3802359","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3802359","url":null,"abstract":"This paper estimates the dynamic effects of the ECB's asset purchase programme (APP) using a proxy structural vector autoregression. We construct a novel proxy for structural APP shocks as unexpected changes in the size of additional purchases announced by the ECB. Unexpected changes are inferred from public expectations released in quantitative surveys just before monetary policy announcements. The results consistently show that innovations to APP have expansionary effects on both output and prices: an immediate increase in asset purchases of one percent of GDP leads to a maximum impact in industrial production and consumer prices by 0.15 percent and 0.06 percent, respectively. Overall, APP shocks account for less than a fifth of the long-run macroeconomic variability. Finally, our counterfactual analyses indicate that APP and its successive recalibrations were central in supporting inflation. For example, we find inflation would have fallen into negative territory without December 2015 and March 2016 APP recalibrations.","PeriodicalId":233958,"journal":{"name":"European Finance eJournal","volume":"317 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115834457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Euro Area Banking and Monetary Policy Shocks in the QE Era: A Structural Credit Risk and Vector-autoregression Approach","authors":"A. Kabundi, Francisco Nadal De Simone","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3780502","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3780502","url":null,"abstract":"This paper assesses the effects of monetary policy shocks on the macroeconomy and the euro area banking sector after the global financial crisis. Financial risk-return indicators of the banking sector based on a compound option-based structural credit risk model are embedded in a large macro-financial quarterly database covering the period 2008Q4-2019Q4. A SFAVAR identifies and estimates the shocks’ responses relating them to the endogenous build-up of banks’ vulnerabilities. The study finds that unconventional monetary policy, in particular the Asset Purchase Program of the European Central Bank, seems to have been more successful than conventional monetary policy in raising output and inflation. The desired boost to bank lending has been muted and loan cyclicality has varied across countries and loan types. The performance of the banking sector following monetary policy shocks can be characterized by a drop in expected ROE and ROA, a relaxation of lending conditions and increased correlation between banks’ assets return and the market return, a mechanism pointing to enhanced risk-taking. While banks’ probabilities of default fall following monetary policy shocks, financial leverage and the price of risk increase. Banks’ net worth rises via higher market capitalization and implied assets value together with lower volatility, albeit often incurring more debt. Risk-taking in the banking sector, such as the one observed in the run-up to the global financial crisis, may pose a risk to financial stability, especially if its effects on banks’ vulnerability spread to systemic risk. The endogenous build-up of macro-financial vulnerabilities may need to become part of monetary policymaking.","PeriodicalId":233958,"journal":{"name":"European Finance eJournal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129863436","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Carla Giglio, Frances Shaw, Nicolas Syrichas, Giuseppe Cappelletti
{"title":"Stress-Testing Net Trading Income: The Case of European Banks","authors":"Carla Giglio, Frances Shaw, Nicolas Syrichas, Giuseppe Cappelletti","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3717707","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3717707","url":null,"abstract":"Net trading income is an important but volatile source of income for many euro area banks, highly sensitive to changes in financial market conditions. Using a representative sample of European banks, we study the distribution of net trading income (normalized by total assets) conditional to changes in key macro-financial risk factors. To map the linkages of net trading income with financial risk factors and capture non-linear effects, we implement a dynamic fixed effects quantile model using the method of moments approach. We use the model to empirically estimate and forecast the conditional net trading income distribution from which we quantify tail risk measures and expected losses across banks. We find a heterogeneous and asymmetric impact of the risk factors on the distribution of net trading income. Credit and interest rate spreads affect lower quantiles of the net trading income distribution while stock returns are an important determinant of the upper quantiles. We also find that the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in a significant increase in the 5th and 10th percentile expected capital shortfall. Moreover, adverse scenario forecasts show a wide dispersion of losses and a long-left tail is evident especially in the most severe scenarios. Our findings highlight strong inter-linkages between financial risk factors and trading income and suggest that this tractable methodology is ideal for use as an additional tool in stress test exercises.","PeriodicalId":233958,"journal":{"name":"European Finance eJournal","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127859297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}