Due to the pandemic, the 51 st Konstanz seminar took place in 2020 only in a much shortened form and virtually.One year later, on September 9 and 10, 2021, around 30 participants were able to exchange ideas on site at the 52 nd Konstanz seminar on monetary theory and policy; others were connected online.The annual symposium brings together experts from academia and central banks as well as young scientists for an intensive exchange.Founded in 1970 by Prof. Karl Brunner, the Konstanz seminar looks back on a unique tradition.The meeting traditionally takes place at the Strandhotel Löchnerhaus on the island of Reichenau on Lake Constance.This year's seminar was organized by Prof. Dr. Keith Küster with the help of other members of the sponsoring association.
This study explores companies’ financing decisions from a new perspective, those of the bank advisers, who are deeply involved in the decision processes, but are nevertheless outsiders. In our survey, corporate advisers of a large German bank report their perception of clients’ decisions. The survey covers both large companies and many SMEs. It confirms the relevance of company size, but also indicates strong heterogeneity within the SMEs. While some SMEs seem to resemble large companies, others differ noticeably. Our results confirm the relevance of strategy, management experience and decision makers’ personalities, but give little support for capital structure theories. The current change in German companies’ financing behavior towards more market-oriented instruments is clearly visible in the responses. The core motivations seem to be a desire for financial stability and flexibility. To secure this, companies tend to combine traditional bank financing with new instruments.
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State-contingent government debt has been proposed as a way to reduce costly debt crisis. However, markets for this type of debt remain very limited, for reasons that are not yet fully understood. This paper describes a new database covering state-contingent government debt issued between 1863 and 2020. Based on these data, this paper shows stylized facts regarding the main design features, and market performance, of state-contingent government debt. It also provides a brief history of state-contingent government borrowing, which is contextualized with a simple theoretical model of state-contingent debt. The results show that there have been several small, heterogeneous, issuances of state-contingent debt, which resemble pilot runs in this new asset class. The paper concludes with some common challenges associated to state-contingent government debt.
The area of online investing is reshaping the financial industry through the emergence of numerous new providers with innovative concepts. This has led to new challenges for customers, such as how to assess the reliability and trustworthiness of the new providers and their offers. This empirical-experimental study has investigated the effectiveness of signaling strategies in offers for digital service innovations. The results could furnish useful input for the market strategies of the providers of innovative services. At the same time, the study serves to test theory; it can be shown that several of the usual assumptions made in the information economic based signaling theory do not apply in all cases. It is also shown that signals used by real financial service providers in the Internet are, in part, of very limited effectiveness.
Large increases in TARGET2 balances in the euro area since 2008 have led to concern and debate about the appropriate interpretation and policy reaction – in particular in TARGET2 creditor countries such as Germany. Against this background, we examine the main drivers of the increases and asymmetries in TARGET2 balances that have emerged in the context of the financial and sovereign debt crises as well as in the context of the Eurosystem’s implementation of quantitative easing (QE) and the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, this paper analyzes the potential risks for euro area member states in the case of (i) the unchanged continuity of the monetary union, (ii) the withdrawal of a member state with (large) TARGET2 liabilities, and (iii) the break-up of the whole monetary union. Depending on the outcome of exit negotiations and the operational handling, there can be direct risks in the form of default losses of TARGET2 balances and indirect risks in the form of threat potentials if TARGET2 debtor countries pretend to plan to leave the euro area. Based on this, we discuss adaption options for the TARGET2 payment system and consider an exit from the ECB’s accommodative monetary policy in order to scale back the high amount of excess liquidity in the euro area banking sector which is the prerequisite for the emergence of TARGET2 balances.
Considering the institutional factors of the German mutual fund market, we analyze equity fund holdings of German retail clients who received financial advice between 2005 and 2014 to investigate whether those investors overweight the bank-affiliated asset manager and if so, whether this bank-affiliated asset manager bias leads to higher fees, i. e. Total Expense Ratios. Our analysis clearly indicates the presence of large bank-affiliated asset management biases for clients of all different banking sectors. Thus, German retail clients follow the biased financial advice they receive from their bank. Surprisingly, this bank-affiliated asset manager bias significantly reduces portfolio costs measured via mutual fund fees. Therefore, German banks disproportionately promote products of bank-affiliated asset managers but this biased advice does not lead to higher portfolio costs.
The modern financial market theory (MFMT) – based on the efficient market hypothesis, rational expectation theory, and modern portfolio theory – has become the standard approach in financial market economics. In this article, the MFMT will be critically reviewed using the logic of human action (or: praxeology) as an epistemological metatheory. It will be shown that the MFMT exhibits (praxeo-)logical deficiencies so that it cannot provide investors with well-founded decision-making support in real-world financial markets.
As a result of technological innovations in data processing, the exploitation of Internet usage data in relation to search engines or social networks is becoming increasingly intriguing for understanding and anticipating stock market movements. We analyze the impact of three alternative investor attention variables, i. e. Google search volume, Wikipedia page views, and stock market-relevant news on the rapidly growing FinTech sector. The result of the simultaneous correlation analysis reveals a highly significant correlation between the trading activities of the FinTech sector and the three investor attention variables. The time-delayed regression analysis complements the results by identifying substantial changes of the effects within one week considering the order of magnitude and sign. Furthermore, multivariate regression analysis highlights that the explanatory power for future stock trading activities and illiquidity primarily depends on Google search volume and stock market-relevant news volume, while the simultaneous correlations are best explained by the number of visits to the corresponding Wikipedia page.
This paper presents an analysis of the impact of the Bank of Japan’s low-interest rate policy on the banking sector in the wake of the 1998 Japanese financial crisis. We show how the low-cost liquidity provision as a means to stabilize banks has created a growing gap between deposits and loans in the financial system and how the low-interest rate policy has compressed interest margins as the traditional source of banks’ income. Efficiency scores are compiled to estimate the effect of the Bank of Japan’s monetary policy on banks’ technical efficiency. The estimation results provide evidence that the Japanese monetary policy has contributed to declining efficiency in the banking sector, despite – or possibly because of – the increasing concentration within this sector.
The paper explores the role, evolution and ruling principles of the concept of “money” in the 21st Century. In this continuously evolving context, cryptocurrencies and Blockchain technology are widely considered the most relevant monetary innovations of the last decades. By means of a macro-founded logical-analytical approach combined with statistical evidence, the paper provides arguments: 1. dismissing the “innovation myth” behind cryptocurrencies because of de facto representing a comeback of the private issue of means of payments and, more problematically, seigniorage at its best; 2. confirming that crypto-tokens do not comply with basic, still ruling monetary principles; 3. suggesting that excess liquidity is already invested in crypto-markets (which are themselves “inflationary”, namely not backed by real value (i.e. GDP). The concrete risk is, once again in economic history, represented by facing a financial bubble.
After the prudential requirements introduced by EMIR in 2012, the European Union took a further step when it adopted a regulation in 2021 on the framework for the recovery and resolution of central counterparties. The regulation is based on the bank recovery and resolution directive of 2014. This paper provides a critical overview of the new regulation by focusing on the question of whether the bank resolution tools are useful and effective in the case of central counterparty resolutions.
This paper analyzes cross border credit from a new perspective: We assess globally aggregated foreign-denominated credit to non-bank borrowers (provided by the BIS) and analyze which factors drive debt denominated in yen, euro and US dollar between 2003 and 2020. The determinants we analyze include global economic activity, global commodity prices and the evolution of assets in the FED balance sheet. We also consider assets in the ECB and the BOJ Balance in a second step. Our results show that global economic activity is the main driver of dollar debt only before the financial crisis while the Fed balance sheet drives dollar debt afterwards. We also identify a crowding-out effect of FED balance activities on debt denominated in yen and euro. On the other hand, effects of changes in the ECB and BOJ balance are qualitatively less important and more stable.
The 6th European Retail Investment Conference was hosted by the Stuttgart Stock Exchange from May 12th to 14th, 2021. Due to the persisting global pandemic, this year’s conference was held exclusively via online platforms. The conference chairs invited academics and practitioners to participate and discuss empirical and theoretical research focusing on retail investor products and services, new trends in the behavior of private customers, investors’ decision-making, investor protection schemes and market microstructure. The keynote about “Climate Finance” was held by Prof. Dr. Zacharias Sautner, Professor of Finance at Frankfurt School of Finance & Management.
The interest rate is generally considered as an important driver of macroeconomic investment characterised by a particular form of path dependency, “hysteresis”. At the same time, the interest rate channel is a central ingredient of monetary policy transmission. In this context, we shed light on the issue (which currently is a matter of concern for many central banks) whether uncertainty over future interest rates at the zero lower bound hampers monetary policy transmission. As an innovation we derive the exact shape of the “hysteretic” impact of rate changes on macroeconomic investment under different sorts of uncertainty. Starting with hysteresis effects on the micro level, we apply an adequate aggregation procedure to derive the interest rate effects on a macro level. Our results may serve as a guideline for future central banks’ policies on how to stimulate investment in times of low or even zero interest rates and uncertainty.
The increasing requirement for action on climate change in developing countries has led to the inclusion of environmental aspects in microfinance objectives, in addition to social and financial performance, and hence to the appearance of green microfinance. To date, financing for modern energy service has proven to be an attractive option to offset adverse climate change related effects for the poor. This article sheds some light on factors predicting clean energy finance involvement of MFIs. By using a worldwide survey among microfinance institutions on rural lending and IT solutions implemented by YAPU Solutions, this study investigates how institutional characteristics and economic growth relate to green energy micro-credit. The findings provide evidence of a significantly positive relationship between the maturity and business sustainability of an MFI and the likelihood of offering green energy loans. Moreover, MFIs managed by female managers and located in wealthy countries are less willing to commence the finance of green energy.
This paper examines the prediction accuracy of various machine learning (ML) algorithms for firm credit risk. It marks the first attempt to leverage data on corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) to better predict credit risk in an ML context. Even though the literature on default and credit risk is vast, the potential explanatory power of CSI for firm credit risk prediction remains unexplored. Previous research has shown that CSI may jeopardize firm survival and thus potentially comes into play in predicting credit risk. We find that prediction accuracy varies considerably between algorithms, with advanced machine learning algorithms (e. g. random forests) outperforming traditional ones (e. g. linear regression). Random forest regression achieves an out-of-sample prediction accuracy of 89.75% for adjusted R2 due to the ability of capturing non-linearity and complex interaction effects in the data. We further show that including information on CSI in firm credit risk prediction does not consistently increase prediction accuracy. One possible interpretation of this result is that CSI does not (yet) seem to be systematically reflected in credit ratings, despite prior literature indicating that CSI increases credit risk. Our study contributes to improving firm credit risk predictions using a machine learning design and to exploring how CSI is reflected in credit risk ratings.
The bursting of the Japanese bubble economy in the early 1990s put the stage for a lasting lowzero-, and negative-interest rate environment, which fundamentally changed the business environment for the Japanese commercial banks. On the income side, with interest margins becoming increasingly depressed, net interest revenues declined, which forced the banks to expand revenues from fees and commissions. The banks had to cut costs by reducing the number of employees, closing branches and merging into larger banks. The gradual concentration process has most recently cumulated in the relaxation of the monopoly law. With the capital allocation function of banks being undermined, the Japanese economy has become zombified, suffering from anemic growth.
