Financial Environment (financial + environment)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Do Business Schools Have a Role in the Current Financial Environment?

DECISION SCIENCES JOURNAL OF INNOVATIVE EDUCATION, Issue 2 2009
Stephen C. Bushardt
First page of article [source]


The impact of the euro on Europe's financial markets

FINANCIAL MARKETS, INSTITUTIONS & INSTRUMENTS, Issue 3 2003
Gabriele Galati
This paper presents an overview of the impact of the introduction of the euro on Europe's financial structure over the first four years since the start of EMU. It analyzes changes in money markets, bond markets, equity markets and foreign exchange markets. Euro's role in originating or catalyzing trends has been uneven across the spectrum of financial markets. From the supply side, banks and investors in fixed income markets have become more focused on the characteristics of individual borrowers rather than the nationality of the issuer and have built up expertise to evaluate credit risk. European equity markets have also been affected by the enhanced ability of investors to build strategies with a pan-European perspective as prices increasingly reflected risk factors specific to industrial sectors rather than individual countries. On the borrower side, EMU has increased the attractiveness of market-based financing methods by allowing debt issuers to tap institutional portfolios across the euro area. Lower barriers to cross-border financial transactions have also increased the contestability of the market for financial services, be it at the wholesale or the retail level. The introduction of the euro has also highlighted the shortcomings of existing institutional structures and areas where excessive focus on narrowly defined interests may stand in the way of realizing the full potential benefits from the new environment. Diverging legal and institutional infrastructures and market practices can impede further financial market development and deepening. Hence, the euro has put a premium on cooperation between national authorities and institution as a means of achieving a more harmonized financial environment. The impact of EMU on depth in foreign exchange markets has been less clear-cut, as volatility, spreads, trading volumes and liquidity appear not to have changed in a substantial way. Overall, it seems that the new currency has made some progress towards the goal of becoming a currency of international stature that would rival that of the US dollar. However, a number of the necessary next steps towards achieving this goal are also among the trickiest to implement. [source]


The Liquidity Premium in the Money Market: A Comparison of the German Mark Period and the Euro Area

GERMAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 2 2006
Alain Durré
Expectations hypothesis; money market; liquidity premium; cointegration analysis Abstract. This paper investigates to what extent the expectations hypothesis of the term structure (EHTS) of interest rates receives some support since the launch of the European single currency. Empirical evidence shows that in general this theory applies to most European countries, and to Germany in particular. The objective of this paper thus is twofold. First, the EHTS for the German money market and for a larger sample including the German mark period and the euro money market is tested in order to check whether the results for the former are affected by the new financial environment since January 1999. Second, the implications of the results for the monetary policy assessment are discussed. We estimate cointegrating vector autoregressive models in order to quantify the level of the liquidity premium. The results suggest that financial markets do not consider the monetary policy of the European Central Bank simply as the one prevailing during the German period. [source]


Assessing Profitability Factors in the Greek Banking System: A Multicriteria Methodology

INTERNATIONAL TRANSACTIONS IN OPERATIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 5 2002
Ch. Spathis
The increasing competition in the national and international banking markets, the changeover towards monetary union and the new technological innovations herald major changes in the banking environment, and challenge all banks to make timely preparations in order to enter into the new competitive monetary and financial environment. Therefore, it is interesting to investigate the effectiveness of Greek banks, as it is valued by the financial markets, i.e. the greater the efficacy the higher the competitiveness and vice versa. Taking into consideration the bank assets, we distinguish banks into small and large ones. Finding factors that make the differences in such effectiveness may explain the effective advantage of these two types of financial institutions and help us understand the ,financial intermediation' industry in Greece better. Based on their size, a classification of Greek banks, in a multivariate environment, according to the return and operation factors for the years 1990,1999 takes place. In order to investigate the differences of profitability and efficiency between small and large Greek banks, as well as the factors of profitability and operation related with the size of banks, a multicriteria methodology has been used. The results of this paper may help us determine the key success (or failure) factors of these two categories of Greek banks as well as the responsible banking decision,makers for future readjustments. [source]


The Contributions of Stewart Myers to the Theory and Practice of Corporate Finance,

JOURNAL OF APPLIED CORPORATE FINANCE, Issue 4 2008
Franklin Allen
In a 40-plus year career notable for path-breaking work on capital structure and innovations in capital budgeting and valuation, MIT finance professor Stewart Myers has had a remarkable influence on both the theory and practice of corporate finance. In this article, two of his former students, a colleague, and a co-author offer a brief survey of Professor Myers's accomplishments, along with an assessment of their relevance for the current financial environment. These contributions are seen as falling into three main categories: ,Work on "debt overhang" and the financial "pecking order" that not only provided plausible explanations for much corporate financing behavior, but can also be used to shed light on recent developments, including the reluctance of highly leveraged U.S. financial institutions to raise equity and the recent "mandatory" infusions of capital by the U.S. Treasury. ,Contributions to capital budgeting that complement and reinforce his research on capital structure. By providing a simple and intuitive way to capture the tax benefits of debt when capital structure changes over time, his adjusted present value (or APV) approach has not only become the standard in LBO and venture capital firms, but accomplishes in practice what theorists like M&M had urged finance practitioners to do some 30 years earlier: separate the real operating profitability of a company or project from the "second-order" effects of financing. And his real options valuation method, by recognizing the "option-like" character of many corporate assets, has provided not only a new way of valuing "growth" assets, but a method and, indeed, a language for bringing together the disciplines of corporate strategy and finance. ,Starting with work on estimating fair rates of return for public utilities, he has gone on to develop a cost-of-capital and capital allocation framework for insurance companies, as well as a persuasive explanation for why the rate-setting process for railroads in the U.S. and U.K. has created problems for those industries. [source]


Indictments, Myths, and Citizen Mobilization in Argentina: A Discourse Analysis

LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY, Issue 4 2005
Ariel C. Armony
ABSTRACT Most accounts of the turmoil that shook Argentina in 2001,2 focused on the harmful impact of the financial environment, imprudent policymaking, and institutional weaknesses. These explanations paid little attention to the cultural frames and cognitive patterns that underlie the connection between civil society and political society. Based on a discourse analysis of Internet forums and presidential speeches, this article argues that the Argentine crisis cannot be fully grasped without considering the link between collective behavior and ingrained conceptions of national identity. The analysis finds that national myths and definitional questions of national purpose are key factors in the way citizens behave in the context of an economic and political crisis. [source]


Financial factors and company investment decisions in transitional China

MANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS, Issue 2 2009
Jia Liu
We investigate the propensity of Chinese publicly listed firms to invest in response to financial factors, according to the a priori degree of a firm's information problems: industry sector, ownership structure and firm size. The firms in primary and tertiary industries are found to be liquidity-constrained in their investment decisions. The investment-cash flow sensitivity of the firms in secondary industry indicates that they lost privileged access to credit in the course of China's market transition. However, we find no evidence that financial liberalization resulted in an easing of financing constraints for small- and medium-sized firms. Our result indicates that agency problems, stemming from a state-controlling pyramidal ownership structure, are responsible for the misallocation of internal funds. The importance of bankruptcy and agency costs in relation to debt finance for certain types of borrowers reflects the transitional nature of the financial environment facing Chinese firms. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Dynamic effects of financial intermediation over the business cycle

ECONOMIC INQUIRY, Issue 1 2000
CS Lehr
This paper provides a empirical evidence that the financial intermediation disturbances can generate business cycles. We examine three countries whose financial sectors are fully developed but quite distinct in their institutional and regulatory circumstances; thus, we can infer whether financial intermediation disturbances differ across dissimilar financial environments. We find that the dynamic responses of output to financial intermediation shocks exhibit similar patterns in all cases studied. However, the various institutional and regulatory circumstances have generated different propagation mechanisms transmitting the financial disturbance to output in ways that lead the magnitudes of the responses to deviate across economies. [source]