Reiner Martin
- 11 April 2005
- OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 28Details
- Abstract
- In the course of the 1990s, the EU has embarked on an ambitious regulatory reform programme for a number of European network industries, such as telecommunications, energy and transport. This paper analyses the potential benefits of successful reforms in these sectors with a focus on the price effects of regulatory reforms. Following a review of the existing empirical literature in this field, the paper discusses the evolution of the current regulatory framework for network industries in the EU. An empirical analysis of the main determinants of recent price developments in these industries provides evidence that regulatory reform measures had a substantial downward impact on prices in the four sectors under review.
- JEL Code
- E30 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles→General
L33 : Industrial Organization→Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise→Comparison of Public and Private Enterprises and Nonprofit Institutions, Privatization, Contracting Out
L51 : Industrial Organization→Regulation and Industrial Policy→Economics of Regulation
L93 : Industrial Organization→Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities→Air Transportation
L94 : Industrial Organization→Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities→Electric Utilities
L95 : Industrial Organization→Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities→Gas Utilities, Pipelines, Water Utilities
L96 : Industrial Organization→Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities→Telecommunications
- 18 April 2007
- OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 61Details
- Abstract
- Overall, the prospects for a continued and reasonably fast real convergence process between the EU 8 countries and the euro area are good. However, the continuation of the rapid progress made by many EU 8 countries in the past cannot be taken for granted. In fact, in order to ensure that fast economic growth in the EU 8 countries remains sustainable, it is crucial for these economies to take appropriate policy action. First it is important to recall that sound macroeconomic policies including credible monetary policy and appropriate fiscal policy are essential to ensure the appropriate framework conditions for further growth and convergence. Second, they need to address structural labour market problems, in particular by reducing regional and skill mismatches. Third, they must make further efforts to improve the business environment, in order to ensure that the capital accumulation process continues and R&D investments increase. Many of the above-mentioned facets of growth-enhancing policy will also help to ensure a continued inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI), which in turn is expected to help accelerate the convergence process.
- 27 September 2007
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 813Details
- Abstract
- Numerous countries have experienced boom-bust episodes in asset prices in the past 20 years. This study looks at stylised facts and conducts statistical and econometric analysis for such episodes, distinguishing between industrialised countries that experienced external adjustment (via real effective exchange rate depreciation during busts) and those that relied on an internal adjustment process (and experienced no depreciation). The study finds that different adjustment experiences are correlated with the degree of macroeconomic imbalances and balance sheet problems. Internal adjustment seems more prevalent when financial vulnerabilities, excess demand and competitiveness loss remain relatively contained in the boom. In the bust, internal adjusters experience more protracted but less deep downturns than external adjusters as imbalances unwind more slowly. Some Central and East European EU Member States are currently experiencing strong credit and asset price growth in conjunction with rapid economic expansion. Against this background the experience of other countries may raise awareness of related policy challenges.
- JEL Code
- E32 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles→Business Fluctuations, Cycles
E63 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook→Comparative or Joint Analysis of Fiscal and Monetary Policy, Stabilization, Treasury Policy
E65 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook→Studies of Particular Policy Episodes
- 18 September 2008
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 929Details
- Abstract
- This paper analyzes the relation between exchange rate volatility and several macroeconomic variables, namely real per capita output growth, the credit cycle, the stock of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) and the current account balance, in the Central and Eastern European EU Member States. Using panel estimations for the period between 1995 and 2006, we find that lower exchange rate volatility is associated with higher growth (for relatively less financially developed economies), higher stocks of FDI (for relatively more open economies), higher current account deficits, and a more volatile development of the credit to GDP ratio.
- JEL Code
- F3 : International Economics→International Finance
F4 : International Economics→Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance
F5 : International Economics→International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy
- 30 June 2010
- OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 114Details
- Abstract
- The paper first reviews the main drivers of the growth and real convergence process in central, eastern and south-eastern Europe (CESEE) since 2000 and assesses the key macro-financial strengths and vulnerabilities of the region at the beginning of the global economic and financial crisis. The main part of the paper reviews financial and real economic developments in these countries since the crisis started to impact the CESEE region. The paper finds that developments have been rather heterogeneous in the region. CESEE countries with the largest economic imbalances tended to be most affected. National and international support measures appear to have helped to stabilise financial markets, and parent banks of foreign bank subsidiaries in CESEE were committed to sustaining their exposure to the region. The degree to which CESEE governments were able to use policy instruments to counter the real effects of the crisis is rather heterogeneous, depending inter alia on the exchange rate regime in place and the initial fiscal positions.
- JEL Code
- E52 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit→Monetary Policy
E58 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit→Central Banks and Their Policies
E44 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Money and Interest Rates→Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy - Network
- Eurosystem Monetary Transmission Network
- 28 May 2014
- FINANCIAL STABILITY REVIEW - ARTICLEFinancial Stability Review Issue 1, 2014Details
- Abstract
- The global financial crisis revealed a need for macro-prudential policy tools to mitigate the build-up of systemic risk in the financial system and to enhance the resilience of financial institutions against such risks once they have materialised. In the EU, macro-prudential policy is an area that is in an early stage of development. This is also true as regards the use of instruments to address systemic risk for which there is so far only limited experience to draw on. Hence, there is general uncertainty about the effectiveness of such instruments in practice. Nevertheless, country-level experience can serve as a useful yardstick for formulating macro-prudential policy in the EU. This special feature considers the experience of European countries with macro-prudential policy implementation. Overall, the evidence surveyed here indicates that macro-prudential policies can be effective in targeting excessive credit growth and rapidly rising asset prices, although other policies can be a useful complement to reduce the build-up of imbalances. At the same time, the appropriate timing of macro-prudential policy measures remains a challenging task.
- JEL Code
- G00 : Financial Economics→General→General
- 28 May 2015
- FINANCIAL STABILITY REVIEW - ARTICLEFinancial Stability Review Issue 1, 2015Details
- Abstract
- The weight of non-performing exposures (NPEs) on the balance sheets of European banks is a cause for concern for policy-makers; yet resolving the issue presents a number of challenges. This special feature presents an overview of the scale of the NPE problem, highlights several operational aspects that are critical for effectively resolving the problem, and outlines the merits of various resolution strategies.
- JEL Code
- G00 : Financial Economics→General→General
- 24 November 2016
- FINANCIAL STABILITY REVIEW - ARTICLEFinancial Stability Review Issue 2, 2016Details
- Abstract
- The high stock of non-performing loans (NPLs) on the balance sheets of euro area banks continues to be an important cause for concern for policymakers. Efforts to resolve this problem have increased significantly in the course of 2016, by supervisors and macroprudential policymakers alike. To relieve capital constraints, these efforts, however, must be complemented with structural reforms to recover the value of NPLs in some countries. Against this background, this special feature focuses on impediments to the functioning of a market for NPL sales. It highlights sources of informational asymmetry and structural inefficiencies. Among indicators of market failure, it distinguishes between supply and demand factors that impede market functioning. In light of the identified externalities, public policy responses are warranted to reduce the cost and duration of debt recovery while also addressing information asymmetries between better-informed banks and potential investors. In certain circumstances the establishment of asset management companies (AMCs) may help to accelerate the value recovery process for banks, while avoiding adverse macroeconomic side effects. Constraints on and limitations of AMCs are also reviewed in this special feature.
- JEL Code
- G00 : Financial Economics→General→General
- 19 June 2017
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 2077Details
- Abstract
- We contribute to the empirical literature on the impact of shocks to bank capital in the euro area by estimating a Bayesian VAR model identied with sign restrictions. The variables included in the VAR are those typically used in monetary policy analysis, extended to include aggregate banking sector variables. We estimate two shocks affecting the euro area economy, namely a demand shock and a shock to bank capital. The main findings of the paper are as follows: i) Impulse-response analysis shows that in response to a shock to bank capital, banks boost capital ratios by reducing their relative exposure to riskier assets and by adjusting lending to a larger extent than they increase the level of capital and reserves per se; ii) Historical shock decomposition analysis shows that bank capital shocks have contributed to increasing capital ratios since the crisis, impairing bank lending growth and contributing to widen bank lending spreads; and iii) counterfactual analysis shows that higher capital ratios pre-crisis would have helped dampening the euro area credit and business cycle. This suggests that going forward the use of capital-based macroprudential policy instruments may be helpful to avoid a repetition of the events seen since the start of the global financial crisis.
- JEL Code
- G21 : Financial Economics→Financial Institutions and Services→Banks, Depository Institutions, Micro Finance Institutions, Mortgages
C32 : Mathematical and Quantitative Methods→Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models, Multiple Variables→Time-Series Models, Dynamic Quantile Regressions, Dynamic Treatment Effect Models, Diffusion Processes
C11 : Mathematical and Quantitative Methods→Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General→Bayesian Analysis: General
- 29 November 2017
- FINANCIAL STABILITY REVIEW - ARTICLEFinancial Stability Review Issue 2, 2017Details
- Abstract
- When banks judge that more value can be extracted by offering non-performing loans (NPLs) for sale rather than working them out themselves, potential investors cannot be sure that the credit quality of the assets is as good as the banks portray it to be. Such information asymmetries in the NPL market drive a wedge between the prices that investors are prepared to pay for NPLs and the prices that banks are prepared to sell them for. While information asymmetries can be overcome through investor due diligence, this requires specialist expertise and the costs of valuing NPL portfolios can be very high. As few investors have the resources to absorb such costs, barriers to entering the market are compounded. This appears to explain why the euro area NPL markets display the features of an oligopsony, a situation where there is a concentration of market power among a limited number of investors, which pushes traded prices even lower. At the same time, potential NPL investors can face coordination challenges when debtors have multiple loans with different banks. In such situations, investors must face the prospect of competing with other creditors for the debtor’s resources. While coordination between banks for common exposures may alleviate this problem, this too can be costly, weighing further on market prices. By offering the prospect of greater transparency in NPL markets, fostering wider investor participation and addressing coordination issues, NPL transaction platforms could help in overcoming all three of these market failures. The attendant improvement in market liquidity would allow banks to achieve better prices for NPL sales, preserve their capital and mitigate financial stability risks. This special feature outlines the desirable features of NPL transaction platforms and discusses their operational implementation.
- JEL Code
- G00 : Financial Economics→General→General
- 24 May 2018
- FINANCIAL STABILITY REVIEW - BOXFinancial Stability Review Issue 1, 2018Details
- Abstract
- Improving operating efficiency is key if euro area banks are to raise their profitability to sustainable levels. The FSR has been consistently reporting on the basis of accounting indicators, such as the cost-to-income ratio (CIR) and the cost-to-assets ratio, that, on aggregate, euro area banks’ cost efficiency has deteriorated somewhat since 2010. While the improving cyclical environment is supporting bank profitability, raising it to levels that can ensure banks are able to provide financing to the real economy in a sustainable manner would benefit from improving their cost efficiency.
- 1 August 2019
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 2305Details
- Abstract
- We use an industrial organisation approach to quantify the size of Total Factor Productivity Growth (TFPG) for euro area banks after the crisis and decompose it into its main driving factors. In addition, we disentangle permanent and time-varying inefficiency in the banking sector. This is important because lack of distinction may lead to biased estimates of inefficiency and because the set of policies needed in both cases is different. We focus on 17 euro area countries over the period 2006 to 2017. We find that cost efficiency in the euro area banking sector amounted to around 84% on average over the 2006 to 2017 period. In addition, we observe that Total Factor Productivity growth for the median euro area bank decreased from around 2% in 2007 to around 1% in 2017, with technological progress being the largest contributor, followed by technical efficiency. Given the need to boost productivity and enhance profitability in the euro area banking sector, these findings suggests that bank’s efforts in areas such as rationalisation of branches, digitalisation of business processes and possibly mergers and acquisitions should be intensified.
- JEL Code
- C23 : Mathematical and Quantitative Methods→Single Equation Models, Single Variables→Panel Data Models, Spatio-temporal Models
D24 : Microeconomics→Production and Organizations→Production, Cost, Capital, Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity, Capacity
G21 : Financial Economics→Financial Institutions and Services→Banks, Depository Institutions, Micro Finance Institutions, Mortgages
- 16 September 2019
- MACROPRUDENTIAL BULLETIN - ARTICLE - No. 8Details
- Abstract
- How do changes in bank capital requirements affect bank lending, lending spreads and the broader macroeconomy? The answer to this question is important for calibrating and assessing macroprudential policies. There is, however, relatively little empirical evidence to answer this question in the case of the euro area countries. This article contributes to filling this gap by studying the effects of changes in economic bank capital buffers in the four largest euro area countries. We use bank-level data and macroeconomic information to estimate a bank-internal, target level of economic capital ratio, i.e. the capital ratio that a bank would like to hold considering its own characteristics (size, profitability, risk aversion of its creditors, risk exposure, etc.) and macroeconomic conditions (expected GDP growth, etc.). Economic bank capital buffers are then computed as the difference between the current and the target economic capital ratio. However, due to adjustment costs, banks cannot adjust the actual capital ratio to the target level instantaneously. As a result, a change in the target capital ratio will result in an instantaneous change in the economic capital buffer. These buffers are aggregated at the country level and included in a panel Bayesian vector auto regressive (VAR) model. With the VAR, it is then possible to compute the response of macroeconomic and banking variables to a change in the buffer. The idea is that changes in economic capital buffers mimic the effects a change in regulatory capital requirements would have on the economy. We find that a negative economic capital buffer shock, i.e. a decline in actual capital ratios below the target level, leads to a modest decline in output and prices and to a larger decline in bank lending growth. By affecting the difference between actual and target economic capital ratios, these findings suggest that countercyclical capital-based macroprudential policy measures can be useful to dampen the financial cycle.
- JEL Code
- C11 : Mathematical and Quantitative Methods→Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General→Bayesian Analysis: General
E58 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit→Central Banks and Their Policies
G21 : Financial Economics→Financial Institutions and Services→Banks, Depository Institutions, Micro Finance Institutions, Mortgages
- 15 May 2020
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 2411Details
- Abstract
- We contribute to the empirical literature on the impact of non-performing loan (NPL) ratios on aggregate banking sector variables and the macroeconomy by estimating a panel Bayesian VAR model for twelve euro area countries. The model is estimated assuming a hierarchical prior that allows for country-specific coefficients. The VAR includes a large set of variables and is identified via Choleski factorisation. We estimate the impact of exogenous shocks to the change in NPL ratios across countries. The main findings of the paper are as follows: i ) An impulse response analysis shows that an exogenous increase in the change in NPL ratios tends to depress bank lending volumes, widens bank lending spreads and leads to a fall in real GDP growth and residential real estate prices; ii ) A forecast error variance decomposition shows that shocks to the change in NPL ratios explain a relatively large share of the variance of the variables in the VAR, particularly for countries that experienced a large increase in NPL ratios during the recent crises; and iii ) A three-year structural out-of-sample scenario analysis provides quantitative evidence that reducing banks' NPL ratios can produce significant benefits in euro area countries in terms of improved macroeconomic and financial conditions.
- JEL Code
- G21 : Financial Economics→Financial Institutions and Services→Banks, Depository Institutions, Micro Finance Institutions, Mortgages
C32 : Mathematical and Quantitative Methods→Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models, Multiple Variables→Time-Series Models, Dynamic Quantile Regressions, Dynamic Treatment Effect Models, Diffusion Processes
C11 : Mathematical and Quantitative Methods→Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General→Bayesian Analysis: General