Topic Financial Markets

Do Business Tax Rates Affect Real Investment?

Policymakers widely use tax-based incentives to spur investment and stimulate economic growth. Tax policy has been at the center of emergency measures during the Covid-19 pandemic, and it is now as countries face a significant deterioration in public finances. Yet, empirical tax research is still in disagreement on how taxes affect business investment. We investigate the effect of local business...

Foreign Exchange Intervention: A New Database

We construct a novel database of monthly foreign exchange interventions for 49 countries over up to 22 years. We build on a text classification approach that extracts information about interventions from news articles and calibrate our procedure to data about actual interventions. This new dataset allows us to document stylized facts about the use of foreign exchange interventions for countries that ...

Contracting Matters: Hedging Producers and Consumers with a Renewable Energy Pool

Renewable energy installations are rapidly gaining market share due to falling technology costs and supportive policies. Meanwhile, the energy price crisis resulting from the Russian-Ukrainian war has shifted the energy policy debate toward the question of how consumers can benefit more from the low and stable generation costs of renewable electricity. Here we suggest a Renewable Pool (“RE-Pool”) under ...

The Multifaceted Impact of US Trade Policy on Financial Markets

We study the multifaceted effects of trade policy shocks on financial markets using a structural vector autoregression identified via event day heteroskedasticity. We find that restrictive US trade policy shocks affect US and international stock prices heterogeneously, but generally negatively. They increase market uncertainty, lower US interest rates, and lead to an appreciation of the US dollar. ...

Decommissioning of Nuclear Power Plants: Regulation, Financing, and Production

Access to Digital Finance: Equity Crowdfunding across Countries and Platforms

Financing entrepreneurship spurs innovation and economic growth. Digital financial platforms that crowdfund equity for entrepreneurs have emerged globally, yet they remain poorly understood. We model equity crowdfunding in terms of the relationship between the number of investors and the amount of money raised per pitch. We examine heterogeneity in the average amount raised per pitch that is associated ...

Leverage, Competitiveness and Systemic Risk in Banking

Die Steuerbefreiung von Fremdkapitalzinsen verschafft Fremdkapital einen erheblichen Finanzierungsvorteil gegenüber Eigenkapital. Dieser Steuervorteil bewirkt, dass insbesondere Banken mit extreme Schuldenhebel arbeiten und somit große Überschuldungsrisiken eingehen. Diese Steuerbefreiung von Fremdkapitalzinsen widerspricht somit den Zielen der prudenziellen Eigenkapitalregulierung, die zum Zwecke ...

Access to Digital Finance: Equity Crowdfunding across Countries and Platforms

Financing entrepreneurship spurs innovation and economic growth. Digital financial platforms that crowdfund equity for entrepreneurs have emerged globally, yet they remain poorly understood. We model equity crowdfunding in terms of the relationship between the number of investors and the amount of money raised per pitch. We examine heterogeneity in the average amount raised per pitch that is associated ...

Integrating Out Natural Disaster Shocks

We study the role of international financial integration in buffering natural disaster shocks, using a large sample of advanced and emerging economies. Conditioning on such exogenous events addresses the endogeneity between financial structures and economic conditions. We document that integration improves shock absorption: output, consumption, and investment are significantly higher after a shock ...

The Long Reach of Class Origin on Financial Investments and Net Worth

In this study, we argue that parents’ class position may influence the type and timing of their offspring's investments in financial assets. These investments may facilitate net worth accumulation beyond direct transfers, contributing to the intergenerational reproduction of social positions. We test these expectations using retrospective life history and prospective panel data for 14 countries from ...