Gender Equality & Anti-Discrimination
Equal Opportunities at IWH IWH commits to actively promoting equal opportunities for men and women, going beyond already existing guidelines. In 2013, 2016, 2019, and again in…
See page
Human Resources
Human Resources For information and questions concerning the payroll (earnings certificate, taxes, health insurance certificate etc.) please use the following E-Mail adress:…
See page
Alumni
IWH Alumni The IWH maintains contact with its former employees worldwide. We involve our alumni in our work and keep them informed, for example, with a newsletter. We also plan…
See page
Advances in Using Vector Autoregressions to Estimate Structural Magnitudes
Christiane Baumeister, James D. Hamilton
Econometric Theory,
No. 3,
2024
Abstract
This paper surveys recent advances in drawing structural conclusions from vector autoregressions (VARs), providing a unified perspective on the role of prior knowledge. We describe the traditional approach to identification as a claim to have exact prior information about the structural model and propose Bayesian inference as a way to acknowledge that prior information is imperfect or subject to error. We raise concerns from both a frequentist and a Bayesian perspective about the way that results are typically reported for VARs that are set-identified using sign and other restrictions. We call attention to a common but previously unrecognized error in estimating structural elasticities and show how to correctly estimate elasticities even in the case when one only knows the effects of a single structural shock.
Read article
The Bright Side of Bank Lobbying: Evidence from the Corporate Loan Market
Manthos D. Delis, Iftekhar Hasan, Thomas Y. To, Eliza Wu
Journal of Corporate Finance,
June
2024
Abstract
Bank lobbying has a bitter taste in most forums, ringing the bell of preferential treatment of big banks from governments and regulators. Using corporate loan facilities and hand-matched information on bank lobbying from 1999 to 2017, we show that lobbying banks increase their borrowers' overall performance. This positive effect is stronger for opaque and credit-constrained borrowers, when the lobbying lender possesses valuable information on the borrower, and for borrowers with strong corporate governance. Our findings are consistent with the theory positing that lobbying can provide access to valuable lender-borrower information, resulting in improved efficiency in large firms' corporate financing.
Read article
Do Politicians Affect Firm Outcomes? Evidence from Connections to the German Federal Parliament
André Diegmann, Laura Pohlan, Andrea Weber
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 15,
2024
Abstract
We study how connections to German federal parliamentarians affect firm dynamics by constructing a novel dataset linking politicians and election candidates to the universe of firms. To identify the causal effect of access to political power, we exploit (i) new appointments to the company leadership team and (ii) discontinuities around the marginal seat of party election lists. Our results reveal that connections lead to reductions in firm exits, gradual increases in employment growth without improvements in productivity. Adding information on credit ratings, subsidies and procurement contracts allows us to distinguish between mechanisms driving the effects over the politician’s career.
Read article
Research Data Centre
Research Data Centre (IWH-RDC) Direct link to our Data Offer The IWH Research Data Centre offers external researchers access to microdata and micro-aggregated data sets that…
See page
CompNet Database
The CompNet Competitiveness Database The Competitiveness Research Network (CompNet) is a forum for high level research and policy analysis in the areas of competitiveness and…
See page
International Banking Library
International Banking Library The International Banking Library (IBL) is a web-based platform for the exchange of research on cross-border banking. It provides access to data…
See page
Disentangling Stock Return Synchronicity From the Auditor's Perspective
Iftekhar Hasan, Joseph A. Micale, Qiang Wu
Journal of Business Finance and Accounting,
No. 5,
2024
Abstract
This paper investigates a firm's stock return asynchronicity through the auditor's perspective to distinguish whether this asynchronicity can proxy for the company's firm-specific information or the quality of its information environment. We find a significant and positive association between asynchronicity and audit fees after controlling for auditor quality and other factors that affect audit fees, suggesting that stock return asynchronicity is more likely to capture a company's firm-specific information than its information environment. We also find that asynchronous firms are more likely to receive adverse opinions on their internal controls over financial reporting, but are associated with lower costs of capital and auditor litigation, providing further evidence in support of the firm-specific information argument. Asynchronicity's positive association with audit fees is driven by firms with higher accounting reporting complexity, suggesting stock return asynchronicity captures a firm's complexity, resulting in more significant efforts by the auditor.
Read article