Physical Climate Change Risks and the Sovereign Creditworthiness of Emerging Economies
Hannes Böhm
IWH-Diskussionspapiere,
Nr. 8,
2020
Abstract
I show that rising temperatures can detrimentally affect the sovereign creditworthiness of emerging economies. To this end, I collect long-term monthly temperature data of 54 emerging countries. I calculate a country’s temperature deviation from its historical average, which approximates present day climate change trends. Running regressions from 1994m1-2018m12, I find that higher temperature anomalies lower sovereign bond performances (i.e. increase sovereign risk) significantly for countries that are warmer on average and have lower seasonality. The estimated magnitudes suggest that affected countries likely face significant increases in their sovereign borrowing costs if temperatures continue to rise due to climate change. However, results indicate that stronger institutions can make a country more resilient towards temperature shocks, which holds independent of a country’s climate.
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What Drives the Commodity-Sovereign-Risk-Dependence in Emerging Market Economies?
Hannes Böhm, Stefan Eichler, Stefan Gießler
IWH-Diskussionspapiere,
Nr. 23,
2019
Abstract
Using daily data for 34 emerging markets in the period 1994-2016, we find robust evidence that higher export commodity prices are associated with higher sovereign bond returns (indicating lower sovereign risk). The economic effect is especially pronounced for heavy commodity exporters. Examining the drivers, we find, first, that commodity-dependence is higher for countries that export large volumes of volatile commodities and that the effect increases in times of recessions, high inflation, and expansionary U.S. monetary policy. Second, the importance of raw material prices for sovereign financing can likely be mitigated if a country improves institutions and tax systems, attracts FDI inflows, invests in manufacturing, machinery and infrastructure, builds up reserve assets and opens capital and trade accounts. Third, the concentration of commodities within a country’s portfolio, its government indebtedness or amount of received development assistance appear to be only of secondary importance for commodity-dependence.
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Corporate Misconduct and the Cost of Private Debt: Evidence from China
Xian Gu, Iftekhar Hasan, Haitian Lu
Comparative Economic Studies,
2019
Abstract
Using a comprehensive dataset of corporate lawsuits in China, we investigate the implications of corporate misconduct on the cost of private debt. Evidence reveals that firms involved in litigations obtain subsequent loans with stricter pricing terms, 15.1 percent higher loan spreads, than non-litigated borrowers. Strong political connection and repeated relationship help to flatten the sensitivity of loan pricing to litigation. Nonbank financial institutions react in stronger manner to corporate misconduct than traditional banks in pricing loans. Overall, we show that private debt holders care about borrowers’ wrongdoing in the past.
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Pricing Sin Stocks: Ethical Preference vs. Risk Aversion
Stefano Colonnello, Giuliano Curatola, Alessandro Gioffré
European Economic Review,
2019
Abstract
We develop an ethical preference-based model that reproduces the average return and volatility spread between sin and non-sin stocks. Our investors do not necessarily boycott sin companies. Rather, they are open to invest in any company while trading off dividends against ethicalness. When dividends and ethicalness are complementary goods and investors are sufficiently risk averse, the model predicts that the dividend share of sin companies exhibits a positive relation with the future return and volatility spreads. An empirical analysis supports the model’s predictions. Taken together, our results point to the importance of ethical preferences for investors’ portfolio choices and asset prices.
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Benchmark on Themselves: CEO-directors’ Influence on the CEO Compensation
Bill Francis, Iftekhar Hasan, Yun Zhu
Managerial Finance,
im Erscheinen
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to examine whether or not the chief executive officers’ (CEO) compensation is affected by the compensation of the outside directors sitting on their board, who are also CEOs of other firms.
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IWH-Insolvenzforschung
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The Income Elasticity of Mortgage Loan Demand
Manthos D. Delis, Iftekhar Hasan, Chris Tsoumas
Financial Markets, Institutions & Instruments,
Special Issue: 2016 Portsmouth – Fordham Conferenc
2019
Abstract
One explanation for the emergence of the housing market bubble and the subprime crisis is that increases in individuals’ income led to higher increases in the amount of mortgage loans demanded, especially for the middle class. This hypothesis translates to an increase in the income elasticity of mortgage loan demand before 2007. Using applicant‐level data, we test this hypothesis and find that the income elasticity of mortgage loan demand in fact declines in the years before 2007, especially for the mid‐ and lower‐middle income groups. Our finding implies that increases in house prices were not matched by increases in loan applicants’ income.
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