Brunella Bruno

Credit Derivatives versus Loan Sales: Evidence from the European Banking Market

This valuable book discusses in detail, through a blend of theory and empirical research, the processes of innovation and the diffusion of new financial instruments.

Market Reaction to Bank Liquidity Regulation

We measure market reactions to announcements concerning liquidity regulation, a key innovation in the Basel framework. Our initial results show that liquidity regulation attracts negative abnormal returns. However, the price responses are less pronounced when coinciding announcements concerning capital regulation are backed out, suggesting that markets do not consider liquidity regulation to be binding. Bank- and country-specific characteristics also matter. Liquid balance sheets and high charter values increase abnormal returns whereas smaller long-term funding mismatches reduce abnormal returns. Banks located in countries with large government debt and tight interbank conditions or with prior domestic liquidity regulation display lower abnormal returns.

Bad loans and resource allocation in crisis years: Evidence from European banks

The aim of this study is to explore the relation between loan portfolio quality and lending in European banks over 2005-2014. We focus on lending behavior of banks from distressed countries since the Euro sovereign debt crisis. Our results confirm the existence of a negative nexus between poor loan quality and lending, since a higher NPL ratio explains a reduced loan growth and a lower allocation to loans at the advantage of government debt (as a percentage of total assets). Such an impact on lending and reallocation effect are strong and consistent across specifications and over and above other factors that may affect credit supply.

Experience and Brokerage in Asset Markets: Evidence from Art Auctions

Focusing on the art market, where auction houses act as brokers between art sellers and buyers, we investigate whether more experienced brokers achieve better performance as information providers. We use a unique data set of auctions of Italian paintings in various houses around the world, and we measure experience as the number of times an auctioneer has auctioned the artworks of a certain artist in a given location. We find that more experienced auction houses (i) are more likely to sell and (ii) provide more precise pre-sale estimates. These findings suggest that experience plays an important role for brokers to reduce illiquidity and opacity in markets with asymmetric information.