David Sondermann

Has political communication during the crisis impacted sovereign bond spreads in the euro area

Using thousands of news agencies reports from May 2010 to June 2011, we find that statements about restructuring, bailout and the involvement of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) have impacted bond spreads of countries in the periphery vis-à-vis Germany. Our findings also indicate that the more different euro area governments issued statements at the same time, the more bond spreads have increased. Finally, statements from politicians from AAA-rated countries seemed to have a particularly strong impact on spreads.

The reception of public signals in financial markets - what if central bank communication becomes stale?

How do financial markets price new information? This paper analyzes price setting at the intersection of private and public information, by testing whether and how the reaction of financial markets to public signals depends on the relative importance of private information in agents’ information sets at a given point in time. It studies the reaction of UK short-term interest rates to the Bank of England’s inflation report and to macroeconomic announcements. Due to the quarterly frequency at which the Bank of England releases one of its main publications, it can become stale over time. In the course of this process, financial market participants need to rely more on private information. The paper develops a stylized model which predicts that, the more time has elapsed since the latest release of an inflation report, market volatility should increase, the price response to macroeconomic announcements should be more pronounced, and macroeconomic announcements should play a more important role in aligning agents’ information set, thus leading to a stronger volatility reduction. The empirical evidence is fully supportive of these hypotheses.

Determinants of FDI inflows in advanced economies: Does the quality of economic structures matter?

This paper investigates the role of economic structures as determinants of FDI inows. We expand on the existing literature by focusing on advanced economies, using a newly available measure of FDI which cleans the data from statistical artefacts, such as financial round tripping, and by relying on a wide variety of measures that proxy the quality of a country’s economic structures. Our results show that there is an empirical relation from the quality of a host country’s economic structures to FDI inflows. These results are robust to various economic specifications and are confirmed when restricting our sample to euro area countries only. JEL Classification: F21, F23, L51, O43

Business investment in euro area countries: the role of institutions and debt overhang

ABSTRACT The recovery of business investment in the euro area has been sluggish, thereby hampering aggregate demand in the short term and potential growth in the long run. While we show that business investment can be associated to cost and supply of credit, cyclical demand conditions and economic uncertainty. But we also find evidence of additional factors. We suggest that there exists a link between excess leverage and weak economic institutions on the one hand and subdued investment growth on the other hand. Moreover, in euro area countries with both larger excess leverage and weaker economic institutions, the link with business investment is found to be stronger. The link between investment and weak institutions or excess leverage highlights the importance of structural reforms aimed at easing business regulations, reducing administrative burdens and increasing the efficiency of insolvency frameworks. These reforms are thus expected to reduce distortions in the allocation of resources and be supportive of a smoother deleveraging process, hence fostering business investment.

Lobbying in Europe: New Firm-Level Evidence

Lobbying can provide policy makers with important sector-specific information and thereby facilitating informed decisions. If going far beyond this, in particular if successfully influencing policy makers to unnecessarily tighten regulation or not opening already excessively regulated markets, it could potentially reduce overall economic welfare. We create a unique firm-level database on EU lobby activity and firm characteristics. We tend to find that firms in more protected sector, e.g. firms from non-tradable or higher regulated sectors tend to spend more for lobby activities. Also such firms tend to have higher profit margins and lower productivity, as often the case in sheltered sectors. JEL Classification: D72, D78, O38