Enrico Onali

Are European Equity Markets Efficient? New Evidence from Fractal Analysis

We report an empirical analysis of long-range dependence in the returns of eight stock market indices, using the Rescaled Range Analysis (RRA) to estimate the Hurst exponent. Monte Carlo and bootstrap simulations are used to construct critical values for the null hypothesis of no long-range dependence. The issue of disentangling short-range and long-range dependence is examined. Pre-filtering by fitting a (short-range) autoregressive model eliminates part of the long-range dependence when the latter is present, while failure to pre-filter leaves open the possibility of conflating short-range and long-range dependence. There is a strong evidence of long-range dependence for the small central European Czech stock market index PX-glob, and a weaker evidence for two smaller western European stock market indices, MSE (Spain) and SWX (Switzerland). There is little or no evidence of long-range dependence for the other five indices, including those with the largest capitalizations among those considered, DJIA (US) and FTSE350 (UK). These results are generally consistent with prior expectations concerning the relative efficiency of the stock markets examined.

Moral Hazard, Dividends and Risk in Banks

This paper is the first investigation of the interplay between dividends and risk taking in banks. I examine the role of dividends as a risk-shifting mechanism that can exacerbate moral hazard, controlling for standard determinants of dividends in nonfinancial firms. My main findings show that banks that are close to depleting their capital pay more dividends to their shareholders, suggesting that dividends are used to shift risk from bank owners to the taxpayer. These findings support recent policy proposals that include restrictions on dividends as part of a set of early regulatory responses to bank distress (Geneva Report, Brunnermeier, 2009).

Moral Hazard, Dividends, and Risk in Banks: MORAL HAZARD, DIVIDENDS, AND RISK IN BANKS

In non-financial firms, higher risk taking results in lower dividend payout ratios. In banking, public guarantees may result in a positive relationship between dividend payout ratios and risk taking. I investigate the interplay between dividend payout ratios and bank risk-taking allowing for the effect of charter values and capital adequacy regulation. I find a positive relationship between bank risk-taking and dividend payout ratios. Proximity to the required capital ratio and a high charter value reduce the impact of bank risk-taking on the dividend payout ratio. My results are robust to different proxies for the dividend payout ratio and bank risk-taking.

The real effects of regulatory enforcement actions : evidence from U.S. counties

We present a novel way to examine macro-financial linkages by focusing on the real effects of bank supervisors’ enforcement actions. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in supervisory monitoring intensity, we show that enforcement actions in single-market banks trigger temporarily large adverse effects for the macroeconomy by reducing personal income growth, the number of establishments, and increasing unemployment. These effects are related to contractions in bank lending and liquidity creation, and are more pronounced when we consider enforcement actions on both single-market and multi-market banks, and in counties with fewer banks and greater external financial dependence.

Self-Affinity in Financial Asset Returns

We test for departures from normal and independent and identically distributed (NIID) log returns, for log returns under the alternative hypothesis that are self-affine and either long-range dependent, or drawn randomly from an L-stable distribution with infinite higher-order moments. The finite sample performance of estimators of the two forms of self-affinity is explored in a simulation study. In contrast to rescaled range analysis and other conventional estimation methods, the variant of fluctuation analysis that considers finite sample moments only is able to identify both forms of self-affinity. When log returns are self-affine and long-range dependent under the alternative hypothesis, however, rescaled range analysis has higher power than fluctuation analysis. The techniques are illustrated by means of an analysis of the daily log returns for the indices of 11 stock markets of developed countries. Several of the smaller stock markets by capitalization exhibit evidence of long-range dependence in log returns.

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.

Long Memory and Multifractality: A Joint Test

The properties of statistical tests for hypotheses concerning the parameters of the multifractal model of asset returns (MMAR) are investigated, using Monte Carlo techniques. We show that, in the presence of multifractality, conventional tests of long memory tend to over-reject the null hypothesis of no long memory. Our test addresses this issue by jointly estimating long memory and multifractality. The estimation and test procedures are applied to exchange rate data for 12 currencies. Among the nested model specifications that are investigated, in 11 out of 12 cases, daily returns are most appropriately characterized by a variant of the MMAR that applies a multifractal time-deformation process to NIID returns. There is no evidence of long memory.

Monitoring Matters: Debt Seniority, Market Discipline and Bank Conduct

We examine if debtholders monitor banks and if such monitoring constrains risk-taking. Leveraging an unexplored experiment in the U.S. that changes the priority structure of claims on banks’ assets, we provide novel insights into the debate on market discipline. We document asymmetric effects for monitoring effort depending on whether a creditor class moves up or down the priority ladder. Conferring priority to depositors reduces deposit rates but increases interest rates for non-deposit liabilities, suggesting greater incentives for junior debtholders to exert monitoring effort. Consistent with the idea that senior claims require lower risk premiums, banks increasingly rely on deposit funding following changes in the priority structure. More intensive monitoring also influences conduct: subordinating non-depositor claims reduces risk taking. Our results highlight that changes in the priority structure are a complementary tool to regulation which has received little attention in prior work.