Maria Iosifidi

On the Estimation of Marginal Cost.

This article proposes the estimation of the marginal cost of individual firms using semiparametric and nonparametric methods. These methods have a number of appealing features when applied to cost functions. The empirical analysis uses data from a unique sample of the California electricity industry for which we observe the actual marginal cost and estimate the marginal cost from these data. We compare the actual values of marginal cost with the estimates from semiparametric and nonparametric methods, as well as with the estimates obtained through conventional parametric methods. We show that the semiparametric and nonparametric methods produce marginal cost estimates that very closely approximate the actual. In contrast, the results from conventional parametric methods are significantly biased and provide invalid inference.

Bank Market Power and Monetary Policy Transmission

This paper examines empirically the role of bank market power as an internal factor influencing banks’ reaction in terms of lending and risk taking to monetary policy impulses. The analysis is carried out for the U.S. and euro-area banking sectors over the period 1997–2010. Market power is estimated at the bank-year level, using a method that allows the efficient estimation of marginal cost of banks also at the bank-year level. The findings show that banks with even moderate levels of market power are able to buffer the negative impact of a monetary policy change on bank loans and credit risk. This effect is somewhat more pronounced in the euro area compared with the United States. However, following the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2007, the level of market power needed to shield bank loans and credit risk from the impact of a change in monetary policy increased substantially. This is clear evidence that the financial crisis reinforced the mechanisms of the bank lending and the risk-taking channels.

Endogenous bank risk and efficiency

We develop a framework to incorporate bank risk, as measured from the variance of profits or returns, within a model of frontier efficiency. Our framework follows the premise that risk is endogenously related to efficiency. We estimate our model using panel data for U.S. banks and Bayesian techniques. We show that excluding risk from the efficiency model significantly biases the efficiency estimates and the ranking of banks according to their competitive advantage. We also demonstrate that there is a negative risk-efficiency nexus with causality running both ways, while our estimates of risk are fully consistent with the developments in the banking industry over the period 1976–2014.

Management as the sine qua non for M&A success

Measuring management practices robustly is difficult, which leaves an important element missing in identifying M&A success. This paper studies management practices as an unobserved (latent) variable using a standard microeconomic model. We show that our measure is the most important determinant of value creation in M&A deals: a one-standard-deviation increase in the measure almost doubles cumulative abnormal returns. Our results are robust to the inclusion of acquirer fixed effects, to a large set of control variables, and to several other sensitivity tests. We posit that any future study of M&A success should include a management component.

Relative effective taxation and income inequality: Evidence from OECD countries:

Using a panel data set of effective tax rates that are directly comparable across Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries and over time, we investigate the redistributive effect of labour, consumption and capital tax rates. We show that what matters from a redistributive standpoint is the tax mix rather than the tax rates in isolation from the rest. The results suggest that increasing the tax burden on labour or consumption relative to capital leads to higher income inequality. In contrast, greater reliance on labour taxes relative to consumption taxes improves income equality. This effect likely stems from the redistributive objectives of social security contributions incorporated in labour taxes.

Relative Effective Taxation and Income Inequality: Evidence from OECD Countries

Using a panel data set of effective tax rates that are directly comparable across OECD countries and over time, we investigate the redistributive effect of labour, consumption and capital tax rates. We show that what matters from the point of view of redistribution is the tax mix rather than the tax rates in isolation of the rest. We also find that as countries become more economically developed, and thus institutionally stronger, the adverse effects of relative tax rates on income equality diminish.

On the Estimation of Marginal Cost

This article proposes a general empirical method for the estimation of marginal cost of individual firms. The new method employs the smooth coefficient model, which has a number of appealing features when applied to cost functions. The empirical analysis uses data from a unique sample from which we observe marginal cost. We compare the estimates from the proposed method with the true values of marginal cost, and the estimates of marginal cost that we obtain through conventional parametric methods. We show that the proposed method produces estimated values of marginal cost that very closely approximate the true values of marginal cost. In contrast, the results from conventional parametric methods are significantly biased and provide invalid inference.

'What's the Use of Having a Reputation If You Can't Ruin It Every Now and Then?' Regulatory Enforcement Actions on Banks and the Structure of Loan Syndicates

A decrease in the reputation of a loan syndicates lead arranger, caused by a regulatory enforcement action for non-compliance with laws and regulations, disincentivizes potential syndicate participants from co-financing the loan. We formally argue that in such cases, the lead arranger must increase his share of the loan in order to make the loan sufficiently attractive to potential participants. We provide strong empirical evidence to support our theoretical argument, using the full sample of enforcement actions enacted on U.S. banks from 2000 through 2010 as well as syndicated loan-level data.