[...]This article investigates whether changes in the termpremium tend to distort the term spread’s recession signals.3We begin by decomposing the term spread into an expectationscomponent and a term premium component, based on the Kimand Wright (2005) term premium estimates. Next, we...

[...]A key finding of our work is that for small auction sizes,TIO interest rates are fairly comparable to MBS repo rates forterm lengths of five days or more. However, shorter termlengths result in the Treasury receiving lower TIO rates relativeto market rates. We also observe a negative...

Restricted access to finance is often stated as one of the main obstaclesto the development of the SME sector in Russia. In this paper, wepropose a new lending strategy that allows private banks to profitablyincrease financing of this sector in spite of being at a disadvantagecompared to the...

This chapter explores the history of financial management reform in Switzerland, both at the Federal and cantonal levels of government. The chapter first outlines the Swiss system of government and public sector organisation.(...)

Recently there has been a rapid growth in the assets managed by “hedged mutual funds” – mutual fundsmimicking hedge funds strategies. In this paper, we examine the performance of these funds relative tohedge funds and traditional mutual funds. We find that despite their use of similar trading...

We investigate the role of analyst following as a monitoring device reducing earnings management. In a large international sample, we fi nd that the more transparent the country, the stronger the reduction in earnings management activity associated with analyst following. More transparent...

The government’s main objective in improving the access to finance for small businesses is to reduce the number of small businesses encountering access to finance as a barrier to growth.The purpose of this section is twofold:• To provide an overview of the evidence to explain why the...

Model risk as part of the operational risk is a serious problem for financial institutions.As the pricing of derivatives as well as the computation of the marketor credit risk of an institution depend on statistical models the application of awrong model can lead to a serious over- or...

The question of whether the CEO should also serve as chairman of the board is one of themost hotly debated issues in the recent corporate governance discussion. While agencytheoreticarguments advocate a separation of decision and control functions, the empiricalevidence focusing on U.S....

This paper investigates the determinants of Swiss non-financial firms’ cash holdings overthe 1995 to 2004 period. The median Swiss firm holds almost twice as much cash andcash equivalents as the median UK or US firm. Our results indicate that there is a negativerelationship between asset...