Financial markets

03/14/2019

Company ratings: useful information for banking relationships

By Christophe Cahn, Mattia Girotti, Federica Salvadè

The banking sector assesses the credit risks associated with borrowers. What are the consequences to be expected from the production of information by a third party? Exploiting a change in the rating methodology of the Banque de France, this post shows how the disclosure of more detailed information on companies can increase the supply of credit for their benefit.

Chart: Companies with a fine-tuned rating obtain more credit
Chart: Companies with a fine-tuned rating obtain more credit
Updated on 03/14/2019 11:13.
02/21/2019

The wedge between the return on capital and risk-free rates

By John Hutchinson and Arthur Saint-Guilhem

For several decades, the wedge between the return on capital and risk-free rates has been growing in the euro area and the United States. We examine the drivers of this wedge and find that while the risk premium is the main driver, mark-ups also play a role. More recently, the contribution from mark-ups has decreased in the euro area and increased in the United States.

Chart 1: Growing wedge between the return on capital and risk-free rates in the euro area and the United States
Chart 1: Growing wedge between the return on capital and risk-free rates in the euro area and the United States Source: AMECO, FRED, AWM, and authors’ calculations.
Updated on 02/21/2019 13:30.
02/07/2019

Real estate: are high loan-to-value ratios the most risky?

By Thomas Ferrière and Laure Frey

Household mortgage debt can jeopardise financial stability, as the 2008 crisis showed. This risk is often assessed using the ratio of the loan amount to the value of the financed property, or loan-to-value ratio (LTV). Yet, very high LTVs cover in large part the property purchases, excluding primary residences, of households with the highest incomes, which are not necessarily the most risky. Therefore, this ratio by itself is insufficient to provide the full picture.

Chart 1: Lower LTVs for primary residences
Chart 1: Lower LTVs for primary residences (% of the 2014 value of the property) Sources: INSEE Household Wealth Survey 2014-2015 and authors’ calculations.
Updated on 02/07/2019 15:24.
01/16/2019

An Alternative Financial Conditions Index for the Euro Area

By Anna Petronevich and Jean-Guillaume Sahuc

Financial conditions are not fully captured by the short-term interest rate, especially when it is stuck at its lower bound. As a result, financial institutions and central banks turn to other indicators richer in information such as financial condition indices (FCI). We provide a new FCI with time-varying component weights which pinpoints the sources of changes in financial conditions.

Dynamics of the Banque de France FCI for the euro area
Chart 1: Dynamics of the Banque de France FCI for the euro area Sources: Bloomberg and the authors’ calculations
Updated on 01/16/2019 14:24.
11/08/2018

Euro area interbank fragmentation: bad sovereign or bad balance sheets?

By Silvia Gabrieli and Claire Labonne

Between 2011 and the announcement of Outright Monetary Transactions (OMTs), high rates of non-performing exposures to peripheral countries hindered banks’ access to the interbank market. Sizeable holdings of peripheral countries’ sovereign bonds also increased the price paid for interbank funding. The introduction of OMTs in 2012 and Targeted Longer-Term Refinancing Operations (TLTROs) in 2014 successfully curbed these channels of fragmentation risk.

Figure 1: Average interest rates in the euro area interbank market for GIIPS
Figure 1: Average interest rates in the euro area interbank market for GIIPS Source: Gabrieli and Labonne (2018)
Updated on 11/09/2018 09:27.
09/11/2018

The economic impact of financial events: an all-or-nothing phenomenon

By Stéphane Lhuissier

By Stéphane Lhuissier
The 2008 financial crisis and the sovereign debt crisis in the euro area led to major recessions. By contrast, the macroeconomic impact of the bursting of the technology bubble in 2000 was mild. The reason behind these all-or-nothing effects is amplification: a fragile financial system makes economic agents more sensitive to changes in financial conditions.

Differences in the impact of an adverse financial shock on euro area industrial production between financial states
Chart 1 – Differences in the impact of an adverse financial shock on euro area industrial production between financial states Note: Impulse responses of industrial production to the financial shock in healthy and fragile financial states. The size of the financial shock is the same in both cases. The dotted line shows the median and solid lines are 68% probability intervals.
Updated on 03/19/2019 14:56.
07/04/2018

The four seasons of the financial cycle and the countercyclical capital buffer

By Cyril Couaillier and Julien Idier

Financial cycles can be broken down into four phases in which the intensity of financial risks changes. The crisis that follows the downturn is all the more pronounced as risks have accumulated during the upturn. Macroprudential policy aims to limit the impact of financial crises on the real economy: the decision to activate the countercyclical capital buffer in France meets this imperative.

The four seasons of the financial cycle
Chart 1: The four seasons of the financial cycle
Updated on 07/05/2018 17:22.
07/05/2017

Are markets signalling that the risk of deflation is over?

By Hervé Le Bihan and Imène Rahmouni Rousseau

Financial markets confirm that, since autumn 2016, deflationary risks in the euro area have dissipated. Market indicators – which are admittedly susceptible to a number of biases – nevertheless continue to reflect medium-term inflation expectations which are below the Eurosystem’s target (inflation rates of below, but close to, 2% over the medium run).

Updated on 06/13/2018 10:59.
06/16/2017

Is bond financing a factor of recovery?

Thomas Grjebine, Urszula Szczerbowicz  and Fabien Tripier

The Capital Markets Union project (CMU) recommends diversifying the financing of companies, in particular through debt securities in addition to bank loans. Is the choice of debt instrument important in economic recoveries? In fact, companies replace bank financing by bond financing in a recovery phase. In addition, recoveries are more robust when the share of bond financing is high.

Updated on 06/13/2018 10:55.