We study the impact of banks’ market power on the incidence of a bank levy that is imposed on balance sheets. Within the framework of an oligopolistic version of the Monti-Klein model, the pass-through of a bank tax levied on loans is stronger when elasticity of credit demand is low. To test this hypothesis, we investigate the incidence of the Hungarian bank tax that was introduced in 2010 on banks’ assets. This case is well suited for our analysis because the tax rate is much higher for large banks than for small banks, which allows relying on difference-in-difference methodology. In line with model predictions, our estimations show that the tax is likely to be shifted to customers with the smallest demand elasticity, such as households. This result depends on the common trends assumption that is discussed at length.
Journal of Banking & Finance201998, 156-169open access
We study whether and how a country's environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance relates to its sovereign borrowing costs in international capital markets. We hypothesize that good ESG performance plays an economic role: It signals a country's commitment to sustainability and long-term orientation and is a buffer against negative shocks, leading to lower sovereign bond yield spreads. Using a sample of 20 OECD countries over the period 1996–2012, we show that countries with good ESG performance are associated with lower default risk and lower sovereign bond yield spreads. Moreover, we show that the social and governance dimensions have a significant negative association with sovereign bond yield spreads, whereas the environmental dimension does not.
In statistics, samples are drawn from a population in a data‐generating process (DGP). Standard errors measure the uncertainty in estimates of population parameters. In science, evidence is generated to test hypotheses in an evidence‐generating process (EGP). We claim that EGP variation across researchers adds uncertainty—nonstandard errors (NSEs). We study NSEs by letting 164 teams test the same hypotheses on the same data. NSEs turn out to be sizable, but smaller for more reproducible or higher rated research. Adding peer‐review stages reduces NSEs. We further find that this type of uncertainty is underestimated by participants.