NEWSLETTER of April 19, 2024

The following content has been added at finexpert:

Oliver Wyman
COMMODITY TRADING'S COMING-OF-AGE STORY
For the commodity trading industry, 2023 marked a year of rebalancing. Supply chains, commodity prices, market volatility, and economic growth across regions and sectors began to normalize after the disruptions in 2022. As a result, our analysis shows trading gross margin declined from the 2022 record high of $150 billion to around $100 billion in 2023. Although margin declined, 2023 still ranks as the second-highest level of industry profits, after sustained growth since 2018. >more

EY
2024 EY EUROPE LONG-TERM VALUE AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE SURVEY
This fourth annual edition of the EY Europe Long-Term Value and Corporate Governance Survey examines the role of governance in sustainable business model innovation. While our 2023 research program  focused on the most effective models and practices of effective sustainability governance, this year we look at how boards can challenge their companies to embrace sustainability as a true business imperative and utilize policy and technology developments to accelerate progress. >more

Leibniz Institute for Economic Research Halle (IWH)
IWH-INSOLVENZTREND: ZAHL DER FIRMENPLEITEN IM MÄRZ ABERMALS AUF REKORDNIVEAU
The number of insolvencies of partnerships and corporations rose to another record high in March. Never since the Leibniz Institute for Economic Research Halle (IWH) began its survey in January 2016 have there been more company bankruptcies. However, an end to the rise in insolvency figures is in sight. >more

ValueTrust
DACH CAPITAL MARKET STUDY
ValueTrust, finexpert and the Institute of Management Accounting and Auditing at WU Vienna publish the 14th edition of the DACH Capital Market Study, which is published semi-annually. In our study, we highlight capital market developments in the second half of 2023 and analyze the cost of capital of twelve sectors for the DACH region using various methods. >more

Allianz Research
THE BEST IS YET TO COME: A COMPARISON OF SAVINGS ACROSS COUNTRIES AND GENERATIONS IN THE EUROZONE
Despite the crises, private households in the nine Eurozone countries we analyze have managed to almost double their total financial assets over the last two decades. However, the composition of growth differs significantly between countries. The rather risk-averse German savers, for example, increased their financial wealth almost exclusively through high savings efforts, while in Finland and the Netherlands, the lion’s share of the increase in wealth was attributable to value gains – accompanied by above-average growth rates. >more

ZOMBIE CREDIT AND (DIS-)INFLATION: EVIDENCE FROM EUROPE
Viral V. Acharya, Matteo Crosignani, Tim Eisert, and Christian Eufinger
2023
We show that ``zombie credit''---subsidized credit to non-viable firms---has a disinflationary effect. By keeping these firms afloat, zombie credit creates excess aggregate supply, thereby putting downward pressure on prices. Granular European data on inflation, firms, and banks confirm this mechanism. Markets affected by a rise in zombie credit experience lower firm entry and exit, capacity utilization, markups, and inflation, as well as a misallocation of capital and labor, which results in lower productivity, investment, and value added. If weakly-capitalized banks were recapitalized in 2009, inflation in Europe would have been up to 0.21pp higher post-2012. >more

LEARNING FROM THEIR DAUGHTERS: FAMILY EXPOSURE TO GENDER DISPARITY AND FEMALE REPRESENTATION IN MALE-LED VENTURES
Zhiyan Wu, Lucia Naldi, Karl Wennberg, and Timur Uman
2023
We build on recent studies on daughter-to-father influence to explore how male founders’ fatherhood of daughters impacts female representation in their ventures. We find that, conditional on the total number of children, fathering an additional daughter vs. a son is associated with a 4% (11%) increase in female director (employee) representation. This daughter-to-father effect gradually matures as daughters grow up and socialize in schools and workplaces, and increases as daughters age, suggesting that male founders vicariously learn from their daughters about the constraints women face throughout the daughters’ lifecycles. Heterogeneity analyses (regarding founder cohort, divorce status, and social class), combined with qualitative evidence, further substantiate the plausibility of vicarious learning as a potential yet understudied mechanism underlying daughter effects. In addition, daughter effects on employee recruitment are concentrated in microbusinesses (number of employees ≤ 10) where the founder is close in decision authority to all employees. These findings add important nuances to our understanding of daughter effects in organizational contexts, and extend theory of gender homophily in organizations. >more