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The euro area bias and the role of financial centres
Author(s) -
Floreani Vincent Arthur,
Habib Maurizio Michael
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
international journal of finance and economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.505
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1099-1158
pISSN - 1076-9307
DOI - 10.1002/ijfe.1614
Subject(s) - economics , equity (law) , financial crisis , sovereign debt , debt , portfolio , monetary economics , international economics , finance , macroeconomics , sovereignty , politics , political science , law
This paper investigates the euro area bias —a stronger preference for euro area securities in the cross‐border portfolio of euro area residents with respect to the prediction of an international finance gravity model. Compared with previous studies, we disentangle different partitions of the euro area and, crucially, isolate euro area financial centres, finding some novel results. First, the euro area bias is not always present and remarkably weak for securities issued by euro area high‐rating economies, those that would be expected to provide better insurance during crisis periods. Second, the extent of the euro area bias could be overstated, because euro area financial centres may conceal round‐tripping flows from euro area low‐rating economies. Finally, in the case of equity, the euro area bias did not decline during the crisis period but, in the case of debt issued by euro area low‐rating economies, unsurprisingly, weakened. The decline in exposure towards euro area debt securities was common among all cross‐border investors, not a specific retrenchment of euro area investors. Overall, our results call for a prudent treatment of cross‐border financial statistics in the presence of a financial centre bias.