Programa del congreso

This paper analyses the relationship between ESG practices and the probability of being involved in a corruption event in banking. We draw on two opposing theoretical frameworks (i.e., the stakeholder view and the impression management view), to assess whether ESG oriented banks are genuinely concerned about anti-corruption practices or potentially involved in deceptive strategies without adequately managing the corporate governance mechanisms related to corruption events. Using a sample of 46 Eurozone banks over the 2013 – 2022, our results suggest the existence of a beneficial negative association between ESG and corruption supporting the stakeholder theory. Moreover, we find that bank-level characteristics and country-level institutional factors play a key role in shaping such relationship. Our findings have important policy and managerial implications in terms of prevention of corruption scandals that can jeopardise the effectiveness of bank financial intermediation.

We examine the impact of natural disasters on sovereign credit risk, using a sample of European countries. Our analysis confirms that natural disasters lead to an increase in sovereign default risk, with the magnitude of the effect varying depending on the time horizon and country characteristics. This impact is moderated by the country’s environmental governance, as measured by the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), which reflects policies related to environmental health and ecosystem sustainability. Our results reveal that countries with higher EPI scores experience stronger increases in CDS spreads following natural disasters. We attribute this to greater investor sensitivity in environmentally conscious markets and higher recovery costs faced by countries with stronger environmental performance. Additionally, we highlight differences between the two EPI components: Environmental Health has a stronger and more immediate effect on sovereign credit risk than Ecosystem Vitality. This disparity is likely due to the greater visibility and proximity of Environmental Health indicators, which are more directly linked to disaster preparedness and public health outcomes, making them more salient to investors.

This paper investigates the impact of open banking on the development of the fintech sector, focusing particularly on payment-related financial services. We utilize the implementation of the Second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) in Europe as a natural experiment and employ a difference-in-differences methodology to analyze a unique microdata set of 406 Spanish fintech firms from 2014 to 2022, sourced from the Bank of Spain’s Central Balance Sheet Data Office and Fintech Radar. Our findings reveal that following PSD2, fintech firms specializing in payment services (Paytech) improved their performance compared to non-payment fintechs (control), with this improvement driven primarily by revenue growth rather than cost reduction. Additionally, treated fintech firms exhibited a significant reduction in long-term bank debt reliance, securing more stable market-equity funding. We also find that Paytech firms increased their liquidity holdings, reduced their labor intensity while increasing their labor costs, and enhanced their productivity. Our results contribute to the literature on open banking by providing empirical evidence of its benefits for fintech firms, particularly in the payment sector, and underscore the importance of regulatory frameworks in fostering innovation and competition.

This paper examines the effect of Non-Banking Financial Intermediation (NBFI) activity on the stability of traditional banks. Using an international sample of 16,563 banks from 27 countries during the period 2009-2022, our results show that the NBFI activity negatively impacts banks’ stability. The final effect, however, is contingent upon the specific economic function performed by the NBFI entities. Our results show that NBFI activity significantly affects both the asset side of banks' balance sheets (e.g., loan growth and pricing) and the liability side (e.g., reliance on short-term funding). Additionally, we find evidence that NBFI activity reduces banks' market power, further affecting stability. We also show that the impact of NBFI on bank stability is contingent on individual bank characteristics, suggesting a heterogeneous effect across banks. Our results remain robust across various measures of bank stability and NBFI activity, as well as under different subsample analyses.