G29 - Financial Institutions and Services: OtherReturn

This analysis tries to address the problem of the insufficiency of premium rates used by export credit agencies. This paper aims to answer why and how states should run agencies that may create losses. We see that each supported exporter brings some other benefits to the public budget, and we try to propose how it could be measured. This paper therefore focuses on benefits and costs of the domestic economy. This analysis aims to develop a model that calculates the impacts of each supported export project. The results must be comparable between projects so that projects can be ranked and decisions made on which ones should receive support under current capacity restraints. The current state of knowledge has been analysed, and little attention has been paid to this microeconomic area of export support. The model structure also helps us understand why governments tend to maintain export credit agencies even though they may be temporarily loss-making.

This article aims to analyse the issue of a lack of rules on the insurance cover of interest from an OECD perspective during the period 2010-2020. Export credit agencies (ECAs) support export and apply minimum premium rates (MPRs) to the principal amount only, while the insurance agreement covers also the interest amount. This area can be described as a grey zone, because ECAs can decide themselves what cover they provide for a limited price. This paper explains which parts of a lending rate should be covered under credit insurance and provides theoretical and empirical analysis of the maximum extent of interest cover. The extent of such cover is closely related to the return on ECAs' investments. An excessive amount of interest cover creates room for market failures such as moral hazard or adverse selection, which have a negative impact on the domestic economy. The right amount of interest cover, on the other hand, guarantees long-term sustainability and a level playing field among ECAs, as the OECD requires.

This paper focuses on national support for export and examines whether, following the OECD arrangement, long-term financial sustainability is assured without sustained fiscal help. Rules on permitted state support in this area are stated by the OECD Consensus, which is meant to guarantee a level playing field for all exporters, to encourage competition among exporters based on the quality and prices of goods, and at the same time, not distort the free market. The main objective is that every export credit agency (ECA) should be self-sustainable with no need for state subsidies. However, this may not be achieved. This research proves inadequacy of minimum premium rates (MPR) due to insured interest. This issue arises mainly from the application of MPRs to the principal value of the insured loan with no correspondence to the insured interest amount. As many ECAs are publicly owned, all systematic losses must be covered by state budgets, which is against OECD agreements and is not allowed.

This article deals with the calculation of bank´s medium-sized enterprises clients´ ex-ante profi- tability and the possibility to use Economic Value Added (EVA) tools in such calculation instead of, currently in bank sector, widely used measure of Risk Adjusted Return on Capital (RAROC). Using a sample of medium-sized enterprises clients to whom a credit exposure was approved in one of the banks operating on the bank´s market within a country belonging to the European Union, the expected profitability of these clients was compared by using firstly RAROC and then compared the results to the profitability calculation using EVA tool on the same set of data. Although both measures (RAROC and EVA) are based on the same initial variables, the results of profitability measure show different outcomes in terms of clients´ profitability level and thus their contribution to the total clients´ portfolio profitability. Using EVA tool instead of RAROC measurement thus could help bank´s relationship managers and branch managers focus on those clients creating larger value added than others.

The article aims at verifying the occurrence of performance persistence phenomenon among equity funds in the Czech Republic. The study uses the most popular measures of return mentioned in financial academic publications. Moreover, a relatively long time horizon, lasting from the beginning of 2000 to the end of 2010 was taken into consideration. The non-parametric methods utilized in the study were traditional contingency tables combined with a new approach discussed in the literature on the subject and related to the estimation of stochastic kernel. The obtained results have revealed the existence of weak and limited performance persistence within the total time horizon and in several sub-periods. The significance of the phenomenon depended on the applied measure of return. Furthermore, performance dependence in successive periods was related to the market situation. In general, the character of the occurrence of performance persistence may be connected with the size and the level of development of the Czech investment fund industry.

This study examines the extent to which fund characteristics contributes to explaining fund returns differentiated by managers' stock picking and market timing abilities. The findings show that funds characterized by high exposures to broad market movements have good timing returns but show poor selectivity performance, suggesting the presence of activity specialization among fund managers. It is shown that large funds enhance managers' timing returns, reflecting the efficiencies of large funds in responding to market-wide movements. However, as the size of the fund gets larger, managers find it more challenging to identify worthwhile investments and hence results in poor selectivity performance.