Stefanie Kleimeier

New Publication

In our paper "The Travels of a Bank Deposit in Turbulent Times: The Importance of Deposit Insurance Design for Cross-Border Deposits" in Economic Inquiry (2020, 58(2), 980-997), Shusen Qi (Xiamen University), Harald Sander (Cologne University of Applied Sciences) and I present our latest research on the effects of deposit insurance design on cross-border depositing.

In particular, we examine the impact of the existence on an explicit deposit insurance scheme and its design features on bilateral cross‐border deposits in a gravity model setting. We find that both the absolute quality of a country's deposit insurance and its relative quality vis‐à‐vis other countries' deposit insurance generally affect depositor behavior. This suggests that depositors are seeking save havens but are also engaging in regulatory arbitrage. However, during systemic banking crises, cross‐border depositors primarily seek countries with the best deposit insurance schemes - suggesting that the search for save havens dominates regulatory arbitrage during unstable periods. Similarly, during the 2008–2009 great financial crisis, the emergency actions taken by the governments, which supply and maintain these safe havens, have led to substantial relocations of cross‐border deposits.

New Blog

Together with my co-authors Itzhak Ben-David (Ohio State University & NBER), Yeejin Jang (University of New South Wales) and Michael Viehs (University of Oxford & Hermes Investment Management), I have written a blog for PRI - Principles of Responsible Investment which highlights the results of our recent working paper on "Exporting Pollution: Where Do Multinational Firms Emit CO2?"

Despite awareness of the detrimental impact of CO2 pollution on the world climate, countries vary widely in how they design and enforce environmental laws. Using novel microdata about multinational firms’ CO2 emissions across countries, we document that firms headquartered in countries with strict environmental policies perform their polluting activities abroad in countries with relatively weaker policies. These effects are stronger for firms in pollution-intensive industries and firms with poor corporate governance characteristics. Although firms headquartered in countries with strict domestic environmental policies are more likely to export pollution to foreign countries, they nevertheless emit less overall CO2 globally. Our findings highlight the importance of collective action to combat climate change given the global scale of firms’ operations.

Special section in the Journal of Banking and Finance

In its April 2020 issue, the Journal of Banking and Finance dedicates a special section to ‘Financial Globalization and Its Spillovers’.

The papers included in this special section originate from a Jean Monnet Workshop on “Financial globalization and its spillovers - monetary and exchange rate policy in times of crises” held in Cologne and Maastricht on February 16-17, 2017 co-organized by Maastricht University, TH Köln, University Duisburg-Essen,and Ruhr-University Bochum.

The editorial to this special section by Harald Sander, Joscha Beckmann and me is available as open access until the end of April. Please click on the link below.