Recommended studies: Digital Finance and Financial Markets

Today, we collected a series of BIS & VoxEU studies related with Digital Finance and Financial Markets. We hope you find this information useful.

BIS:

1. Regulating fintech financing: digital banks and fintech platforms. A host of new technology-enabled business models for deposit-taking, credit intermediation and capital raising have emerged in recent years. In particular, the proliferation of digital banking and financing via web-based platforms (fintech balance sheet lending and crowdfunding) raises the question of where the regulatory perimeter should be drawn. Financial authorities now face the task of deciding whether their regulatory framework needs to be adjusted to account for these new fintech activities. To do so, they will need to consider a number of elements. This paper explores how digital banking and fintech platform financing are regulated and provides a cross-country overview of the regulatory requirements for fintech activities in 30 jurisdictions.
2. Rise of the central bank digital currencies: drivers, approaches and technologies. Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are receiving more attention than ever before. Yet the motivations for issuance vary across countries, as do the policy approaches and technical designs. We investigate the economic and institutional drivers of CBDC development and take stock of design efforts. We set out a comprehensive database of technical approaches and policy stances on issuance, relying on central bank speeches and technical reports. Most projects are found in digitised economies with a high capacity for innovation. Work on retail CBDCs is more advanced where the informal economy is larger. We next take stock of the technical design options. More and more central banks are considering retail CBDC architectures in which the CBDC is a direct cash-like claim on the central bank, but where the private sector handles all customer-facing activity. We conclude with an in-depth description of three distinct CBDC approaches by the central banks of China, Sweden and Canada.
3. Data vs collateral. The use of massive amounts of data by large technology firms (big techs) to assess firms' creditworthiness could reduce the need for collateral in solving asymmetric information problems in credit markets. Using a unique dataset of more than 2 million Chinese firms that received credit from both an important big tech firm (Ant Group) and traditional commercial banks, this paper investigates how different forms of credit correlate with local economic activity, house prices and firm characteristics. We find that big tech credit does not correlate with local business conditions and house prices when controlling for demand factors, but reacts strongly to changes in firm characteristics, such as transaction volumes and network scores used to calculate firm credit ratings. By contrast, both secured and unsecured bank credit react significantly to local house prices, which incorporate useful information on the environment in which clients operate and on their creditworthiness. This evidence implies that a greater use of big tech credit - granted on the basis of machine learning and big data - could reduce the importance of collateral in credit markets and potentially weaken the financial accelerator mechanism.

VoxEU:

1. Managing volatile capital flows in emerging and frontier markets. The COVID-19 pandemic caused an unprecedented sharp reversal of portfolio flows in emerging and frontier markets, triggering concerns about financial stability and consequently, strong policy responses. This column uses a novel analytical framework, the capital-flows-at-risk methodology, to show that changes in global financial conditions tend to influence portfolio flows more during surges and reversals than in normal times. Furthermore, stronger domestic fundamentals do not necessarily lead to surges in portfolio flows but help mitigate outflows. Hence, the weaker growth outlook for emerging markets due to COVID-19 will worsen local currency flows, while global financial conditions will affect hard currency flows.
2. Sustainability preferences under stress: Mutual fund flows during COVID-19. Socially responsible investing has been at the centre of recent regulatory scrutiny and academic debate. This column explores how retail investors’ preferences for socially responsible investments respond to market distress, as revealed within mutual fund flows during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results suggest that funds with the highest sustainability ratings experience sharper declines in flows. This suggests that there tends to be a shift away from sustainability among retail investors’ preferences in the face of an economic shock, highlighting a source of fragility in the increasingly popular socially responsible investment  market.
3. COVID-19 and the stock market: Long-term valuations. The fast rebound of US stock prices following the Covid-19 shock has reignited discussions over ‘frothiness’ in stock markets. This column examines how asset prices are affected by drastic shocks to the real economy, and what factors drive this relationship. Evidence from the investigation suggests that, from a longer-term perspective, high asset valuations may reflect more than just investor optimism. The greater expected income, in comparison to government bonds, could be the key as to why investors are continuing to trust in the stock market, irrespective of the turbulent wider economic climate.