OeNB Bulletin Q2/24

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• OeNB Bulletin Q2/24 (PDF, 10,7 MB) Juli 2024

Studien und Analysen

• What you don’t know can’t help you: public perception of COVID-19 loan repayment moratoria (PDF, 7,4 MB) Allinger, Farnleitner. We analyze public perceptions of borrower relief measures, i.e. loan repayment moratoria, implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic, aiming to better understand potential frictions in the transmission of these policies. Using data from an international survey, we document substantial cross-country differences in respondents’ awareness and use of borrower relief measures, their attribution of the measures to different institutions and their reasons for not using the measures. We relate these findings to differences in the designs of moratoria across countries, concluding that respondents’ awareness and use is positively correlated with how borrower-friendly the measures were. Regarding respondents’ socioeconomic characteristics, we find that awareness is correlated with several characteristics, including ownership of financial assets and liabilities or the level of education and financial literacy. In terms of policy conclusions, we are most concerned by respondents’ low awareness of borrower relief measures in some countries and by potential implications resulting from high shares of borrowers reporting that they did not use the measure due to ineligibility. en loan moratoria, household finance, COVID-19, policy evaluation, Central-, Eastern- and Southeastern Europe G28, G21, G51 05.06.2024, 00:00:00

• Crypto assets in Austria: an assessment of their prevalence and the motives of their holders (PDF, 6,4 MB) Fessler, Weber. In this study, we analyze data from a preliminary survey designed to evaluate the inclusion of questions regarding crypto asset holdings of households in the Austrian segment of the Eurosystem Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). Our objective is to examine the extent of crypto asset ownership within the Austrian population and to explore the motivations behind these holdings.
  Our findings reveal that a consistent, albeit small, proportion of individuals hold relatively modest quantities of crypto assets. Demographically, crypto asset holders tend to be younger than the average and predominantly male. Notably, a significant proportion of crypto asset owners (41%) in Austria initiated their investments in 2019. On average, they hold relatively low amounts of crypto assets, with the median value hovering around EUR 6,000 and the 90th percentile near EUR 6,500. Even when evaluating across various levels of crypto asset holdings, the average proportion of these assets in crypto asset owners’ overall financial portfolios remains below 30% across the full distribution of crypto assets and below 15% for owners whose holdings exceed EUR 5,000. The primary motivations cited for owning crypto assets are their speculative potential for profiting from market fluctuations (36% of stated reasons), owners’ curiosity about new technology (27%) and their desire to diversify portfolios of risky assets (12%). en crypto assets; financial risk; household survey E44; G29 21.06.2024, 00:00:00

• Enjoy the silence? (De)globalization and cross-border investment – a gravity approach (PDF, 7,7 MB) Abeliansky, Belabed, Mayrhuber. Amidst increasing geopolitical tensions and the growing discourse on “deglobalization,” we study how geopolitical (de)alignment correlates with one of the main drivers of globalization – cross-border investment. Extending a gravity model with data on voting behavior at the United Nations General Assembly, we find that an increase of geopolitical dealignment is associated with a decline in both foreign direct investment (FDI) and portfolio investment (PI). The decline is stronger for FDI. The relevance of geopolitical dealignment to FDI has increased after the financial crisis, suggesting that geopolitical considerations are becoming increasingly important for foreign capital allocation. While an increase in the geopolitical distance between “nonfriendly” country pairs is associated with a significant decline in cross-border investment, our results do not show such a strong relation for “friendly” country pairs, indicating that geopolitical differences between “friendly” countries do not immediately lead to a reduction of bilateral investment. Overall, our findings suggest that continued geopolitical fragmentation is likely to lead to a decline in cross-border investment. en capital flows, cross-border investment, deglobalization, geopolitical fragmentation F02, F21, F36 12.07.2024, 00:00:00