AD ALTA
JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
countries and found that in the new Members States was
competition significantly higher between 2001 and 2006 than in
the old Member States. Studies such as Bartram (2017) or
Giraldo-Prieto et al. (2017) evaluate the influence of transaction
taxes on risk management and found statistically significant
effect on hedging derivatives.
As the theoretical literature proves, the financial transaction tax
is an important indicator that affects the economic processes in
the country as well as in the internal environment of the
companies. Therefore, it is in our interest to analyse the impact
of this tax shortly after the introduction on the financial market
and to draw conclusions for the Single European market.
3 Research and methodology
Our main goal is to explain the impact of the introduction of
FTT on the European market and its impact on the behaviour of
companies. To research the impact of FTT, we choose the
method of regression analysis, expressed in the following form:
y (FTT) =
β0 + β1 . GDP + β2 . Price + β3. Volume + β4 . DFA
+ β5 . Debt short-term assets + β6. Debt long-term assets
(1)
where: Y – financial transaction tax (measured as a proportion of
equity securities to total financial assets)
GDP (X1) – real economic growth, expressed in %
Price (X2) – development of French stock index CAC40
(log value)
Volume (X3) – market volume of CAC40 (log value)
DFA (X4) – derivative financial assets (log value)
Debt assets (X5, X6) – short-term and long-term debt
financial assets held for trading (log value).
The relation to express FTT can be described as follows:
Tax
it
= FTT
it
/ TT
it
(2)
where: TT
it
– the volume of all securities on the French market;
FTT
it
–the volume of relevant taxed transaction with
equity securities on the French market in the given year.
To achieve our goal, we have set two hypotheses in the
following form:
H1: The introduction of FTT in France supports the economic
growth in the country and, and in the long run reduces the
market volume of shares.
H2: There is a statistically significant relationship between
FTT and hedging assets.
In the first hypothesis, we assume that a transaction tax, as a
fiscal instrument of economic policy, stimulates economic
growth and ensures financial stability after a period of the debt
crisis. The introduction of the tax limits high-risk short-term
financial transactions, which cause market fragmentation, and
thus limiting fluctuations in the prices of financial assets. In the
long run, the tax harms the trading volumes of taxable
instruments on the market.
In the second hypothesis, we assume that FTT has a significant
effect on trading and hedging derivatives. As trading instruments
are mainly used for short-term market activities, we assume that
the tax will harm the volume of these instruments and reduce
excess liquidity in the short term, which may distort the price of
hedging assets.
We retrieved the data from the French stock exchange Euronext
(i.e. data for the development of index CAC 40), from ECB
Statistical Warehouse and Bank for International Settlement
(i.e. data for derivative instruments) and form Eurostat (i.e. data
for economic growth).
4 Results and discussion
Based on the results, GDP growth would fall by 0.1056% (if the
other variables are equal), while the results are statistically
insignificant. Our assumption of stimulating economic growth
through FTT has thus not been confirmed. Results also showed a
slight negative effect of market price and market volume of the
index CAC40. The weaker strength of the test (79.61%) and the
statistical insignificance (on the significance level
α = 0.05) for
the volume of trading asset may indicate the fact that the FTT
reform affects the volume of an asset only in the short-term
period, i.e. shortly after the introduction of the tax, while in the
long period the tax has negligible effect. This may also be
explained by the fact that, under the French measure, intraday
securities transactions are not taxed. For debt assets, results
showed that FTT harms short-term transactions (-0.18), but in
the long run, the tax effect on debt instruments is positive (0.23).
For bond issuance, this may mean a decrease in the rate of return
on the bond (especially in the case of government bonds) and an
increase in the cost of debt.
Tab. 2: An impact of FTT: The results of regression analysis
df
SS
MS
F
Significance F
Regre-
ssion
6
0.00153
0.00026
8.1562
0.01797
Resi-
dual
5
0.00016
0.00003
Total
11
0.00169
Coeff.
St. Error
t-Stat
P-value
Lower
95 %
Upper
95 %
Inter-
cept
1.1979
1.0976
1.0914
0.32
-1.6235
4.0192
X1
-0.1056
0.1569
-0.6727
0.53
-0.5091
0.2979
X2
-0.0589
0.0456
-1.2896
0.25
-0.1761
0.0584
X3
-0.0221
0.0335
-0.6583
0.54
-0.1083
0.0641
X4
-0.0827
0.0277
-2.9884
0.03
-0.1538
-0.0115
X5
-0.1797
0.0491
-3.6572
0.01
-0.3060
-0.0534
X6
0.2253
0.1024
2.2009
0.08
-0.0378
0.4885
Source: authors’ calculation
Our results are in line with the conclusion achieved by Griffith-
Jones & Persaud (2012), who emphasized that the negative
correlation between FTT and GDP is due to different periods of
holding financial assets. Also, several other studies explain
rather a negative effect on economic growth (such as Campbell
et al., 2011; Cappelletti et al., 2017; or Schandlbauer, 2017).
However, Colliard & Hoffmann (2017) came to the opposite
conclusion and based on regression they proved the positive
correlation of the tax and GDP in France. In the original
proposal of FTT at the level of the euro area, the European
Commission predicts that an increase in the tax rate by 0.10%
will lead to a long-term decline in GDP of 1.76%.
Eichfelder & Lau (2016) also analyse the French tax and
conclude that trading of intraday activities was more sensitive
shortly after its introduction in May 2012, but they found no
significant effect on trading volume over the longer period. Also,
they examined the effect on volatility and stated that asset prices
are more volatile in intraday trading, and in the long run, the tax
has a stabilizing effect and eliminates speculative transactions.
The effect on volatility was based on our results negative. It can
be explained that the tax rate is low (0.02% for equity assets) and
the tax base of the French FTT is not very broad and includes
only shares of companies with a market capitalization of more
than EUR 1 billion. Becchetti et al. (2014) confirm a statistically
significant effect on the reduction of short-term daily liquidity
and daily trading, as well as a reduction in the volume of trading
for shares of small-cap companies. The negative effect on the
volume of asset trading is also known from several critical
studies, which are against the introduction of a tax on financial
markets. For example, Yongyang & Zheng (2010), based on an
analysis of the Chinese financial market, confirmed that a 22-
percentage point reduction in the FTT tax rate would lead to a
28% increase in market volume. Any changes in the tax rate will
have a significant effect on market efficiency and asset price
volatility.
In the second hypothesis, we assumed a relationship between
FTT and hedging derivatives. Our goal was to point out that
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