Charter value,risk-taking and systemic risk in banking before and after the global financial crisis of 2007-2008

ABSTRACT

We investigate how bank charter value affects risk for a sample of OECD banks by using standalone and systemic risk measures before, during, and after the global financial crisis of 2007–2008. Prior to the crisis, bank charter value is positively associated with risk-taking and systemic risk for very large ‘too-big-too-fail’ banks and large U.S. and European banks but such a relationship is inverted during and after the crisis. A deeper investigation shows that such a behaviour before the crisis is mostly relevant for very large banks and large banks with high growth strategies. Banks’ business models also influence this relationship. We find that for banks following a focus strategy, higher charter value amplifies both standalone and systemic risk for large U.S. and European banks. Our findings have important policy implications and cast doubts on the relevance of the uniform more stringent capital requirements introduced by Basel III.     

Last bank standing: What do I gain if you fail?

Banks attitude towards speculative lending is typically regarded as the result of trading-off the short-term gains from risk-taking against the risk of loss of charter value. We study the trade-off between stability and competition in a dynamic setting where charter value depends on future market competition. Promoting the takeover of failed banks by solvent institutions results in greater market concentration and larger rents for the surviving incumbents. This converts banks’ speculative lending decisions into strategic substitutes, granting an additional incentive to remain solvent. Entry policy may subsequently serve to fine-tune the trade-off between competition and stability.     

INTERSTATE BANKING AND ANTITRUST LAWS: HISTORY OF PUBLIC POLICIES TO PROMOTE BANKING COMPETITION

Over the past several years, antitrust laws' significance as a public policy to promote competition in banking has diminished. Deregulation has intensified competition so much that it has made antitrust laws nonbinding constraints, even during a merger movement of extraordinary proportions. Deregulation and attenuating antitrust raise a question as to whether a distinctive competitive policy for commercial banks should exist as it has in the past.
Two earlier policies are identified and reviewed in this paper: (1) free banking, which in several forms existed from the 1830s to the early 1930s, and (2) antitrust, which became relevant during the early 1960s. Experience under both policies illuminates the interaction between competition and regulation in banking. Such experience indicates that the effects of current competitive policy must be evaluated within the developing regulatory environment. Partially evaluating current policy within this context suggests that new charter requirements should be reformulated and that large bank mergers should be limited. So long as a distinctive regulatory system exists, a distinctive competitive policy for banks is needed.     

Securities fraud

Recent frauds in investment banks and securities houses have revealed how vulnerable modern financial institutions are to criminal activity by their employees. In this paper, we examine how regulators may limit the incidence of securities fraud by encouraging firms to provide managers and dealers with appropriate incentives and by imposing ex post penalties once a fraud has been discovered     

WAL‐MART AND BANKS: SHOULD THE TWAIN MEET? A PRINCIPLES‐BASED APPROACH TO THE ISSUES OF THE SEPARATION OF BANKING AND COMMERCE

The application in July 2005 by Wal-Mart to obtain a specialized bank charter from the state of Utah and to obtain federal deposit insurance reopened a national debate concerning the separation of banking and commerce. Though Wal-Mart withdrew its application in March 2007, the issue and the debate continue. This article offers a principles-based approach to this issue that begins with the recognition that banks are special and that safety and soundness regulation of banks is therefore warranted. Building on that recognition, the article lays out the principle that the "examinability and supervisability" of an activity should determine if that activity should be undertaken by a bank. Even if an otherwise legitimate activity is not suitable for a bank, it should be allowed for a bank's owners (whether the owners are individuals or a holding company), so long as the financial transactions between the bank and its owners are closely monitored by bank regulators. The implications of this set of ideas for the Wal-Mart case and for banking and commerce generally are then discussed . ( JEL G21, G28)     

流动性供给、最后贷款人与金融系统稳定:一个次优选择

中央银行维护金融稳定的能力建立在其能够为市场提供流动性这一特有能力的基础之上。事实上,金融危机期间,各国央行一方面通过调整自身的资产负债表而创造流动性以支持金融系统正常运转;一方面动用最后贷款人职能对个别机构进行救助。需要注意的是,大规模流动性供给和救助行为并非是"最优"的选择,其对经济金融失衡的影响、对公平效率的损害,以及由此带来的通胀压力和政策外溢效应不容忽视。     

Manipulation and auditing of public sector contracts

We model purchaser–provider contracts when providers can inflate reimbursable activity through manipulation. Providers are audited and fined upon detected fraud. We characterise the optimal price and audit policy both in the presence and absence of commitment to an audit intensity. Under ‘non-commitment’ the audit intensity increases in reported activity, allowing the provider to soften it by reducing activity together with the underlying service quality and manipulation. The purchaser then faces a trade-off between offsetting this tendency by raising price and committing to a low audit intensity by reducing price. We identify circumstances under which the two forces balance out.     

Monetary policy transmission under different banking structures: The role of capital and heterogeneity

This work deals with the transmission of monetary policy through the bank loan market, in the presence of a capital requirement regulation. Unlike standard models, based on the “representative bank” shortcut, we adopt the heterogeneous agents approach: this allows us to explicitly model the strategic interaction between well-capitalized and under-capitalized banks. The main results are the following. (I) The propagation of a monetary policy impulse through the loan market differs considerably, depending on the market structure: under monopolistic competition, strategic complementarity among well-capitalized banks leads to a “multiplier effect”; in the Cournot oligopoly framework, an effect of the opposite sign is at work, due to strategic substitutability. (II) Well-capitalized banks are more important, in shaping the adjustment following a monetary policy shock, than what is implied by their relative number over total; this fact strengthens the monetary policy effectiveness. This result holds under both monopolistic competition and oligopoly, although the interaction among banks, leading to such a result, differs across the two banking structures.     

ARE SOME BANKS TOO LARGE TO FAIL? MYTH AND REALITY

At the time of the Continental Illinois National Bank insolvency, bank regulators considered some commercial banks "too large to fail" (TLTF) and were reluctant both to legally fail such banks and to impose pro rata losses on any of the uninsured creditors of these insolvent banks and their parent holding companies. This policy was introduced due to widespread fears that large bank failures would set off a domino effect bringing down other banks and possibly even the macroeconomy as it did during the 1930s. Also, because these banks are considered special in that they provide money and credit to their communities, many feared that their failure could reduce greatly the availability of these services.
This paper analyzes the validity of these fears by examining both theory and the historical record. It concludes that neither theory nor history provides strong support for either fear. In addition, the paper finds that the costs of regulatory forbearance granted to insolvent banks and their creditors greatly exceed the alleged benefits. It also reviews how policy makers apply the TLTF principle in practice. The paper concludes that the policy has been modified progressively over time so that some large banks now are declared legally insolvent and all creditors of bank holding companies—and some uninsured creditors of the banks themselves—incur losses. One may reasonably expect that TLTF will be modified further as the large societal costs become more evident to the public and regulators alike.     

Culture and the capital–performance nexus in dual banking systems

While recent surveys have taken a special interest in culture to explain the failure of existing regulation, empirical evidence on the role of culture in influencing the bank capital-performance link is still largely unexplored. In this paper, we ask the following: Should regulators and policy makers make room for culture as an effective tool for a successful bank regulatory environment? We identify three proxies for cultural values derived from Hofstede (1980, 2001) and the World Values Survey and investigate to what extent individualism, masculinity, and trust can enhance or impede the capital-performance link for conventional and Islamic banks. Analyzing a panel of 729 banks operating in 33 countries from 1999 to 2013, our findings provide empirical evidence that cultural values enhance the capital-performance link for the two bank types. Our results have important policy implications: our paper represents a first initiative and provides evidence that culture has merits and can be used as an additional tool to implement regulatory guidelines in a successful way.     

资本要求、“多而不倒” 救助与系统性风险

本文从银行之间资产回报相关性的角度研究系统性风险，通过构建理论模型考察了存在“多而不倒”救助时资本要求对系统性风险的影响，并且以11个国家（地区）2006-2012年的相关数据为样本进行实证检验。研究结果表明，一定条件下“多而不倒”救助是监管者的最优选择，然而当存在这种“事后”最优政策时，资本要求的提高可能会通过影响银行“事前”投资决策的方式扩大银行之间的系统相关性，提高系统性风险隐患。这一效应在金融自由化程度较低的国家表现得更为显著。中国的资本监管改革应注意与金融市场化改革相协调。     

Allocating bank regulatory powers: Lender of last resort, deposit insurance and supervision

We examine the optimal institutional allocation of bank regulation. We find that centralizing the lending of last resort and deposit insurance functions in a regulator leads to excessive forbearance. It also leads the bank to invest suboptimally in loans. Giving this regulator supervision improves on both problems, but it still does not lead to the efficient outcome. In the multi-regulator arrangement, we find that it is beneficial to give supervision to the deposit insurer. The choice between the unified-regulator arrangement and the multi-regulator arrangement involves a trade-off: The multi-regulator arrangement reduces the forbearance problem at high levels of liquidity shortage but may exacerbate it at low levels. These results assume the absence of information frictions. When banks are better informed than regulators, we show that regulators may have an incentive not to share private information, suggesting it is important to consider regulators’ informational advantages when deciding on the allocation of regulation.     

Bank liquidity risk and monetary policy. Empirical evidence on the impact of Basel III liquidity standards

We extend the literature on the bank lending channel in two aspects. First, rather than following the literature by analyzing the impact of banks’ liquidity (measured via their asset portfolio) on monetary policy transmission, we study the role of banks’ actual liquidity risk, as measured by the Basel III liquidity regulations. Second, we investigate the effect of complying with the Basel III liquidity standards on monetary policy transmission. We use highly detailed bank-level data from Luxembourg for the period 2003q1--2010q4. Our findings are that monetary policy transmission works its way through small banks that also have a large maturity mismatch, as measured by the Net Stable Funding Ratio. In contrast, large banks with a small maturity mismatch increase their lending following a monetary policy shock, which confirms existing results that Luxembourg’s banks are liquidity providers to the European market. Based upon in-sample predictions and upon simulated data from an optimization model that takes the banks’ business models into account, we conclude that the bank lending channel will no longer be effective once banks adhere to the new Basel III liquidity regulations.     

How does credit supply respond to monetary policy and bank minimum capital requirements?

We use data on UK banks׳ minimum capital requirements to study the interaction of monetary policy and capital requirement regulation. UK banks were subject to both time-varying capital requirements and changes in interest rate policy. Tightening of either capital requirements or monetary policy reduces the supply of lending. Lending by large banks reacts substantially to capital requirement changes, but not to monetary policy changes. Lending by small banks reacts to both. There is little evidence of interaction between these two policy instruments. The differences in the responses of small and large banks identify important distributional consequences within the financial system of these two policy instruments. Finally, our findings do not corroborate theoretical models that raise concerns about complex interactions between monetary policy and macro-prudential variation in capital requirements.     

On the Provision of Insurance against Search‐Induced Wage Fluctuations*

Should workers be provided with insurance against search‐induced wage fluctuations? To answer this question, I rely on the numerical simulations of a model of on‐the‐job search and precautionary savings. The model is calibrated to low‐skilled workers in the United States. The extent of insurance is determined by the degree of progressivity of a non‐linear transfer schedule. The fundamental trade‐off is that a more generous provision of insurance reduces incentives to search for better‐paying jobs, which increases the cost of providing insurance. I show that progressivity raises the search intensity of unemployed workers, which reduces the equilibrium rate of unemployment, but it lowers the search intensity of employed job seekers, which reduces the output level. I also solve numerically for the optimal non‐linear transfer schedule. The optimal policy is to provide little insurance up to a monthly income level of $1350, so as to preserve incentives to move up the wage ladder, and nearly full insurance above $1450. This policy reduces the standard deviation of labor income net of transfers by 34 per cent and generates a consumption‐equivalent welfare gain of 0.7 per cent. The absence of private savings does not fundamentally change the shape of the optimal transfer function, but tilts the optimal policy towards more insurance, at the expense of a less efficient allocation of workers across jobs.     

Home sweet host: A cross‐country perspective on prudential and monetary policy spillovers through global banks

Prudential regulation of banks is multi‐layered: policy changes by home‐country authorities affect banks’ global operations across many jurisdictions; policy changes by host‐country authorities shape banks’ operations in the host jurisdiction regardless of the nationality of the parent bank. Do these policies create (unintended) cross‐border spillovers? Similarly, monetary policy actions by major central banks may also have effects on the behaviour of banks in other countries. This paper examines the effect that changes in home‐ and host‐country prudential measures have on cross‐border dollar credit provision, and how these interact with US monetary policy. We first run panel regressions with both layers of regulation, to examine which has a greater effect on cross‐border lending. We then use a novel approach to decompose growth in cross‐border bank lending into separate home, host and common components, and then match each with the corresponding home or host policies. Our results suggest that prudential policies can have spillover effects, which depend on the instrument used and on whether a bank's home or host country implemented them. Home policies tend to have larger spillovers on cross‐border US dollar lending than host policies. We also find that a tightening of US monetary policy can compound the spillovers of some prudential measures.     

The dynamic of bank lending channel: Basel regulatory constraint

This article analyzes the impact of monetary policy on bank behavior under the Basel I regulatory framework using a dynamic model with monopolistic competition. There are two main objectives. First, we theoretically predict the dynamic model of bank lending channels under the Basel I regulatory constraint. Second, we empirically analyze the situation in Malaysia by using panel data on 23 commercial banks in the period of 1999 to 2007 by using General Method of Moments. The empirical results show that market rates on loans and policy rates are important influences on average rates of banks' loans. This has an implication that Malaysian banks have the power to set their own prices on loans as they are influenced by the change in the market rate and policy rate. We also have proven that the previous period of spread risk weighted loans and securities is statistically significant and correlated with the average loan rate, whereas risk weighted securities is also statistically significant and correlated with the average time deposit rate in both periods. This shows that the role of risk-weighted assets under the Basel I is important in influencing the optimal rates on loans and time deposits.     

会计造假的责任认定及其治理

会计造假在我国是一个久治难愈的顽疾,会计信息使用者、提供者、监管者一方面需要真实的会计信息,另一方面为了追求自身的利益,默认甚至纵容了那些对自己有利的会计造假,而指责那些对自己不利的会计造假。会计造假有着深刻复杂的社会背景,是社会上各种造假现象在会计工作领域的一种反映,还有不合理的行政管理体制的深层次原因。治理会计造假必须跳出就会计造假治理会计造假的怪圈,从导致会计造假的社会环境和体制因素入手,只有这样才能从根本上治理会计造假。     

How does capital regulation react to monetary policy? New evidence on the risk-taking channel

Before the subprime crisis, financial stability was a microprudential issue addressed by capital regulation and unrelated to monetary policy. The financial crisis put this paradigm to the test and turned the spotlight on the relationship between financial stability and monetary policy. Hence, the following question arises: how does capital regulation react to monetary policy? This article seeks to answer this question. We analyze the link involving monetary policy and capital regulation through the risk-taking channel in Brazil. The findings suggest that banks react to monetary policy by changing the amount of loan provisions as well as the capital adequacy ratio (CAR). An important novelty of the study is the evidence that there is no trade-off between provisions and CAR, which are important tools used by banking supervisors. The key result of the article is that banks react to the macroeconomic environment differently from what is expected by banking supervision, i.e., there exists a paradox between the microprudential view and the macroprudential view. Thus, in terms of practical implication, a banking supervision strategy for financial stability must take into account the effects of monetary policy.     

基于DSGE模型的货币政策对银行风险承担影响研究*——兼论货币政策的应对

本文着力研究货币政策对商业银行风险承担的影响机制，并在此基础上分析货币政策应当如何应对。为此，本文构建了DSGE模型对比分析银行风险承担行为的传导机制，结果显示在信息不对称和有限债务的条件下，银行存在着道德风险，会过度地主动承担风险。为应对银行风险承担行为造成的低效率，本文设计了“最优”货币政策规则：货币政策应适当容忍通货膨胀的波动，优先关注实际利率，以降低由银行风险承担行为所导致的社会福利损失。