Cross-border banking,credit access,and the financial crisis

We study the sensitivity of credit supply to bank financial conditions in 16 emerging European countries before and during the financial crisis. We use survey data on 10,701 applicant and non-applicant firms that enable us to disentangle effects driven by positive and negative shocks to the banking system from demand shocks that may vary across lenders. We find strong evidence that firms' access to credit was affected by changes in the financial conditions of their banks. During the crisis firms were more credit constrained if they were dealing with banks that experienced a decline in equity and Tier 1 capital, as well as losses on financial assets. We also find that access to credit reflects the balance sheet conditions of foreign parent banks. The effect of positive and negative shocks to a bank is greater for riskier firms and firms with fewer tangible assets.     

“Lending by example”: Direct and indirect effects of foreign banks in emerging markets

Using a novel dataset that allows us to trace the bank relationships of a sample of mostly unlisted firms, we explore which borrowers are able to benefit from foreign bank presence in emerging markets. Our results suggest that the limits to financial integration are less tight than the static picture of firm-bank relationships implies. Even though foreign banks are more likely to engage large and foreign-owned firms, after an acquisition, a bank is 20% less likely to terminate a relationship with a firm if the acquirer is foreign rather than domestic. Most importantly, within a credit market, firms appear to have the same access to financial loans and ability to invest whether they borrow from a foreign bank or not, while foreign banks benefit all firms by indirectly enhancing credit access.     

民营化、国有化与中国国有银行改革

国有银行自上世纪70年代中期以来出现了民营化的国际趋势,一些国家因此发生了银行危机.而此前全球曾有过国有化浪潮.虽然国有银行效率比民营银行低,但经验研究却表明,国有银行与银行危机之间没有或很少有因果关系;而且由于有政府信誉担保不易发生挤兑.中国国有银行改革过程实际上是政府逐步放弃控制权的过程,但切不可因效率而忽视金融稳定;简单地依靠所有权变更无法解决国有银行脆弱性问题;而且,与境外战略投资者合作时要谨防金融主权失控风险.     

财务危机预警系统在商业银行信贷风险管理中的应用

目前,商业银行信贷风险管理中财务分析存在的贷款企业资料不真实、现金流量没得到应有重视、财务分析手段不丰富等主要问题,都会引发财务危机。在信贷风险管理中应用财务危机预警系统,通过对上市公司运营因子、盈利因子、偿债因子、成长因子、现金流量因子、规模因子、行业因子、股权集中度因子的分析,能够及时发现企业可能带来的危机影响。商业银行应准确合理地选择财务危机预警指标,为信贷风险管理提供强有力的依据;建立财务危机预警模型应在会计信息真实完整的基础上,通过对会计信息进行加工、处理来完成。     

The Aggregate Behavior of Banks: A Proposal for Prudential Supervision

This study seeks to investigate a macroeconomic approach that could help bank regulators and supervisors perform their task of ensuring financial stability. To achieve this, an attempt is made to explain the behavior of banks by analyzing aggregate time series of credit lending and deposit-taking, which are the variables involved in financial intermediation. This article's main contribution is to present evidence of banks’ behavior in their role as financial intermediaries, in terms of the performance of the variables that represent their credit-granting or deposit-taking decisions. For this purpose the study used a vector autoregressive model to construct impulse response functions and the Granger test. The results demonstrate the existence of bilateral causality between credit lending and deposit--taking, suggesting that banks actively manage the financial intermediation process. In addition, the results show that shocks to deposits destabilize the credit lending process, and credit supply shocks, in turn, destabilize deposit-taking. The latter result is important for understanding how financial instability can arise, and is thus relevant for the bank regulator.     

Ownership and production efficiency: Evidence from Taiwanese banks

In the early 1990s, Taiwan began her deregulation trend in order to enhance competition and economic efficiency across all industries. We derive a theoretical framework to predict possible rankings in technical efficiencies of public, mixed, and private banks. A panel data set with 43 Taiwanese banks during 1997–1999 is used for empirical analysis. We then apply a translog distance function to estimate technical efficiencies. The relationship between technical efficiency and government shareholding is also examined. Empirical results show that a public bank in Taiwan can improve its technical efficiency by mixed ownership at a diminishing rate. Moreover, banks in Taiwan on average performed worse after the 1997 Asian financial crisis.     

次贷危机背景下我国商业银行对个人住房信贷风险的防范

美国次贷危机已演变成为了全球性的金融危机。我国商业银行的个人住房信贷扩张累积了较大风险与个贷危机,次贷危机的冲击将使个人住房贷款者信用风险的集中爆发,也会使房地产市场发展的不确定性风险加大等问题完全暴露。我国商业银行必须采取措施,提前防范其对银行体系内个人住房信贷所产生的不良影响,严格控制个人住房贷款者的信用级别,完善并严厉执行银行体系的内部控制,增强银行自身的流动性,加强金融创新监管,以全面保证商业银行信贷资产运作的安全性。     

Ownership Reform,Foreign Competition and Efficiency of Chinese Commercial Banks: A Non‐parametric Approach

Since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, the pressure for bank reforms has mounted as China ought to have fully opened up its financial market to foreign competition by 2006. Efficiency is key for domestic banks to survive in a liberalised environment, but it appears that the last hope for raising bank efficiency is through ownership reform. Whether ownership reform and foreign competition can solve China's banking problem remains to be tested. This paper aims to answer this question using a non‐parametric approach to analyse the efficiency changes of 15 large commercial banks during 1998–2005. We find that ownership reform and foreign competition have forced Chinese commercial banks to improve performance, as their total factor productivity rose by 5.6 per cent per annum. This coincides with the recent bullish Chinese stock markets led by three listed state‐owned commercial banks. Despite such encouraging results, we remain cautious about the future of Chinese banks, as the good results may have been artificially created with massive government support and the fundamentals of the banks may be still weak.     

Regulation,ownership and bank performance in the MENA region: Evidence for Islamic and conventional banks

This paper investigates the impact of regulation and ownership on the performance of banks in 19 countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. We test the hypothesis that the effect of regulation on bank profitability depends on the type of ownership structure. The public and private views of bank regulation are also tested along with the interaction of bank regulation and ownership. We find regulation measures to have a strong influence on bank profitability, whereas ownership structure seems to play a limited role in explaining bank performance in the MENA region. The results support the private view of bank regulation and suggest that capital requirements and private monitoring when interacted with ownership concentration exert a strong influence on bank profitability. When the analysis is done separately for conventional and Islamic banks, we find that the impact of bank regulations though strongly significant, does not depend on the type of ownership structure prevailing in conventional banks. In contrast, regulatory effects seem to be important drivers of profitability of Islamic banks. Therefore, it is very important for policy makers in these countries not to treat the two types of banks identically when setting up and implementing bank regulations especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.     

中资银行和外资银行竞争力的对比研究

中国加入世贸组织后,金融市场将按承诺逐步开放,这意味着外资银行与中资银行之间的竞争将日趋激烈。从银行经营的外部环境、经营安全性、资产数量和质量以及业务开展等方面着手,对外资银行与中资银行进行比较分析,针对中资银行在经营中存在的问题并提出相关建议。     

Fiscal divergence, current account divergence and TARGET2 imbalances in the EMU

Diverging fiscal policy paths, housing booms and diverging unit labour costs were driving forces of rising intra-European current account imbalances, which were underpinned by low interest rates. Since the outbreak of the crisis, the adjustment of intra-EMU current account imbalances has been postponed by a rising divergence of TARGET2 balances, as the repatriation of private international credit and deposit flight from the crisis economies is intermediated by central bank credit. Given that this process has brought the Deutsche Bundesbank into a debtor position to the domestic financial system, the article discusses options for liquidity absorption by the Bundesbank to forestall asset price bubbles in Germany.     

The role of trade credit in the recent subprime financial crisis

This study tests firms’ financing behavior, especially the causal relation between trade credit and bank credit around the time of the recent subprime financial crises. I find bank credit and accounts payable/receivable are simultaneously determined and there is a substitute/complementary effect between bank credit and accounts payable/receivable. Moreover, I test a cross-sectional response to crisis and find that firms with a more vulnerable financial position (i.e., financially constrained firms) are more likely to be negatively affected by crisis and, in turn, are more likely to cut their supply of credit to customers and increase their use of credit from suppliers.     

Review article - The East Asian Miracle

The fact that Sweden had the highest growth rate of per capita GNP of any European country between 1870 and 1914 has very often been explained by the existence of a well functioning financial system, with commercial banks as efficient prime movers. In this essay various characteristic features are presented to shed some light on the financial system during the next period in Swedish economic history – the turbulent inter-war period. Financial systems in capitalist countries can be classified either as market-oriented or bank-orientated. In a bank-orientated system the banks take more responsibility for corporate financing than in a market-orientated one. Therefore, bank–industry relations, especially credit and owner connections, are much longer and more concentrated then in the latter. It is also significant for a bank-orientated system that banks in times of distress increases both the credit granted and their shareholding. This was certainly the case of Sweden. Another ‘analytical tool’ for the characterisation of the Swedish bank–industry relations is the contracting approach. In institutional theory a company's relations to other actors and institutions within a certain financial system are viewed as a set of various contracts. The credit and ownership contracts are two examples. The aim of complementing the broad financial story of Sweden with various case studies on a micro-level is to illustrate how these contracts were developed in a small economy like Sweden. From this part of the study we attain a much deeper understanding of these important, long-term relations.     

Public bank lending in Africa in times of crisis

This paper examines State-owned bank lending in Africa in times of crisis. We exploit a sample of 112 banks, including 24 State-owned banks, operating in 8 West African countries over the period 2000–2019. We focus on how bank ownership affects lending, during and after crises. Results indicate that, contrary to domestic-private banks, public banks continue to lend at the same rate during and slightly increase their lending after a crisis. The main explanation of the previous finding is the stability of State-owned bank resources. Finally, the countercyclicality of public banks does not affect their profitability or portfolio quality.     

Banks,Financial Liberalisation and Financial Crises in Emerging Markets

The East Asian financial crisis has raised a series of important issues. Amongst them is the question of the role of the banking sector and financial liberalisation in contributing to financial crises. How do weaknesses in the domestic banking sector, when combined with both domestic and international financial liberalisation, engender currency crises? What is lacking in the literature is a simple conceptual framework within which these connections can be conceptualised and drawn out and in which the role of banks is explicitly discussed. This paper seeks to provide just such a framework. Within it, international financial liberalisation can be seen as fuelling a boom in domestic credit, which leads to acute balance sheet problems for domestic banks, and exposes the country concerned to a currency crisis in the event of a sudden reversal of capital inflows, which banking weaknesses may itself trigger.     

Bank Performance and Credit Availability in the Bulgarian Banking Sector, 1997-2001

Abstract

The 1997 financial crisis wiped out 30% of the Bulgarian banking sector and created severe strains on corporations. With the establishment of the currency board in 1997 and the new Banking Law, which set the legal framework for proper bank supervision, major Bulgarian banks were rapidly privatized through sales to foreigners, now controlling around 80% of bank assets. Since 1997, the Bulgarian banking sector has recovered from the crisis by improving its profitability and efficiency and adopted a legal framework compatible with the European Union standards. Based on a regression analysis of bank balance sheets and income statements, this paper shows that low level of credit volume during 1997-1999 derived from banks' cautious stance towards credit making reflecting both the ongoing risks in the real sector, and the stringent new banking regulations. Large banks, however, benefited from scale economies in improving profitability in the same period.     

Financing patterns in transition economies: Privatized former SOEs versus ab initio private firms

We employ 37,987 firms in 30 transition economies to investigate the relation between the origins of private firms and their financing patterns. We find that relative to ab initio (from the beginning) private firms, privatized former state-owned enterprises (SOEs) finance a higher proportion of their fixed assets from bank finance (especially from state-owned banks) and supplier credit. We argue that privatized former SOEs continue to benefit from the political and financial connections established during their SOE era. We document that country governance, financial development and legal origins play an important role in the financing patterns of privatized versus private firms.     

How Well Have Social Economy Financial Institutions Performed During the Crisis Period? Exploring Financial and Social Efficiency in Spanish Credit Unions

As Social Economy financial institutions, credit unions have traditionally been considered less efficient than traditional banking entities. However, like banks and savings banks, they have to be as efficient and competitive as possible to survive in today’s business environment, especially at times of crisis. To date, there have been very few studies on their efficiency and practically none for the crisis period. Moreover, almost all the existing studies assess only financial efficiency, without considering their social function. This study examines the levels of both financial and social efficiency in Spanish credit unions as well as their main determinants during the recent crisis. We apply the two-stage double bootstrap data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology based on panel data corresponding to all the credit unions active in Spain between 2008 and 2013. The empirical results indicate that financial and social efficiency achieved an acceptable level, although on average the former was slightly greater than the latter. We also find that both age and merger and acquisition activity were positively influential on the financial efficiency of credit unions but had a significant negative effect on their social efficiency. Moreover, the regional location of such entities and the financial crisis were also crucial determinants of both types of efficiency. Our findings are therefore useful for all the stakeholders of credit unions to know if these entities have been efficient according to a double bottom line accounting in the crisis period and hence to maintain successful social management that is compatible with satisfactory financial efficiency.     

Banking Reforms for the 21st Century: A Perfectly Stable Banking System Based on Financial Innovations*

Although bank loans themselves are somewhat illiquid because of private information, most of their cashflows are not. Recent financial innovations allow commercial loans to be liquefied via credit derivatives and actual and synthetic securitizations. The loan originating bank holds the remaining illiquid equity tranche containing the concentrated credit risk, private information rent and the ‘excess spread’ that incentivize the bank to continue to monitor and service the loans. Empirically, we find that the average size of the equity tranche is about 3% for the representative commercial loan portfolios in our sample. The liquefaction of bank loans makes possible a banking system that restricts the guaranteed accounts to be backed by 100% reserves and the non‐guaranteed deposits to be backed by liquid securitized loan tranches, while retaining the deposit‐lending synergy. Such a system is perfectly safe without deposit insurance and it renders banks bankruptcy‐remote without sacrificing a bank's traditional role as a financial intermediary.     

Collectivism and Corruption in Commercial Loan Production: How to Break the Curse?

Recent research suggests that collectivism breeds corruption in bank lending. This finding, together with the stickiness of culture, poses a direct challenge to economic growth in collectivist societies. In this paper, we address this grim outlook by examining the types of firms that are susceptible to the detrimental effect of collectivism on lending integrity and the formal institutions that can help alleviate such effect. We find that the adverse effect of collectivism on bank corruption is more severe in small and medium-sized firms, privately owned firms, and non-exporting firms, while it is considerably weaker in countries with more effective private monitoring, a higher (lower) fraction of foreign-owned (government-owned) banks, a more competitive banking sector, better information sharing, and stronger legal and political institutions. Our findings are robust to using alternative measures of collectivism and alternative dependent variables. These results highlight how firm-level characteristics and formal institutions interact with collectivism in affecting firms’ access to bank credit.