Does deposit insurance improve financial intermediation? Evidence from the Russian experiment

This study examines how the introduction of deposit insurance affects depositors and banks, using the deposit-insurance scheme introduced into the Russian banking system as a natural experiment. The fundamental research question is whether the introduction of deposit insurance leads to a more effective banking system as evidenced by increased deposit-taking and decreased reliance upon State-owned banks as custodians of retail deposits. We find that banks entering the new deposit-insurance system increase both their level of retail deposits and their ratios of retail deposits to total assets relative to banks that do not enter the new deposit insurance system. These results hold up in a multivariate panel-data analysis that controls for bank- and time-random effects. The longer a bank has been entered into the deposit insurance system, the greater is its level of deposits and its ratio of deposits to assets. Moreover, this effect is stronger for regional banks and for smaller banks. We also find that implementation of the new deposit-insurance system has the effect of “leveling the playing field” between State-owned banks and privately owned banks. Finally, we find strong evidence of moral hazard following implementation of deposit insurance in the form of increased bank risk-taking. Financial risk and, to a lesser degree, operating risk increase following implementation.     

Effect of Banking Regulation on Performance: Evidence from Turkey

In this study, we investigate the effect of regulation on banking sector performance in an emerging country context. Consecutive crises in the early 2000s led to three waves of reformist banking regulations in Turkey: (1) the banking sector restructuring program in 2002, (2) limitation of the full deposit insurance system in 2004, and (3) a corporate governance-related banking law in 2005. Results show that these actions had a positive effect on bank lending, asset quality, and profitability. Findings also support the view that the sequence and timing of banking reforms in Turkey acted as a shield against the global financial crisis of 2008.     

Deposit insurance around the world: A comprehensive analysis and database

This paper provides a comprehensive, global database of deposit insurance arrangements as of 2013. We extend our earlier dataset by including recent adopters of deposit insurance and information on the use of government guarantees on banks’ assets and liabilities, including during the recent global financial crisis. We also create a Safety Net Index capturing the generosity of the deposit insurance scheme and government guarantees on banks’ balance sheets. The data show that deposit insurance has become more widespread and more extensive in coverage since the global financial crisis, which also triggered a temporary increase in the government protection of non-deposit liabilities and bank assets. In most cases, these guarantees have since been formally removed but coverage of deposit insurance remains above pre-crisis levels, raising concerns about implicit coverage and moral hazard going forward.     

Modelling Deposit Insurance Scheme Losses in a Basel 2 Framework

This paper extends the existing literature on deposit insurance by proposing a new approach for the estimation of the loss distribution of a Deposit Insurance Scheme (DIS) that is based on the Basel 2 regulatory framework. In particular, we generate the distribution of banks’ losses following the Basel 2 theoretical approach and focus on the part of this distribution that is not covered by capital (tail risk). We also refine our approach by considering two major sources of systemic risks: the correlation between banks’ assets and interbank lending contagion. The application of our model to 2007 data for a sample of Italian banks shows that the target size of the Italian deposit insurance system covers up to 98.96% of its potential losses. Furthermore, it emerges that the introduction of bank contagion via the interbank lending market could lead to the collapse of the entire Italian banking system. Our analysis points out that the existing Italian deposit insurance system can be assessed as adequate only in normal times and not in bad market conditions with substantial contagion between banks. Overall, we argue that policy makers should explicitly consider the following when estimating DIS loss distributions: first, the regulatory framework within which banks operate such as (Basel 2) capital requirements; and, second, potential sources of systemic risk such as the correlation between banks’ assets and the risk of interbank contagion.     

Bank liabilities channel

The financial intermediation sector is important not only for channeling resources from agents in excess of funds to agents in need of funds (lending channel). By issuing liabilities it also creates financial assets held by other sectors of the economy for insurance or liquidity purpose. When the intermediation sector creates less liabilities or their value falls, agents are less willing to engage in activities that are individually risky but desirable in aggregate (bank liabilities channel). The paper shows how financial crises driven by self-fulfilling expectations about the liquidity of the banking sector are transmitted to the real sector of the economy. Since the government could also create financial assets by borrowing, the paper analyzes how public debt affects the issuance of liabilities by the financial intermediation sector.     

Deposit Insurance,Banking Crises,and Market Discipline: Evidence from a Natural Experiment on Deposit Flows and Rates

Using evidence from Russia, we carry out what we believe to be the literature's cleanest test of the direct impact of deposit insurance on market discipline and study the combined effect of a banking crisis and deposit insurance on market discipline. We employ a difference‐in‐difference estimator to isolate the change in the behavior of a newly insured group (i.e., households) relative to an uninsured “control” group (i.e., firms). The sensitivity of households to bank capitalization diminishes markedly after the introduction of deposit insurance. The traditional wake‐up call effect of a crisis is muted by this numbing effect of deposit insurance.     

中国银行业系统流动性风险考察与控制——基于资产抛售价格视角

基于银行业在宏观风险来临时出现的流动性不足和系统性风险,通过建立 DSGE-VAR 模型,考量银行业在宏观经济运行框架下的系统流动性风险,结果发现:银行同业借贷、其他证券资产和交易性负债业务的综合作用会使得银行系统流动性风险总体增大,银行如果想要降低存款提取率对其流动性的影响,就要在银行间市场停止拆出资金、出售政府证券及其他流动资产,并出售潜在的流动性较低的资产.从监管层面来讲,应当通过监管的引导效应将交易性负债进行转化,引导同业借贷和其他证券资产业务向平衡区域集中,并在一定范围内减少银行其他证券资产业务的规模.     

Banking regulation and the output cost of banking crises

Using a cross-section time-series of 47 banking crisis episodes in 35 industrial and emerging market economies between the 1970s and 2003, this study analyses the relationship between banking regulation and supervision, and the severity of banking crises measured in terms of the magnitude of output loss. The empirical results show that countries that provide comprehensive deposit insurance coverage and enforce strict bank capital adequacy requirements experience a smaller output cost of crises. Restrictions on bank activities also influence the severity of crises. The results, however, do not suggest that there is a significant impact of bank supervision. In addition, there is no robust evidence that the magnitude of the output cost of crises depends on the extent of banks’ financial intermediation.     

Bank failures and the cost of systemic risk: Evidence from 1900 to 1930

We measure the effect of bank failures on economic growth using data from 1900 to 1930, a period without active government stabilization policies and several severe banking crises. VAR model estimates suggest bank failures have long-lasting negative effects on economic growth. A bank failure shock involving one percent of system liabilities leads to a 6.5% reduction in GNP growth within three quarters and a measurable reduction for 10 quarters. Panel VAR model estimates for the 48 states show bank failures aggravate commercial non-bank failures. Institutional and regulatory features affect the intensity of the bank failure effect. We find that bank failures have a larger impact in states with deposit insurance, in states more heavily concentrated in agriculture, and in states with fewer large firms. However, because a number of states exhibit all three characteristics, we are not able to clearly identify the true marginal effects of these factors independently.     

Costs of financial instability, household-sector balance sheets and consumption

Extant work on costs of financial instability focuses on fiscal costs and declines in aggregate GDP following banking crises. We estimate effects of banking and currency crises on consumption in 19 OECD countries, showing consumption plays an important role in the adjustment following a crisis, and effects are not captured solely by the impact of crises on standard consumption determinants, income and wealth. Additional effects, attributable to factors such as time-varying confidence, uncertainty and credit rationing, are aggravated by high and rising leverage, despite financial liberalisation easing liquidity constraints. High leverage implies that banking crises taking place now could have greater incidence than in the past.     

Public bank lending in times of crisis

This paper studies the role of government-owned banks in the event of financial crises. The study takes an empirical perspective focusing on bank lending. We compare the lending responses across government-owned and private banks to financial crises using the balance sheet information of 764 major banks headquartered in 50 countries over the period of 1994–2009. Using a nested panel regression framework that allows for parameter shifts in the bank lending equation, we find robust evidence that government-owned banks increase their lending during crises relative to normal times, while private banks’ lending decreases. Government-owned banks thus counteract the lending slowdown of private banks. The findings suggest that governments can play an active counter-cyclical role in their banking systems directly through government-owned banks.     

A New Development Database. Deposit Insurance around the World

In the past two decades, in a series of banking crises aroundthe world, banks have become systematically insolvent. Thesecrises have occurred in developed and developing economies alike.To make such financial system breakdowns less likely and tolimit their costs if they occur, policymakers feel the needfor financial safety nets. These include such policies as implicitor explicit deposit insurance, a lender of last resort functionof the central bank, bank insolvency resolution procedures,and bank regulation and supervision. Of these policies, explicitdeposit insurance has been gaining popularity in recent years.Since the 1980s the number of countries with explicit depositinsurance schemes almost tripled, with most OECD countries andan increasing number of developing economies adopting some formof explicit depositor protection. In 1994 deposit insurancebecame the standard for the newly created single banking marketof the European Union. Establishing an explicit deposit insurancescheme became part of the generally accepted best practice advicegiven to developing economies.     

Bank lending and commercial property cycles: Some cross-country evidence

We investigate determination of commercial property prices and their interaction with aggregate bank lending. An illustrative model suggests that lending is closely related to property prices and property markets can develop cycles given plausible assumptions. Cross-country empirical analysis confirms its predictions. Property prices show particularly strong links to credit in countries that experienced banking crises linked to property losses in 1985-1995. Studies of dynamic interaction suggest that variance in commercial property prices is largely explicable by lagged shocks in the variable itself, while GDP and bank credit also have an important influence. Implications arise for risk managers and regulators.     

Impact of regulatory interactions on bank capital structure

This article examines a bank's optimal capital structure and risk-taking decisions in a regulated environment. We focus on the interactive nature of the Fed's collateralized discount window lending and the FDIC's deposit insurance. Such regulatory interactions are shown to have nonlinear and nonuniform impacts on the bank's leverage and risk-taking decisions. Thus, bank moral hazard problems may persist, even when banks are charged risk-adjusted deposit insurance premia and are also subject to market discipline through subordinate debt. Our analysis yields several new policy implications about the design and pricing of bank regulations.     

Collateralization,leverage, and stressed expected loss

We describe a general equilibrium model with a banking system in which the deposit bank collects deposits from households and the merchant bank provides funds to firms. The merchant bank borrows collateralized short-term funds from the deposit bank. In an economic downturn, as the value of collateral decreases, the merchant bank must sell assets on short notice, reinforcing the crisis, and defaults if its cash buffer is insufficient. The deposit bank suffers from losses because of the depreciated assets. If the value of the deposit bank's assets is insufficient to cover deposits, it also defaults. Deposits are insured by the government, with a premium paid by the deposit bank equal to its expected loss on the deposits. We define the bank's capital shortfall in the crisis as the expected loss on deposits under stress. We calibrate the model on the U.S. economy and show how this measure of stressed expected loss behaves for different calibrations of the model. A 40% decline of the securities market would induce a loss of 12.5% in the ex-ante value of deposits.     

Which banks smooth and at what price?

By adjusting lending, banks can smooth the macroeconomic impact of deposit fluctuations. This may, however, lead to extended periods of disproportionately high lending relative to deposit intake and, under certain conditions, to the accumulation of risk in the banking system. Using bank-level data for 8477 banks in 129 countries for the period from 1992 to 2015, we examine how banks' market power and other characteristics may contribute to smoothing or amplification of shocks and the accumulation of risk. We find that the higher their market power the lower is the growth rate of lending relative to deposits. As a result, in periods of falling deposits higher market power for the average bank is associated with a greater fall in lending, consistent with amplification of adverse effects during relatively bad times. Strikingly, at very high levels of market power, there is a threshold past which the effect of market power on the growth rate of lending relative to deposits turns positive so that “superpower” banks may contribute to the smoothing of adverse effects when deposits are falling. In periods of rising deposits, however, such banks are more likely to lead to amplification and accumulation of risk in the economy.     

The shifting value of federal deposit insurance: Implications for reform

This research examines the relationship between the value of federal deposit insurance and bank size. We conclude that the value of deposit insurance has often been greater for the largest bank-holding companies since 1981. This differential is consistent with the notion that largest banks have greater ability to circumvent regulatory and/or market discipline. The source of this differential appears to be due to holding less capital rather than greater asset risk. Insurance costs net of the value of deposit insurance are also relatively lower for the largest banks and have become more so since 1981. These results suggest that recent proposals to improve the deposit insurance system should be evaluated based on their ability to effect even-handed discipline throughout the banking industry to eliminate and forestall further creation of this large institution bias.     

Do Depositors Punish Banks for Bad Behavior? Market Discipline,Deposit Insurance,and Banking Crises

This paper empirically investigates two issues largely unexplored by the literature on market discipline. We evaluate the interaction between market discipline and deposit insurance and the impact of banking crises on market discipline. We focus on the experiences of Argentina, Chile, and Mexico during the 1980s and 1990s. We find that depositors discipline banks by withdrawing deposits and by requiring higher interest rates. Deposit insurance does not appear to diminish the extent of market discipline. Aggregate shocks affect deposits and interest rates during crises, regardless of bank fundamentals, and investors' responsiveness to bank risk taking increases in the aftermath of crises.     

差别化存款保险费率与银行风险承担——基于我国农村银行的经验证据

本文拓展了Freixas and Rochet(2008)的理论模型,证明存款保险差别化费率机制对银行风险承担具有抑制作用,在此基础上选取我国农村银行为研究对象,运用2015—2019年某省119家法人投保机构进行实证检验。研究发现:引入差别化费率设计显著降低了农村银行的风险承担;这一作用存在异质性,对于自身风险承担水平较低、资产规模较大的农村银行来说,抑制作用更为明显。进一步研究发现,差别化费率机制在一定程度上缓和了农信社改制短期内对农商行风险可能造成的不利影响。本文结论对加强存款保险制度的早期纠正功能、防范化解金融风险以及深化农村金融机构改革具有一定的理论意义和参考价值。     

利率市场化背景下银行系统性危机的实证研究

从利率市场化的国际经验来看,无论是在发达国家还是发展中国家,其实施过程都容易导致不同程度的银行业危机。采用1973~2012年42个国家的面板数据,对利率市场化背景下的银行业危机进行的实证研究表明：利率市场化的推进将增加银行系统性危机发生的机率,特别是在存款利率市场化阶段,而严格的银行监管是抑制银行系统危机发生的有效方法;显性存款保险制度的设立无助于利率市场化后银行系统性风险的防范,甚至有可能会增加危机发生的机率;资本账户开放下进行利率市场化会增加银行系统危机发生的机率。利率市场化进程中允许开设民营银行不会增加银行系统危机的发生机率。