Contagion during the Greek sovereign debt crisis

We examine the impact of news about Greece and news about a Greek bailout on bank stock prices in 2010 using data for 48 European banks. We identify the twenty days with extreme returns on Greek sovereign bonds and categorise the news events during those days into news about Greece and news about the prospects of a Greek bailout. We find that, except for Greek banks, news about Greece does not lead to abnormal returns while news about a bailout does, even for banks without any exposure to Greece or other highly indebted euro countries. This finding suggests that markets consider news about the bailout to be a signal of European governments' willingness in general to use public funds to combat the financial crisis. Sovereign bond prices of Portugal, Ireland, and Spain respond to both news about Greece and news about a Greek bailout.     

Does gender diversity on banks' boards matter? Evidence from public bailouts

We are the first to examine the impact of gender diversity on banks' boards on the probability and size of public bailouts. Our findings, based on a sample of listed European banks over the period 2005–2017, suggest that banks with more gender-diverse boards are less likely to receive a public bailout and receive a lower amount of bailout funds as a percentage of total assets than banks with less gender-diverse boards. Specifically, an increase by one standard deviation in gender diversity decreases the probability of a bailout by at least 2.44%, a significant reduction considering that the unconditional probability is 18.7%. Gender diversity is also positively related to bank performance, as proxied by ROA and Tobin's Q and with dividend payout ratios, consistent with the hypothesis that female directors are better monitors than male directors. These results are robust to a variety of econometric approaches and provide support for recent reforms in several EU countries regarding gender quotas.     

Credit spread interdependencies of European states and banks during the financial crisis

We investigate the interdependence of the default risk of several Eurozone countries (France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain) and their domestic banks during the period between June 2007 and May 2010, using daily credit default swaps (CDS). Bank bailout programs changed the composition of both banks’ and sovereign balance sheets and, moreover, affected the linkage between the default risk of governments and their local banks. Our main findings suggest that in the period before bank bailouts the contagion disperses from bank credit spreads into the sovereign CDS market. After bailouts, a financial sector shock affects sovereign CDS spreads more strongly in the short run. However, the impact becomes insignificant in the long term. Furthermore, government CDS spreads become an important determinant of banks’ CDS series. The interdependence of government and bank credit risk is heterogeneous across countries, but homogeneous within the same country.     

Banks,the IMF,and the Asian crisis

This paper examines the impact of the Asian crisis on bank stocks. In the second half of 1997, Western banks outperformed their stock markets. In contrast, East Asian bank indices incurred losses in excess of 60% in each of the crisis countries. Most of these poor performances are explained by stock market movements in the crisis countries. After taking into account these movements, currency exposures affected banks adversely only in Indonesia and the Philippines. Except for the Korean program, which affected positively bank stocks in all countries in our sample but one, IMF programs had little effect on bank values.     

Sovereign Credit Risk,Banks' Government Support,and Bank Stock Returns around the World

We explore the joint effect of expected government support to banks and changes in sovereign credit ratings on bank stock returns using data for banks in 37 countries between 1995 and 2011. We find that sovereign credit rating downgrades have a large negative effect on bank stock returns for those banks that are expected to receive stronger support from their governments. This result is stronger for banks in advanced economies where governments are better positioned to provide that support. Our results suggest that stock market investors perceive sovereigns and domestic banks as markedly interconnected, partly through government guarantees.     

"大而不倒"救助政策的理论和实证研究

由于大银行倒闭的巨大破坏性,最后贷款人在救助中通常奉行"大而不倒"政策。考虑到救助成本是银行资产规模的增函数,如果救助银行是最优的,那么救助任何一个更大的银行将也是最优的,这也意味着"大而不倒"救助政策在理论上的成立。在"大而不倒"政策下,规模和风险之间存在相互影响的关系。"大而不倒"救助政策影响银行的规模选择和资产风险的组合选择,导致银行追求变得更大且更具风险。     

Bank bailouts and economic growth: Evidence from cross-country,cross-industry data

In this paper, we revisit the question of how bank bailouts affect economic growth. We adopt a broad concept of bailouts, which includes both capital injections and liquidity support to the banking system. We employ an identification strategy that controls for the various dimensions of bailout endogeneity and find that liquidity support has a significant positive real economic effect. The effect of recapitalizations per se is not statistically significant, but they reinforce the positive impact of liquidity interventions. Utilizing bank-level data, we provide evidence that this is the case because better-capitalized banks and banks in significantly recapitalized systems have a higher propensity to lend, thus raising aggregate-level real economic growth.     

Interest rate dynamic effect on stock returns and central bank transparency: Evidence from emerging markets

Interest rate dynamic effect on stock returns is examined under different levels of central bank transparency under an asset pricing context. Using a large set of emerging countries in a panel data framework, we provide evidence for a negative link between stock returns and interest rate differences. However, this negative effect is reduced significantly under a transparent central bank, underlying a non-linear impact on stock returns. Our study is focused on a period from 1998 to 2008 where fundamental changes in the level of central banks’ transparency were occurred. Our findings imply that restrictive monetary policies under high levels of transparency lead to smoother reductions on stock returns with significant benefits for financial stability.     

Can European bank bailouts work?

Cross-border banking needs cross-border recapitalisation mechanisms. Each mechanism, however, suffers from the financial trilemma, which is that cross-border banking, national financial autonomy and financial stability are incompatible. In this paper, we study the efficiency of different burden-sharing agreements for the recapitalisation of the 30 largest banks in Europe. We consider bank bailouts for these banks in a simulation framework with stochastic country-specific bailout benefits. Among the burden sharing rules, we find that the majority and qualified-majority voting rules come close to the efficiency of a bailout mechanism with a supranational authority. Even a unanimous voting rule works better than home-country bailouts, which are very inefficient. If we assume additional systemic risk benefits, the efficiency of burden sharing rules comes close to the supranational solution.     

Banking sector reactions to COVID-19: The role of bank-specific factors and government policy responses

This paper examines the impact of bank-specific factors and variations in the context of stringency of government policy responses on bank stock returns because of the COVID-19 pandemic. A sample of 1,927 publicly listed banks from 110 countries is used for the period of the first major wave of COVID-19, that is, January to May 2020. Our findings indicate that stock returns of banks with higher capitalization and deposits, more diversification, lower non-performing loans, and larger size are more resilient to the pandemic. While banks’ environment and governance scores do not have a significant impact, higher social and corporate social responsibility strategy scores intensify the negative stock price reaction to COVID-19. We further observe that the pandemic-induced reduction in bank stock prices is mitigated as the strictness of government policy responses increases, mainly through economic responses such as income support, debt and contract relief, and fiscal measures from governments.     

The effects of corporate bailout on firm performance: International evidence

Not all corporate bailouts are the same. We study corporate bailouts from around the world during 1987–2005. Among these bailed-out firms, some firms are economically distressed while others are financially distressed. Some firms are bailed out with cash (either as equity or as loans) while others are bailed out with debt relief. Some firms are bailed out by the government while others are bailed out by other stakeholders. We examine these firms’ operating performance before and after their bailouts, but specifically across different bailout types, and we also measure their stock returns surrounding their bailout announcements.     

Explaining bank stock performance with crisis sentiment

Using search volume data on crisis-related queries from Google Trends, we estimate three different measures of market-level and individual crisis sentiment. We find that the stock performance of international banks during the period Q1 2004 to Q4 2012 was significantly driven by investors’ irrational market-wide crisis sentiment. Our empirical analysis shows that irrational market-wide crisis sentiment leads investors to devalue bank stocks irrespective of idiosyncratic or macroeconomic fundamentals. Comparing this finding with results for a sample of non-financial companies, we find evidence in support of the notion that the effect of crisis sentiment on stock returns is strongest in the absence of implicit bailout guarantees.     

Public debt,bailouts, and common bonds

We look at a model where countries of different sizes provide local public goods with positive spillovers. Matching grants can give rise to optimal expenditure levels, but countries can induce bailouts. We study the characteristics of these bailouts in a subgame-perfect Nash equilibrium and how these characteristics are affected by the introduction of common bonds. Partial substitution of common for sovereign bonds has two implications. First, it lowers the average and marginal borrowing costs of countries which may be eligible for bailouts. This effect leads to higher borrowing in these countries irrespective of their bailout expectations. Second, the lower borrowing costs mitigate the incentives of countries to induce a bailout and, therefore, constrain the parameter set for which a soft budget constraint equilibrium exists. As a result, the introduction of common bonds can also be in the interest of those countries that provide the bailouts.     

Supply and Demand Effects of Bank Bailouts: Depositors Need Not Apply and Need Not Run

We address two key issues concerning bank bailout effects on depositor and bank behavior. The first is whether bailouts weaken or strengthen market discipline by depositors through deposit supplies. The second is if bailed-out banks decrease or increase their deposit demands. These questions can only be adequately addressed by analyzing the effects of bailouts on both deposit quantities and prices. We do so for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailouts. Overall, we find that demand changes empirically dominate supply changes, and suggest significantly reduced deposit demand from bailouts. In some cases, however, supply changes dominate and indicate weakened market discipline.     

A Pyrrhic Victory? Bank Bailouts and Sovereign Credit Risk

We model a loop between sovereign and bank credit risk. A distressed financial sector induces government bailouts, whose cost increases sovereign credit risk. Increased sovereign credit risk in turn weakens the financial sector by eroding the value of its government guarantees and bond holdings. Using credit default swap (CDS) rates on European sovereigns and banks, we show that bailouts triggered the rise of sovereign credit risk in 2008. We document that post‐bailout changes in sovereign CDS explain changes in bank CDS even after controlling for aggregate and bank‐level determinants of credit spreads, confirming the sovereign‐bank loop.     

The real effects of bank distress: Evidence from bank bailouts in Germany

How does bank distress impact their customers' probability of default and trade credit availability? We address this question by looking at a unique sample of German firms from 2000 to 2011. We follow their firm-bank relationships through times of distress and crisis, featuring the different transmission of bank distress shocks into already weakened firm balance sheets. We find that a distressed bank bailout, which is subject to restructuring and deleveraging conditions, leads to a bank-induced increase of firms' probabilities of default. Moreover, bailouts tend to reduce trade credit availability and ultimately firms' sales. We further find that the direction and magnitude of the effects depends on firm quality and the relationship orientation of banks.     

Bank CEO careers after bailouts: The effects of management turnover on bank risk

We study whether bank bailouts affect CEO turnover and its subsequent impact on bank risk. Exploiting the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) of 2008, we find that TARP funds temporarily decreased the likelihood of bank CEO turnover during the crisis (2008–2010) but significantly increased CEO changes afterwards. Our results show that replacing TARP CEOs reduced individual bank's risk as well as the bank's contributions to the systemic risk. Finally, we find that TARP CEO turnover was mainly driven by a decrease in the bank's political capital. Overall we provide evidence that bank bailouts have important implications for banks’ risk-taking and systemic risk, insofar as bailouts affect bank CEO turnover.     

Does the source of uncertainty matter? The impact of financial,newspaper and Twitter-based measures on U.S. banks

This study examines if the source of uncertainty (newspaper, Twitter, financial market) matters in its impact on bank stock returns in the United States. By applying discrete wavelet transformation, we model directional spillovers and Granger causality between uncertainty and bank returns for different time horizons. Our results demonstrate that this distinction between time horizons is crucial. Although newspaper and Twitter-based measures are correlated, they capture a different source of investor perception. Twitter-based uncertainty adversely affects bank stocks in the short run, while newspaper-based policy uncertainty is relevant in the medium run. Financial-based uncertainty, VIX, is the most important factor. Moreover, we find that the impact of uncertainty on bank returns is stronger during the COVID-19 pandemic and for banks with a high ratio of loans to total assets and large off-balance-sheet activities.     

Reprint of: Stopping contagion with bailouts: Micro-evidence from Pennsylvania bank networks during the panic of 1884

Using a newly constructed historical dataset on the Pennsylvania state banking system, detailing the amounts of “due-froms” on a debtor bank-by-debtor bank basis, we investigate the effects of the Panic of 1884 and subsequent private sector-orchestrated bailout of systemically important banks (SIBs) on the broader banking sector. We find evidence that Pennsylvania banks with larger direct interbank exposures to New York City changed the composition of their asset holdings, shifting from loans to more liquid assets and reducing their New York City correspondent deposits in the near-term. Over the long-term though, only the lower correspondent deposits effect persisted. Our findings show that the banking turmoil in New York City impacted more exposed interior banks, but that bailouts of SIBs by the New York Clearing House likely short-circuited a full-scale banking panic.     

The credit crisis around the globe: Why did some banks perform better?

Though overall bank performance from July 2007 to December 2008 was the worst since the Great Depression, there is significant variation in the cross-section of stock returns of large banks across the world during that period. We use this variation to evaluate the importance of factors that have been put forth as having contributed to the poor performance of banks during the credit crisis. The evidence is supportive of theories that emphasize the fragility of banks financed with short-term capital market funding. The better-performing banks had less leverage and lower returns immediately before the crisis. Differences in banking regulations across countries are generally uncorrelated with the performance of banks during the crisis, except that large banks from countries with more restrictions on bank activities performed better and decreased loans less. Our evidence poses a substantial challenge to those who argue that poor bank governance was a major cause of the crisis because we find that banks with more shareholder-friendly boards performed significantly worse during the crisis than other banks, were not less risky before the crisis, and reduced loans more during the crisis.