The Economy‐wide Impacts of a Rise in the Capital Adequacy Ratios of Australian Banks

Regulators are requiring banks to raise additional equity to finance their activities. The benefits are understood in terms of reducing the risks of another financial crisis. But there are potential costs, including the potential for unanticipated macroeconomic impacts as banks reduce leverage. We use a financial computable general equilibrium model, containing disaggregated treatment of financial agents, to explore the economy‐wide consequences of an increase in bank capital adequacy ratios. We find that the macroeconomic consequences are small.     

The impacts of bank-specific and macroeconomic variables on the capital adequacy ratio: evidence from Islamic banks

The study investigates the relationship between the capital adequacy ratio (CAR) and different bank-specific and macroeconomic variables for 28 Islamic banks. We document that there is a statistically significant positive relationship between the CAR and the bank-specific and macroeconomic variables. In particular, bank-specific variables such as ROA, ROE, leverage, credit risk and size show a strong association with the CAR, while on the macroeconomic side, inflation, market capitalization and exchange rate have an impact on the average Islamic bank in our sample study. Furthermore, we run another model (equity to assets ratio) as dependent, with similar control variables, and the results reveal that, except for inflation, all the variables that have a significant effect on the CAR also influence the equity to assets ratio.     

货币政策能否促进银行对小微企业信贷投放*——基于宏观经济不确定视角的研究

本文研究在宏观经济不确定条件下，不同货币政策工具能否促进银行对小微企业信贷投放。首先，将货币政策引入考虑了宏观经济不确定性的银行资产组合模型中，论证货币政策、宏观经济不确定性与银行信贷资产配置的理论关系。然后利用我国181家银行2004—2018年的数据，检验在宏观经济不确定条件下，不同货币政策工具对银行小微企业信贷行为调控的作用效果。研究结果表明：宏观经济不确定性会抑制银行信贷行为。其中小微企业信贷占比较大的银行受到的影响更为显著。与数量型货币政策相比，价格型货币政策能够更显著地减轻不确定性对银行小微信贷的消极影响。其中银行同业拆借利率的调控效果最强。研究结论对于选择适宜的货币政策工具促进银行向小微企业信贷投放，化解经济不确定性对银行信贷行为的影响并助力小微企业发展等具有政策借鉴意义。     

经济政策不确定性、银行集中度与银行风险*

本文基于2007—2018年30家上市商业银行季度面板数据，首次针对不同方面的银行风险，采用固定效应模型详细探讨经济政策不确定性、银行集中度与银行风险之间的关系。研究结果表明：（1）经济政策不确定性会加剧银行经营风险和信用风险，但会降低银行风险承担；（2）银行集中度的上升会导致银行经营风险和信用风险上升，但对银行风险承担的作用不显著；（3）集中度在经济政策不确定性对银行风险的影响中具有调节效应，随着银行集中度上升，经济政策不确定性会更加剧银行经营风险和信用风险，且会进一步减弱银行风险承担。本文采用不同的银行集中度变量并涵盖多种银行风险衡量指标的实证结果均稳健。进而笔者基于实证结果，在银行风险防控方面对政策制定者及监管部门提出一些建议。     

Money growth,uncertainty and macroeconomic activity: a multivariate GARCH analysis

The impact uncertainty has on money growth has received much attention in recent years and is an issue of critical importance to central banks, particularly for those, such as the European Central Bank (ECB), which place a strong emphasis on monetary analysis in monetary policy formulation. Some recent papers examining this issue use ad hoc estimates and measure variability rather than uncertainty. We employ a multivariate GARCH model, which measures uncertainty by the conditional variance of the data series, to investigate whether macroeconomic uncertainty and monetary uncertainty Granger-cause changes in real money. The estimated model also allows us to investigate how monetary uncertainty impacts economic activity. We find that macroeconomic uncertainty impacts positively on US real M2 growth over a two-year horizon but that monetary uncertainty does not cause changes in real M2. Instead, our results indicate that real money growth causes monetary uncertainty. Monetary uncertainty is found to have a negative effect on real economic activity and on macroeconomic uncertainty. We conclude by discussing the implications of these results and the methodological approach used for institutions such as the ECB that give monetary analysis a prominent role in their monetary policy strategy.     

ENDOGENOUS DEBT‐EQUITY RATIO AND BALANCE‐SHEET CHANNEL: IMPLICATIONS FOR GROWTH AND WELFARE

This paper endogenizes the debt‐equity ratio and embodies financial leverage in a cash‐in‐advance model of endogenous growth. Our analysis finds that the debt‐equity ratio is positively related to the balanced‐growth rate, since it serves as a ‘financial accelerator’ to stimulate investment projects. Compared to previous studies, this positive relationship gives rise to an additional balance‐sheet effect, which substantially affects the macroeconomic consequences of monetary and taxation policies. Due to the existence of the balance‐sheet effect, we also find that the Friedman rule is not necessarily optimal.     

Welfare costs of monetary policy uncertainty in the economy with shifting trend inflation

We study welfare costs of the uncertainty about monetary policy in the economy featuring shifting trend inflation. We follow Ruge-Murcia (J Econ Dyn Control 36: 914–-938, 2012) to employ the SMM approach to fit the model to the US data (1979Q1-2015Q1). We find that the monetary policy uncertainty affects economic welfare through different dimensions. On the one hand, the policy uncertainty itself distorts the economic welfare negligibly, not only by increasing volatilities of consumption and leisure, but also by decreasing their average levels. A higher level of trend inflation then signifies these changes to produce greater welfare costs. Furthermore, the adverse impacts of policy uncertainty on the economy, documented by the impulse response functions of macroeconomic variables to policy uncertainty shock, become larger when central banks raise their inflation targets. On the other hand, the costs of exogenous variations in trend inflation are larger if there is policy uncertainty.     

Ex ante capital position,changes in the different components of regulatory capital and bank risk

We investigate the impact of changes in capital of European banks on their risk-taking behaviour from 1992 to 2006, a time period covering the Basel I capital requirements. We specifically focus on the initial level and type of regulatory capital banks hold. First, we assume that risk changes depend on banks’ ex ante regulatory capital position. Second, we consider the impact of an increase in each component of regulatory capital on banks’ risk changes. We find that, for highly capitalized, adequately capitalized and strongly undercapitalized banks, an increase in equity or in subordinated debt positively affects risk. Moderately undercapitalized banks tend to invest in less risky assets when their equity ratio increases but not when they improve their capital position by extending hybrid capital or subordinated debt. On the whole, our conclusions support the need to implement more explicit thresholds to classify European banks according to their capital ratios but also to clearly distinguish pure equity from hybrid and subordinated instruments.     

The impact of macroeconomic factors on income inequality: Evidence from the BRICS

In this paper we investigate how the evolution of income growth, real interest rates, and inflation have driven income inequality across a variety of countries with particular focus on the BRICS economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) during the period 2001 to 2015. Our work suggests that, when central banks of the BRICS economies use monetary policy for macroeconomic stabilization, they need to consider the impact monetary policy changes have on the distribution of income in their nations. Our estimates reveal that the unintended consequence of policies that induce economic growth and higher prices is higher income inequality. We find that the positive relationship between the three macroeconomic variables and income inequality for the BRICS economies is stronger during the post-2008 period.     

The political economy of IMF conditionality and central bank independence

International organizations (IOs) often drive policy change in member countries. Given IOs' limited political leverage over a member country, previous research argues that IOs rely on a combination of hard pressures (i.e., conditionality) and soft pressures (i.e., socialization) to attain their political goals. Expanding this literature, we hypothesize that IOs can enhance their political leverage through loan conditions aimed at enhancing the political independence of key administrative units. Studying this mechanism in the context of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), we argue that through prescribing structural loan conditions on central banks (CBI conditionality), the IMF empowers central banks to gain more political leverage with the aim to limit a government's ability to (ab)use monetary policy for political gain. Divorcing monetary authorities from their respective government, the IMF intends to alter political dynamics towards achieving greater program compliance and enhance long-term macro-financial stability. Relying on a dataset including up to 124 countries between 1980 and 2012, we find that the IMF deploys CBI conditionality to countries with fewer checks and balances, a less independent central bank, and where the government relies more heavily on the monetization of public debt.     

The static and dynamic connectedness of environmental,social, and governance investments: International evidence

We investigate the connectedness of the most significant global equity indices that comprise companies with the highest environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. Motivated by the rapid growth of socially responsible investing during the last two decades, we examine whether these investments are prone to similar exogenous economic and financial shocks as their conventional counterparts. Employing a variety of influential macroeconomic and financial variables over the period 10/1/2007–4/15/2020, we document statistically significant and consistent transmissions between the employed equity indices throughout the sample period. In particular, the connectedness exhibits dynamic patterns during three periods: the European sovereign debt crisis, the systemic Greek problems, and the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. We also find that developed equity markets are the shock transmitters to Asian and other emerging markets. Our results highlight the risk of contagion and the diminishing portfolio diversification benefits of these equity indices during turbulent periods.     

What are the bank-specific and macroeconomic drivers of banks’ leverage? Evidence from Luxembourg

We investigate the leverage cycle in Luxembourg’s banking sector using individual bank-level data for the period 2003 Q1–2010 Q1. One of our findings is that Luxembourg’s banks have a procyclical leverage. This procyclicality is not due to marking-to-market but because Luxembourg’s banks are liquidity providers to the EU banking sector. We then empirically investigate the role of bank characteristics as well as real, financial and expectation variables that proxy for macroeconomic conditions in the pre-crisis and crisis period. We find that off-balance sheet exposures have different effects in the pre-crisis and crisis period, and that the share of liquid assets in the portfolio only affects security holdings. As for macroeconomic variables, we find that the Euribor-OIS spread is a significant driver of the build-up in leverage in the pre-crisis period. The reason is that most banks in Luxembourg are either branches or subsidiaries. This makes leverage a less relevant indicator of riskiness for investors. It also implies that in times of liquidity shortages, mother companies or groups demand further liquidity from their branch or subsidiary. The downturn in leverage during the crisis can be accredited to reductions in expectations, which we proxy by an economic sentiment indicator. It can also be explained by increasing bond prices which induce depositors to shift their funds from bank deposits into bonds. We find no important role for GDP growth.     

Unemployment dynamics in emerging countries: Monetary policy and external shocks

This paper quantifies the impact of three key external shocks – external demand, interest rate, and uncertainty shocks – on emerging market economies (EMEs). We find that external shocks have a sizeable impact on macroeconomic fluctuations in EMEs and that a considerable fraction of this impact is through the domestic stock market. A decrease in external demand and an increase in external interest rate and uncertainty lead to a higher unemployment rate, lower stock market return, and a depreciation of the domestic currency. The EMEs' monetary policy actively responds to external shocks and dampens their impact on domestic activity.     

国有股权重、政策性负担与绩效——国有银行战略引资方案探析

本文结合当前国有银行战略引资的改革背景,构建银行业混合寡占、国有银行混合持股的古诺竞争均衡模型,研究认为战略引资后的均衡股权结构与国有银行所承担的政策性负担及私有银行数量密切相关;国有银行政策性负担与私有银行的经营绩效正相关,但从整体来看则损害了社会总福利.另外,政策性负担不影响市场可容纳的最大银行数量,但会影响达到这一数量时国有银行的股权结构.     

国有股权重、政策性负担与绩效——国有银行战略引资方案探析

We present a mixed oligopoly model for private banks and a public bank with mixed ownership and policy burden to research the program of strategic investor importing for state-owned banks. We find that close relationships exist among the equilibrium equity structure following strategic investor importing, the policy burden of state-owned banks and the number of private banks; that the policy burden of state-owned banks has positive relationships with the performance of private banks, with overall negative effect on social welfare; that the policy burden would not affect the maximum market capacity number of private banks but would affect the equity structure of state-owned banks with such a number.     

Evaluating the effect of monetary policy on unemployment with alternative inflation forecasts

This paper explores the role that inflation forecasts play in the uncertainty surrounding the estimated effects of alternative monetary rules on unemployment dynamics in the euro area and the US. We use the inflation forecasts of 8 competing models in a standard Bayesian VAR to analyse the size and the timing of these effects, as well as to quantify the uncertainty relative to the different inflation models under two rules. The results suggest that model uncertainty can be a serious issue and strengthen the case for a policy strategy that takes into account several sources of information. We find that combining inflation forecasts from many models not only yields more accurate forecasts than those of any specific model, but also reduces the uncertainty associated with the real effects of policy decisions. These results are in line with the model-combination approach that central banks already follow when conceiving their strategy.     

Leading indicators of non-performing loans in Greece: the information content of macro-, micro- and bank-specific variables

We examine the information content of a unique set of macroeconomic, bank-specific, market and credit registry variables as regards their ability to forecast non-performing loans using a panel data set of nine Greek banks. We distinguish between business, consumer and mortgage loans and investigate their differences with respect to their optimal predictors. The quasi-AIM approach (Carson et al. in Int J Forecast 27:923–941, 2010) is utilized in order to take into account heterogeneity across banks and minimize estimation uncertainty. In addition, we calculate a number of forecasting measures in order to take into account the policy makers’ preferences. We find that market variables, specifically the supermarket sales, confidence indices for the services and construction sector and the business sentiment index represent good forecasting variables for most categories of NPLs. In addition, industrial production is the optimal predictor for consumer NPLs and imports for business NPLs. Finally, bank-specific variables represent top-performing leading indicators for business NPLs. Our results have significant implications for stress-testing credit risk in a top-down manner and for supervisory and macro-prudential policy design.     

Robust control and central banking behaviour

This paper seeks to explain the recent behaviour of the two main central banks in the recent financial crisis, applying a robust control tool through a Neo-Keynesian monetary policy model. The direct forbearer of this paper is the Giordani and Söderlind (2004) study. It begins with the origin, purpose and theoretical grounds of robust control, indicating that it is one way to face model uncertainty, as an alternative to the Bayesian approach. In the middle section, we seek to obtain the course of the model's main variables: interest rates, inflation and output. The model constructor also wants the participating agents to have the same doubts that he has regarding its validity; therefore, robust control is considered as a “fine-tuning” of the rational expectations approach. The impulse-response functions are obtained, with the monetary authority acting as a Stackelberg-type leader, affected by a perturbation on the supply side. The two relevant equilibria are obtained and compared in robust control with dynamic economy (the reference equilibrium and the worst possible case equilibrium) with that obtained when operating with rational expectations. The alternative course for the reference model set forth in the paper by Dennis (2008) is also analysed. We mainly find that the different results depend on the behaviour of the law of motion of the state variables, specifically the shadow prices that influence the private sector's expectations. Lastly, the paper relates the recent monetary policy performance when facing the financial crisis that began in the summer of 2007.     

Assessing macro-financial linkages: A model comparison exercise

The recent global financial crisis has increased interest in macroeconomic models that incorporate financial frictions. We illustrate the simulation properties of five medium-sized general equilibrium models used by central banks in the Eurosystem. The models include a financial accelerator mechanism (convex “spread” costs related to firms' leverage) and/or collateral constraints (based on asset values). We provide results from impulse responses to shocks originating in the financial sector as well as a monetary policy shock. Overall, the models share qualitatively similar and interpretable features. This gives us confidence that we have some common understanding of the mechanisms involved. Finally, we survey recent trends in the literature on financial frictions.     

(Un)Conventional monetary policy and bank risk-taking: A nonlinear relationship

This paper investigates the effect of monetary policy - especially unconventional monetary policy - on bank risk-taking behavior in Europe over the period 2000–2015. Using a dynamic panel model with a threshold effect, we estimate this effect on two measures of bank risk: the Distance to Default, which reflects the market perception of risk, and the asymmetric Z-score, which corresponds to an accounting-based measure of the risk. We find that loosening monetary policy (via low interest rates and increasing central banks' liquidity) has a harmful effect on banks’ risk, confirming the existence of the risk-taking channel. Moreover, we show that this relationship is nonlinear, i.e., with the sustainable implementation of unconventional monetary policies, the effects are stronger below a certain threshold.