Government bailouts and default risks of a duopoly: strong bank versus weak bank

A duopolistic loan market includes a strong bank without the problem of early closure that opts out of government bailouts and a weak bank with this problem that participates in the bailout programmes of distressed loan purchases and direct equity injections. A direct implication of our framework is that the strong bank’s equity will be priced as a standard call option, while the weak bank’s equity will be priced as a down-and-out call option. We find that an increase in either bailout (i.e. distressed loan purchases and direct equity injections) directly decreases the weak bank’s default risk but indirectly increases the strong bank’s default risk. Accordingly, either bailout contributes to banking stability since the indirect positive effect insufficiently offsets the direct negative effect, giving an overall negative response of default risks to an increase in either bailout. Higher competition by shifting to quasi-competition from collusion increases banking stability under either bailout. Our analysis suggests that competition is aligned with the regulatory objective of improving stability.     

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.     

The impact of regulatory measures on commercial bank interest rates: A micro analysis of the Barbados case

This study estimates the impact on commercial banks' interest-rate behavior of the more pervasive regulatory measures adopted by the Central Bank of Barbados. The results indicate that the cash ratio, the stipulated government securities ratio, and the savings deposit rate floor significantly impacted the loan rate for every bank. Generally, the deposit rate for any given bank has been responsive to fewer policy variables than the loan rate. The loan rates, though generally responsive to all policy variables other than the bank rate, have exhibited very low elasticities. The results indicated that the ceiling on the average lending rate, when it existed, depressed loan rates by less than 1 percent on average. This is largely attributable to the Central Bank's policy of adjusting the ceiling in line with market trends.     

Between Mao and markets: new evidence on segmentation of the bank loan market in China

This article examines the local bank lending's dependency upon local deposits within China in the Feldstein–Horioka vein. In the case of a transition economy like China, it would be appropriate to assume the presence of a significant level of disparity in the cost of funds between State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and non-SOEs. For this purpose, a dataset of the provincial deposit rates and the provincial loan rates for the state and the nonstate sectors is built. Even after controlling the national- and province-specific shocks, the correlation between the local deposit rates and the local loan rates for the nonstate sector, in contrast with that for the state sector, is even higher than for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries. The findings suggest that serious asymmetric information problems between banks and non-SOEs might impede cross-regional lending and prevent the development of the nonstate sector within China.     

Race in relation to bank depositors and mortgage applications

Data associated with the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) are often studied for evidence of discrimination in terms of minority applicants or for home location in minority neighborhoods, with mixed results. The present analysis utilizes a data set covering 2014–2016, combining characteristics of home location and applicants from the HMDA data with information on depositor characteristics from the Federal Insurance Deposit Corporation's Summary of Deposits data and the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. Consistent with predictions from the red-lining literature, loan acceptance rates are adversely influenced by high minority locations, although the effect is larger for minority applicants. The relationship banking literature predicts that community banks will yield higher rates of loan acceptance, and the results support that hypothesis. That same literature suggests that familiarity in terms of similar race/ethnicity characteristics for depositors and home location or loan applicants will yield a loan acceptance advantage; and that hypothesis is not supported. Subsidiary analyses suggest that market competition improves loan acceptance rates for minority applicants, consistent with models of discrimination. Additionally, minority depositors are associated positively with loan acceptance rates, which may reflect higher levels of bank risk, and a risk premium, in those markets.     

Incentive contracts and bank performance

This paper, using unique survey data from the banking industry in rural China, investigates the effect of incentive contracts on performance. In the context of China's economic transition, we find that the incentive contracts have a positive effect on the bank manager's performance in deposit taking and non‐performing loan reduction. This finding is robust when we control for the endogeneity of incentive contracts. Our empirical results present evidence on the positive effects of incentive‐based banking reforms in rural China.     

The Effects of Competition on Banks’ Risk Taking

We consider the joint effect of competition and deposit insurance on risk taking by banks when bank risk is unobservable to depositors. It turns out that the magnitude of risk taking depends on the structure and side of the market in which competition takes place. If the bank is a monopoly or banks are competing only in the loan market, deposit insurance has no effect on risk taking. Banks in this situation tend to take risk, although extreme risk taking is avoided. In contrast, introducing deposit insurance increases risk taking if banks are competing for deposits. Then, deposit rates become excessively high, thereby forcing banks to take extreme risks.     

The cyclicality of bank regulation in a general economic framework

This article utilizes a representative agent model to address how the regulation policies for banks should respond to the general economic condition. With the consideration of a self-fulfilling deposit insurance facility with sufficient bank reserve to meet the expected need of liquidity shock, our model suggests a counter-cyclical capital adequacy requirement in a competitive loan market. The exception might occur when the moral hazard problem becomes very unwieldy and the representative individual is rather risk averse. With regard to the closure policy, we find that it is closely related to the individual’s degree of risk aversion. A counter-cyclical closure policy is recommended when the individual is highly risk averse. Otherwise, a pro-cyclical closure policy is preferred.     

Implications of Shifting Retail Market Shares for Loan Monitoring in a Dominant‐Bank Model

This study utilizes a dominant‐bank model to investigate whether an increase in retail loan and deposit‐market concentration increases the incentives for both dominant and fringe banks to monitor their loans and thereby improve the quality of their loan portfolios. It shows that the effects on banks' incentives to engage in monitoring aimed at eliminating loan default losses in response to increased concentration of retail market shares of loans and deposits depend critically on whether the banks' asset and liability choices are interdependent. When the asset and liability decisions of both dominant and fringe banks are independent, a shift in market shares in favor of the dominant bank generates a straightforward increase in the incentives of all banks to monitor their loans. Under portfolio interdependence, the effects on monitoring outcomes at dominant banks and at banks within the competitive fringe depend on more complicated configurations of parameters. This fact helps explain mixed empirical evidence on the relationships between bank competition and measures of bank risk and soundness.     

Measuring bank competition under binding interest rate regulation: the case of China

Many empirical studies suggest that financial reform promoted bank competition in most mature and emerging economies. However, some earlier studies that adopted conventional approaches to measure competition have concluded that bank competition in China declined during the past decade, despite progressive reforms implemented since the 1980s. We show that this apparent contradiction is the result of flawed measurement. Conventional indicators such as the Lerner index and Panzar–Rosse H-statistic fail to measure competition in Chinese loan markets properly due to the system of interest rate regulation. By contrast, the profit elasticity (PE) approach does not suffer from these shortcomings. Using balance sheet information for a large sample of banks operating in China during 1996–2008, we show that competition actually increased in the past decade when the PE indicator is used.     

贷款收益与综合收益RAROC优化组合的比较分析

有效匹配稀缺的贷款资源以创造银行的最大价值是商业银行提升经营和精细化管理能力的关键.本文立足于商业银行信贷经营实际,采用综合收益(包括贷款收益、存款收益和中间业务收益)下的RAROC指标来代替传统的贷款收益指标,并且从商业银行贷款客户选择的角度,构建了基于RAROC最优的客户组合优化决策模型.运用该模型,通过对以贷款风险收益最大化和以客户综合风险收益最大化为目标的贷款优化组合的比较分析,研究贷款组合目标函数选择的科学性和有效性.研究表明,以贷款风险收益最大化为目标去匹配贷款将产生资源错配,银行无法得到最优经营结果,以客户综合风险收益最大化为目标匹配贷款资源才是商业银行信贷经营的最优选择.     

Optimal monetary policy with the cost channel and monopolistically-competitive banks

This paper studies the optimal nominal policy interest rate in a model with the cost channel and imperfect competition in the banking sector. Due to this market power, the interest rate on deposits is relatively low; in particular it is lower than the policy interest rate. This, in turn, leads to a suboptimal level of deposits and, as a result, to a low level of intermediation. Deviations from the Friedman Rule are optimal in this setup regardless of the assumption about price rigidity; since households can hold their assets in the form of cash or deposits, taxing money, which is an imperfect substitute for deposits, is optimal in order to increase the level of deposits and encourage intermediation. The main results of the paper are robust to the introduction of market power in the loan market as well as stickiness in both the deposit and the loan markets.     

Creditor passivity: The effects of bank competition and institutions on the strategic use of bankruptcy filings

In transition countries, banks often fail to take action against loan defaulters. Using a model of the bank–firm relationship, we study the trade-off a bank faces when having defaulting firms declared bankrupt. First, the bank receives a payoff if a firm is liquidated. Second, it provides information about a firm’s type to its competitors. Therefore, asymmetric information between banks is reduced, and bank competition intensifies. We find that the better the institutions and the more competitive the banking sector, the greater the bank’s incentive to bankrupt defaulting firms. This makes information between banks less asymmetric and thus leads to lower interest rates and increases the probability that all banks offer loans.     

转移成本、价格歧视与银行竞争——基于霍特林模型的实证分析

在银行业竞争中,转移成本能够锁定消费者,使银行能够对锁定的消费者定一个较高的价格,但是,转移成本也使银行对没有被锁定的消费者的竞争更加激烈。研究发现,转移成本的存在增加了银行的利润,并且转移成本越高,银行从信贷中获得的利润越高。但是,当存在存款市场和贷款市场竞争时,由于价格歧视的存在,银行的利润随着转移成本的增加而降低,转移成本没有给银行带来优势。     

基于同业竞争的中小企业贷款定价模式设计

利率市场化改革备件下,本文站在银行的角度建立一个适合中小企业的贷款定价模型,以此帮助银行更好地为中小企业融资服务。本文首先基三种贷款定价模式的比较研究,归纳提出了适合区域性商业银行特征的中小企业贷款定价理念——“基于同业竞争的贷款定价法”;其次,探讨了影响商业银行贷款定价机制的微观因素,如资金成本、违约风险、预期收益等;第三,综合市场结构和风险度量两个主要因素,利用审断回归分析建立同业竞争贷款定价模型;最后,采用某区域性商业银行的数据来进行实证检验,从而说明使用这种基于同业竞争的贷款定价模型是解决目前中小企业融资难问题的一条可行的道路。     

Market Structure and Risk Taking in the Banking Industry

We demonstrate that the common view according to which an increase in competition leads banks to increased risk taking fails to hold in an environment where homogeneous loss averse consumers can choose in which bank to make a deposit based on their knowledge of the riskiness incorporated in the banks outstanding loan portfolios. With an exclusive focus on imperfect competition we find that banks incentives for risk taking are invariant to a change in the banking market structure from duopoly to monopoly. Finally, we show that deposit insurance would eliminate the gains from bank competition when banks use asset quality as a strategic instrument.revised version received October 15, 2003     

Bank behavior, incomplete interest rate pass-through, and the cost channel of monetary policy transmission

This paper employs a New Keynesian DSGE model to explore the role of banks within the cost channel of monetary policy transmission for shaping the interest rate pass-through from money market rates to loan rates. Banks extend loans to firms in an environment of monopolistic competition by setting their loan rates in a staggered way, which means that the adjustment of the aggregate loan rate to a monetary policy shock is sticky. We estimate the model for the euro area by adopting a minimum distance approach. Our findings exhibit that (i) financial costs are an important factor for price changes, (ii) frictions in the loan market have an effect on the propagation of monetary policy shocks as the pass-through from a change in money market rates to loan rates is incomplete, and (iii) the strength of the cost channel is mitigated as banks shelter firms from monetary policy shocks by smoothing loan rates.     

The transmission of bank capital requirements and monetary policy to bank lending in Germany

We investigate the transmission of changes in bank capital requirements and monetary policy, and their interaction, on German banks’ corporate loan growth and lending rates. Our results show that increases in capital requirements are associated with an immediate decrease in total domestic and cross‐border bank lending. Changes in the euro area's monetary policy stance are positively related to corporate loan interest rates in general. Regarding the interacting effect of national bank capital requirements and euro area monetary policy, we observe that the transmission of accommodative euro area monetary policy to corporate lending rates can be attenuated by contemporaneous increases in bank capital requirements. Moreover, more strongly capitalized banks increase their loan growth in response to accommodative monetary policy whereas, for weaker banks, increasing capital requirements implies a decrease in their corporate loan growth. Our results confirm a tradeoff between higher capital requirements and accommodating monetary policy originating from banks’ capital constraints.     

The effect of economic policy uncertainty on bank valuations

This article examines how economic policy uncertainty (EPU) affects bank valuations. Using a large sample of banks over a long period, we find that EPU has a negative effect on bank valuations. One explanation for this result is that EPU reduces bank loan growth, and lower loan growth then leads to lower bank valuations. Consistent with this explanation, we find that the negative effect of EPU is more pronounced for banks with a higher ratio of loans to total assets.     

Regret theory and the banking firm: The optimal bank interest margin

This paper examines the optimal bank interest margin, i.e., the spread between the loan rate and the deposit rate of a bank, when the bank is not only risk-averse but also regret-averse. Regret-averse preferences are characterized by a utility function that includes disutility from having chosen ex-post suboptimal alternatives. We show that the presence of regret aversion raises or lowers the optimal bank interest margin than the one chosen by the purely risk-averse bank, depending on whether the probability of default is below or above a threshold value, respectively. Regret aversion as such makes the bank less prudent and more prone to risk-taking when the probability of default is high, thereby adversely affecting the stability of the banking system.