A closer look at financial development and income distribution

This paper analyzes the under-investigated relationship uniting financial development and income distribution. We use a novel approach taking into account for the first time the specific channels linking banks, capital markets and income inequality, the time-varying nature of the relationship, and reciprocal causality. We construct a set of annual indicators of banking and capital market size, robustness, efficiency and international integration. We then estimate the determinants of income distribution using a panel Bayesian structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model, for a set of 49 countries over the 1994-2002 period. We uncover a significant causality running from financial sector development to income distribution. In addition, the banking sector seems to exert a stronger impact on inequality. Finally, the relationship appears to depend on the characteristics of the financial sector, rather than on its size.     

Financial liberalization,insurance market,and the likelihood of financial crises

This paper provides empirical evidence to investigate the direct impact of financial liberalization on the likelihood of currency/systemic banking crises, and examines the roles of insurance market, country risk, and economic conditional variables on the relationship between financial liberalization and financial crises in 39 countries. Our empirical results support that financial liberalization does have a significantly negative impact on the likelihood of currency/systemic banking crises, and that the indirect effects of insurance development and lower country risk decrease the probability of crises, but the indirect effect of economic conditional proxies is enhanced with the likelihood of a financial crisis. The policy implication is that the government or authority should strengthen the positive role of the insurance sector in order to combat financial crises.     

Household Debt and Income Inequality, 1963–2003

I construct an economy with heterogeneous agents that mimics the time-series behavior of the earnings distribution in the United States from 1963 to 2003. Agents face aggregate and idiosyncratic shocks and accumulate real and financial assets. I estimate the shocks that drive the model using data on income inequality, aggregate income, and measures of financial liberalization. I show how the model economy can replicate two empirical facts: the trend and cyclical behavior of household debt and the diverging patterns in consumption and wealth inequality over time. While business cycle fluctuations can account for the short-run changes in household debt, its prolonged rise of the 1980s and the 1990s can be quantitatively explained only by the concurrent increase in income inequality.     

Banking Mergers: The Impact of Financial Liberalization on the Taiwanese Banking Industry

The objective of this paper is to examine the nature of the Taiwanese banking sector and to analyze the impact of financial liberalization on the Taiwanese banking industry. We present empirical evidence to show that the recent wave of bank mergers observed in other countries is also suitable for Taiwan. Based on empirical results for overall economies of scale and expansion path subadditivity, Taiwanese banks should obtain the benefit of scale economies by merging with other banks rather than expanding by opening more branches. Furthermore, we show that the Relative Market Power hypothesis—which postulates that greater market shares lead to higher profitability—finds empirical support in Taiwanese banking data after financial reforms were enacted.     

利率市场化对我国商业银行影响的实证分析

对于商业银行而言,利率市场化的积极意义在于它将促进金融市场的深化发展和金融机构之间的公平竞争,为银行业快速发展和多元化经营创造良好的外部环境。但是从短期来看,利率市场化也将改变商业银行原有的利率决定机制和经营模式。利率市场化将大大提高利率波动的幅度和频率,并使利率的期限结构复杂化,对商业银行的经营能力和风险把控能力都将是重大考验。本文选取10家国内上市商业银行,对其非利息收入占比、利率敏感性缺口等指标进行实证检验,最后根据实证结果对商业银行应对利率市场化提出合理建议。     

WTO financial services commitments: Determinants and impact on financial stability

The paper investigates the factors that have influenced WTO members to take on their chosen level of liberalization commitments in the framework of liberalization of trade in financial services and the impact of such commitments on financial sector stability. The most important factors are economic growth, current account, trends in banking sector development, policy restrictiveness, and peer-group effects. The econometric evidence suggests that more liberal commitments may be associated with greater vulnerability to currency and banking crises—most likely a short-term effect, which should be mitigated with time through increased market efficiency and better resource allocation.     

Bank profitability and the business cycle

An important element of the macro-prudential analysis is the study of the link between business cycle fluctuations and banking sector profitability and how this link is affected by institutional and structural characteristics. This work estimates a set of equations for net interest income, non-interest income, operating costs, provisions, and profit before taxes, for banks in the main industrialized countries and evaluates the effects on banking profitability of shocks to both macroeconomic and financial factors. Distinguishing mainly the euro area from Anglo-Saxon countries, the analysis also identifies differences in the resilience of the respective banking systems and relates them to the characteristics of their financial structure.     

Does interest rate and its volatility affect banking sector development? Empirical evidence from emerging market economies

This study investigates the relationship between interest rate, interest rate volatility, and banking sector development in 12 emerging market economies located around the world. For this purpose, panel data analysis was conducted using annual data from 1980 to 2014. In parallel to the financial development literature, which asserts that banking sector development, as a broad and complex concept, cannot be measured by a single indicator, this study adopts a set of measures of banking sector development. The empirical results reveal that while interest rate has a positive impact on all banking sector indicators, this relationship weakens at higher interest levels, showing a concave relationship between interest rate and banking sector development. In addition, the empirical results provide evidence that interest rate fluctuations have a negative impact on most banking sector development (BSD) indicators, suggesting that the banking sectors of emerging countries are vulnerable to interest rate risks. Furthermore, all measures of the banking sector indicators are positively affected by economic growth rates, while this association weakens at higher levels of income, confirming a nonlinear relationship. Thus, the results have important implications for policymakers in improving the banking system and promoting the economic growth of these emerging economies.     

金融摩擦、收入风险与财富不平等

本文通过构建带有职业选择的两部门异质模型,探讨了个体面临的金融摩擦和收入风险对财富分配的作用机制。结果发现,经济中存在的金融摩擦会通过职业选择、自我保险和自融资来影响个人的财富积累,从而导致财富的集中和不平等。对模型模拟的结果表明:降低金融摩擦在总体上会降低财富不平等程度,但对不同财富阶层的影响不同,其在大幅减少前1%和前10%阶层财富份额的同时,虽然也会在一定程度上提升后50%阶层的财富份额,但提升幅度并不大,过高或过低的企业家收入风险,都会加大财富不平等程度,因而存在一个使经济中财富不平等程度最低的适度企业家收入风险水平;虽然金融摩擦和收入风险都会影响经济中的财富不平等,但收入风险本身对财富不平等程度的影响较小,其主要是通过金融摩擦放大了经济中财富不平等的程度。     

The Impact of Enterprises’ Shadow Banking Activities on Business Performance: A Test Based on Mediator Effect of Investment Scale and Investment Efficiency

ABSTRACT

In recent years, China’s financial sector has gradually been alienated from the real sector, allowing financial innovation and regulatory arbitrage add their own value to finance. High interest rates in the financial industry have led to changes in the real sector, revealing a trend toward “financialization” and “quasi-financialization”; a typical example of this includes nonfinancial enterprises’ shadow banking activities. In this article, we use annual data from 2004 to 2015 of A share listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges, to examine the influence of nonfinancial enterprises’ shadow banking activities on business performance. The results show that, overall, enterprises’ shadow banking activity improve operating performance. In addition, from the perspective of earning structure, nonfinancial enterprises’ shadow banking business increases financial benefits, but has a significantly negative effect on operating income. Further tests show that enterprises engaged in shadow banking activities will impact operating income through the two intermediary variables of investment scale and investment efficiency. However, the negative effect of investment in crowding out operating income is greater than that of the efficiency-improving effect on operating income. This article provides policy guidance in terms of recognizing diverse aspects of shadow banking system that divorce the real economy from the financial economy.     

Does Financial Openness Matter in the Relationship Between Financial Development and Income Distribution in Latin America?

This article examines the effect of financial development on income distribution by analyzing a sample of Latin American countries according to their degree of financial openness for the 1990–2011 period. The period includes the time before and after financial liberalization for most of the countries in the region. As the literature provides inconclusive results regarding the relationship between financial development and income inequality, we aim to determine whether financial openness plays a role in this relationship. Our results provide an explanation for why some countries regardless of their degree of financial openness cannot achieve a reduction in income inequality.     

Decomposing the effects of financial liberalization: Crises vs. growth

We present a new empirical decomposition of the effects of financial liberalization on economic growth and on the incidence of crises. Our empirical estimates show that the direct effect of financial liberalization on growth by far outweighs the indirect effect via a higher propensity to crisis. We also discuss several models of financial liberalization and growth whose predictions are consistent with our empirical findings.     

Globalizations and bank performance in China

The paper provides for the first time empirical evidence on the impact of economic globalization on the performance of banks operating in the Chinese banking sector. The empirical findings from this study suggest that the well capitalized banks tend to be more profitable, while expense preference behavior exerts negative impact on bank profitability in China. By examining different components of economic globalization, we find that greater economic integration via higher trade flows, cultural proximity, and greater political globalization have significant and positive influence on bank profitability levels. The impacts of personal contacts and information flows seem to work in favour of the Chinese banks. During the period under study, the empirical findings seem to suggest that liberalization (restrictions) of the capital account exerts positive (negative) influence on the profitability of banks operating in the Chinese banking sector.     

Reaching out: Access to and use of banking services across countries

This paper is a first attempt at measuring financial sector outreach and investigating its determinants. First, we present new indicators of banking sector outreach across 99 countries, constructed from aggregate data provided by bank regulators. Second, we show that our indicators closely predict harder-to-collect micro-level statistics of household and firm use of banking services, and are associated with measures of firm financing obstacles in the expected way. Finally, we explore the association between our outreach indicators and standard determinants of financial sector depth. We find many similarities but also some differences in the determinants of outreach and depth.     

金融改革对收入不平等的影响研究——理论解释与实证分析

采集55个新兴市场国家的非平衡面板数据,使用动态门限面板模型实证结果表明,金融改革与收入不平等间存在明显的门限效应,当金融改革水平低于门限值时,金融改革会扩大收入差距;当金融改革水平越过门限值时,金融改革有利于收入差距的缩小.多数新兴市场国家金融改革对降低收入不平等已经发挥正向效应,为缩小新兴市场国家收入差距,必须进一步深化金融改革.     

What is the net effect of financial liberalization on bank productivity? A decomposition analysis of bank total factor productivity growth

We employ a unique framework to quantify the net effect of financial liberalization on banks’ total factor productivity (TFP) growth through a decomposition analysis of two effects: a positive direct effect of financial liberalization on bank TFP growth; and a negative indirect effect operating through a higher propensity to systemic banking crisis. The empirical decomposition is based on a sample of 1530 banks operating in 88 countries over the period 1999–2011. We find that the net effect of financial liberalization on bank TFP growth is positive: the direct positive effect outweighs the negative one. An important policy implication flows from these findings.     

Freeing Greece from capital controls: Were the restrictions enforced in time?

Recent developments in Greece have caused for the implementation of banking capital controls on the outflow of funds, a policy decision not uncommon, especially in emerging markets. However, the issues of the Greek economy, which seem to stem from the public sector but have been passed on to the banking sector, pose a unique challenge to researchers. In this paper, we employ VBanking, an object-oriented model for banking simulations to examine whether capital controls in Greece were enforced at the appropriate time. Additionally, we propose that the banking sector will not purge this regulation soon. Finally, we demonstrate the destructive effects of capital controls both on the financial system and on the real economy. We present the empirical results of our work, which suggest that the Greek authorities’ response to the deterioration of the banking sector was lagged.     

How resilient is the German banking system to macroeconomic shocks?

Macroeconomic stress testing studies often rely on rather short sample periods due to the limited availability of banking data. They may fail to appropriately account for the cyclicality in the interaction between the banking system and macroeconomic developments. In this paper, we use a newly constructed data set on German banks’ income and loss statements over the past 39 years to model the interaction between the banking sector and the macroeconomy. Our VAR analysis indicates that the level of stress in the banking sector is strongly affected by monetary policy shocks. The results rationalize the active behavior of central banks observed during periods of financial market crises.     

Gibrat's law test on Brazilian commercial banks

In recent years, Brazil has been one of the countries with the biggest changes in the banking sector. The process of deregulation that began in 2002 has entailed the increase of the presence of foreign banking and the increase of competition, among other aspects. In this context, the objective of this study consists in contrasting Gibrat's Law in the Brazilian commercial banking during the period of 2002–2013 with the objective of contributing with evidence for the construction of a growth model for banking that will guide the financial policy of the country. For this, the quartile regression methodology is utilized, since we consider that it analyzes the relation between growth and the size of the entities more thoroughly than the empirical contrasts given by previous empirical evidence. The results obtained indicate that there is a non-linear relation in an inverted U form between growth and size in the Brazilian commercial banking. These results allow us to affirm that the relative dispersion of the sizes of the financial entities will tend to decrease in time and with this, the concentration of the sector.     

Back to the basics in banking? A micro-analysis of banking system stability

This paper analyzes the relationship between banks’ divergent strategies toward specialization and diversification of financial activities and their ability to withstand a banking sector crash. We first generate market-based measures of banks’ systemic risk exposures using extreme value analysis. Systemic banking risk is measured as the tail beta, which equals the probability of a sharp decline in a bank’s stock price conditional on a crash in a banking index. Subsequently, the impact of (the correlation between) interest income and the components of non-interest income on this risk measure is assessed. The heterogeneity in extreme bank risk is attributed to differences in the scope of non-traditional banking activities: non-interest generating activities increase banks’ tail beta. In addition, smaller banks and better-capitalized banks are better able to withstand extremely adverse conditions. These relationships are stronger during turbulent times compared to normal economic conditions. Overall, diversifying financial activities under one umbrella institution does not improve banking system stability, which may explain why financial conglomerates trade at a discount.