Credit information,consolidation and credit market performance: Bank-level evidence from developing countries

Paying particular attention to the degree of banking market concentration in developing countries, this paper examines the effect of credit information sharing on bank lending. Using bank-level data from African countries over the period 2004 to 2009 and a dynamic two-step system generalised method of moments (GMM) estimation, it is found that credit information sharing increases bank lending. The degree of banking market concentration moderates the effect of credit information sharing on bank lending. The results are robust to controlling for possible interactions between credit information sharing and governance.     

Monetary policy and bank lending in the Euro area: Is there a stock market channel or an interest rate channel?

In this paper I compare a traditional demand oriented model of bank lending with its focus on short-term interest rates in the money market, to a non-traditional capital budgeting model of bank lending based on movements in share valuations for the Euro area. Using non-nested hypothesis tests, omitted variables tests, and Granger Causality tests, I reject the traditional demand oriented model of bank lending and fail to reject the capital budgeting model of bank lending for Monetary Financial Institutions (MFI's) in the Euro area. Even though Europe is a bank-based financial system, it appears the stock market plays a key role in the lending decisions and allocation of resources in Europe. One possible policy implication of this research is that the central bank should try and stabilize stock prices in order to achieve their goal of stabilizing bank lending and the economy.     

The determinants of U.S. banks’ international activities

This paper develops a model and structural dynamic estimation of bank behavior to map the relationship between U.S. banks’ choices of foreign banking activities, and bank and foreign market traits. This estimation framework is applied to a unique bank-level dataset compiled from regulatory sources, covering U.S. banks’ foreign activities in 83 host markets over the 2003–2013 period. Bank traits are better able to explain the evolving patterns of foreign banking than host market characteristics. After controlling for these traits, the post-financial crisis period shows a structural shift away from cross-border claims towards foreign affiliate activities. Structural estimates of foreign market entry costs and regulatory attitudes towards risk are derived. Simulation exercises confirm the strong impact of banks’ and regulators’ risk stance on bank profits and portfolio composition.     

Bank size, market concentration, and bank earnings volatility in the US

We examine whether bank earnings volatility depends on bank size and the degree of concentration in the banking sector. Using quarterly data for non-investment banks in the United States for the period 2004Q1-2009Q4 and controlling for the quality of management, leverage, and diversification, we find that bank size reduces return volatility. The negative impact of bank size on bank earnings volatility decreases (in absolute terms) with market concentration. We also find that larger banks located in concentrated markets have experienced higher volatility during the recent financial crisis.     

The effect of banking market structure on the lending channel: Evidence from emerging markets

This paper analyses the extent to which the level of bank competition influences monetary policy transmission. Using a large panel dataset of 978 banks from 55 countries, and employing the Lerner index model as a measure of market structure, our results show that an increase in banking sector competition weakens the effectiveness of monetary policy on bank lending. The findings are robust to a broad array of sensitivity checks including control of alternative measurements of the Lerner index, different samples and different methodological specifications. By extension, these results have important policy implications for regulators in assessing the effectiveness of monetary policy transmission mechanisms.     

The determinants of private capital flow volatility in Sub-Saharan African countries

The study investigates the underlying factors of patterns of volatility for FDI, portfolio equity and cross-border bank lending inflows for sub-Saharan African countries using a panel framework with data from 1990 to 2011. No other study has focussed exclusively on sub-Saharan Africa when investigating the determinants of private capital flow volatility. This study is further unique in that it employs clearly-delineated cross-border bank lending data from the Bank of International Settlements’ (BIS) Locational Banking Statistics that has not been used by similar prior studies. The findings of the study are as follows: (1) global liquidity lowers FDI volatility while private sector credit increases volatility; (2) global liquidity increases portfolio equity volatility with growth and the quality of macroeconomic policies found to be important pull factors in lowering volatility; and (3) the quality of macroeconomic policies and trade openness are important pull factors in lowering cross-border bank lending volatility while financial openness increases volatility.     

Credit market concentration,relationship lending and the cost of debt

We investigate how the banking industry concentration and the strength of credit relationships (relationship lending) jointly affect the cost of borrowing of firms. Our results indicate that relationship lending is not associated with the rent extraction mechanism deriving from informational lock-in. Conversely, market concentration appears to be associated with firms' higher cost of funding. But the effect is fully compensated if the relationship between the firm and the bank is long and comprehensive. Controlling for a number of covariates and for endogeneity concerns leaves results unchanged. Our results shed some new light on the unclear effects documented by Kysucky and Norden (2016) of relationship lending on the cost of financing.     

Theories of bank behavior under capital regulation

This paper reviews academic studies of bank capital regulation in an effort to evaluate the intellectual foundation for the imposition of the Basel I and Basel II systems of risk-based capital requirements. The theoretical literature yields general agreement about the immediate effects of capital requirements on bank lending and loan rates and the longer-term impacts on bank ratios of equity to total or risk-adjusted assets. This literature produces highly mixed predictions, however, regarding the effects of capital regulation on asset risk and overall safety and soundness for the banking system as a whole. Thus, the intellectual foundation for the present capital-regulation regime is not particularly strong. The mixed conclusions in the academic literature on banking certainly do not provide unqualified support for moving to an even more stringent and costly system of capital requirements. These widely ambiguous results do suggest, however, that assessing the implications of capital regulation for balance-sheet risk and monitoring effort in diverse banking systems is an important agenda for future theoretical research in the banking area.     

Capital flows and the risk-taking channel of monetary policy

Adjustments in bank leverage act as the linchpin in the monetary transmission mechanism that works through fluctuations in risk-taking. In the international context, we find evidence of monetary policy spillovers on cross-border bank capital flows and the US dollar exchange rate through the banking sector. A contractionary shock to US monetary policy leads to a decrease in cross-border banking capital flows and a decline in the leverage of international banks. Such a decrease in bank capital flows is associated with an appreciation of the US dollar.     

Bank risk,competition and bank connectedness with firms: A literature review

The outbreak of the 2007–2009 financial crisis and of the European sovereign debt crisis again raised questions about the vulnerability and the behaviour of banking institutions. The unconventional monetary policies that followed have flattened the yield curve and created a low interest rates environment. This can give rise to risk-taking behaviour from banks and can therefore undermine the stability of the banking system with negative impact of the credit supply, corporate investment and real economy. This article proposes a literature review on the main determinants of bank lending and risk-taking decisions, going through the competition in the banking market, the bank connectedness with firms and the role of monetary and banking authorities. The systemic risk concept is also discussed as well as its drivers and potential measures that should be monitored by prudential authorities in order to preserve financial stability.     

跨境金融:驱动因素、结构特征与未来路径

跨境金融的驱动因素和结构特征是理论界和实务界关注的重要话题。在当前复杂的国际经济金融形势下,厘清全球跨境金融的规律特征,对我国更好地利用“两个市场、两种资源”,防范外部金融风险具有重要意义。2008年国际金融危机以来,在经济周期、全球流动性、金融结构和监管政策等驱动因素的影响下,全球跨境金融活动呈现规模下降、结构调整、流向分化、主体切换和风险变化等特征。同时,银行跨境业务呈现综合化趋势,数字化转型提速,经营稳健性明显增强。我国跨境金融规模稳步增长,对国际收支的影响持续增强,在全球资金循环中的份额不断提高。未来,随着我国经济转型和对外开放步伐的加快,跨境金融的规模和结构还将发生深刻变化,风险日趋复杂。应引导形成与我国经济金融发展特征相匹配的跨境资金结构,平衡扩大开放与风险防控的关系,充分发挥银行业在跨境金融领域的“比较优势”。     

It takes more than two to tango: Multiple bank lending,asset commonality and risk

Multiple-bank lending is the most prevalent form of bank-firm credit relationships in nearly all countries. It results in high asset commonality and interconnectedness, allows idiosyncratic risks to become systemic, and makes the banking system more fragile and vulnerable to shocks. Using detailed, granular-level, supervisory data on large corporate loans, we show that multiple bank lending is driven, inter alia, by regulatory limits on large credit exposures. These limits, aimed at mitigating an individual bank's concentration risk, force firms to explore alternative sources of funding, making the common borrowers' phenomenon more prominent. We find that multiple bank lending is determined endogenously, and its likelihood increases with the level of portfolio similarity between lenders. The size of the original lender and its systemic importance magnifies this effect. We argue that banks do not internalize the systemic effect of their lending decisions and that multiple bank lending constitutes an insurance mechanism related to an implicit "too-many-to-fail" guarantee. Its externalities are suboptimal and should be reinforced with better monitoring by the related authorities.     

Does market size structure affect competition? The case of small business lending

Market size structure refers to the distribution of shares of different size classes of local market participants, where the sizes are inclusive of assets both within and outside the local market. We apply this new measure of market structure in two empirical analyses of the US banking industry to address concerns regarding the effects of the consolidation in banking. Our quantity analysis of the likelihood that small businesses borrow from large versus small banks and our small business loan price analysis that includes market size structure as well as conventional measures yield very different findings from most of the literature on bank size and small business lending. Our results do not suggest a significant net advantage or disadvantage for large banks in small business lending overall, or in lending to informationally opaque small businesses in particular. We argue that the prior research that excluded market size structure may be misleading and offer some likely explanations of why our results differ.     

银行竞争提高了企业投资水平和资源配置效率吗？——基于分支机构空间分布的研究

银行贷款是我国企业融资的重要方式,在企业生产经营中发挥着举足轻重的作用。2006年和2009年,我国先后两次放松了商业银行分支机构市场准入规制,银行分支机构空间分布发生了较大变化,银行竞争水平和服务实体经济能力明显提升。本文利用2001-2012年国家统计局工业企业数据,以企业周边银行分支机构的数量衡量银行竞争水平,研究银行竞争对企业投资的影响。研究发现,银行分支机构数量的增加显著提高了企业投资水平和投资效率。进一步研究表明,银行分支机构数量增加对企业投资效率的提升作用主要表现在投资不足的企业和非国有企业中,企业融资约束降低和代理冲突减弱是银行竞争提高企业投资效率的主要原因。本研究拓展了银行竞争以及企业投资和资源配置效率的相关文献,对供给侧结构性改革和银行业高质量发展具有启示意义。     

The impact of changes in bank ownership structure on the allocation of capital: International evidence

A new wave of bank privatizations in the past decade has significantly changed the ownership structure of banking systems around the world. This paper explores how these changes affect the allocation of capital within countries. Increases in domestic blockholder ownership of banks adversely affect the allocation of capital through increased lending activity to less productive industries and to those with less dependence on external finance. This result is more pronounced in countries with higher levels of corruption. I find some evidence that foreign presence improves capital allocation efficiency by increasing lending to more productive industries, primarily in common law countries.     

Dwarf banks

This study examines the business model and the viability of very small commercial banks in emerging market context. Using a unique sample of 141 Russian banks with less than a $10 million in assets, I trace performance, survival, recapitalization and growth patterns of these dwarf banks in response to the sharp increase in the minimum capital requirements. I find that dwarf banks are, on average, low-risk financial intermediaries that perform simple operations and have significantly higher survival rates in local markets with poor economic and banking services outreach characteristics. I also find that the average dwarf banks withstand the regulatory capital shock surprisingly well by securing fresh capital injection followed by a twofold asset size increase. The results of this study contribute to the literature on the relationship between the small bank business model, local banking markets characteristics and long-term viability. They also provide new evidence on the expected and unexpected outcomes of the “too small to survive” regulatory intervention into the banking market size structures.     

Does competition influence the bank lending channel in the euro area?

This paper examines how competition influences the bank lending channel in the euro area countries. Using a large panel of banks from 12 euro area countries for the period 2002–2010 we analyze the reaction of loan supply to monetary policy actions depending on the degree of bank competition. We find that the effect of monetary policy on bank lending is dependent on bank competition: the transmission of monetary policy via the bank lending channel is less pronounced for banks with extensive market power. Further investigation shows that banks with less market power were more sensitive to monetary policy only before the financial crisis. These results suggest that bank market power has a significant impact on the effectiveness of monetary policy. Therefore, wide variations in the level of bank market power may lead to asymmetric effects of the single monetary policy.     

Bank pay caps,bank risk,and macroprudential regulation

This paper studies the consequences of a regulatory pay cap in proportion to assets on bank risk, bank value, and bank asset allocations. The cap is shown to lower banks’ risk and raise banks’ values by acting against a competitive externality in the labour market. The risk reduction is achieved without the possibility of reduced lending from a Tier 1 increase. The cap encourages diversification and reduces the need a bank has to focus on a limited number of asset classes. The cap can be used for Macroprudential Regulation to encourage banks to move resources away from wholesale banking to the retail banking sector. Such an intervention would be targeted: in 2009 a 20% reduction in remuneration would have been equivalent to more than 150 basis points of extra Tier 1 for UBS, for example.     

The role of lender country factors in cross border bank lending

This article considers the cross-border lending stock from 19 advanced countries to European countries using quarterly data for 1999–2016. An extended model based on home and host country characteristics conditioned on distance and mass primarily measured by GDP is used to explain the behaviour of cross-border lending stocks. We focus particularly on the competitive structure of domestic banking markets and on the role of EU integration using indicators from the New Industrial Economics literature. Our results suggest EU integration has had a large effect on cross-border lending, although this has been partly reversed after Euro debt crisis. This reversal probably arises more from the actions of home country bank regulators rather than from the rise in risk premia in host countries. We show that in general lender rather than borrower factors are more important, and that more concentrated or less competitive lender countries do more cross border lending, especially in less concentrated or more competitive borrowers. Our results are robust across a range of specifications.     

Does the expansion of regional cross-border banks affect competition in Africa? Indirect evidence

This article investigates how bank competition has evolved in Africa following the recent penetration and expansion of regional cross-border banks over the past decade. We examine changes in competition in the banking industry of seven African countries highly affected by this recent phenomenon. The evolution of competition is evaluated through three different non-structural measures of competition (Lerner index, Panzar–Rosse model, and Boone indicator). With the exception of results from the Lerner index, our findings show an intensification of competition since the mid-2000s. This period corresponds to the rapid expansion of regional cross-border banks in the zone, indicating that this expansion has promoted competition in banking sectors in Africa.