Bank Time Deposit Rates and Market Discipline in Poland: The Impact of State Ownership and Deposit Insurance Reform

This paper examines the impact of ownership structure and changes in the deposit insurance system on the market for bank time deposits in Poland. In an environment of less restrictive bank supervision and a deposit insurance policy that favored state banks, we find that depositors exacted a price for risk-taking. After a new law increasing insurance coverage for private banks went into effect, however, bank specific variables became less important in explaining differences in deposit interest rates. We report, however, that the three fully guaranteed state banks pay significantly lower rates than private banks. Moreover, other state-owned banks, with the same explicit guarantee as private banks, pay significantly lower rates than private banks, so it appears that depositors treat these state-owned banks as if they have a larger implicit guarantee.     

The competitive implications of multimarket bank branching

Retail banking markets have traditionally been viewed as locally limited. However, recent studies have found evidence that large multimarket banking organizations tend to offer uniform interest rates for retail deposit accounts throughout the area that they serve, at least within a given state. This uniform pricing phenomenon raises questions about the continued relevance of the concept of local banking markets for both research and antitrust purposes.We address this issue by employing a model designed to explain the pricing behavior of single-market banks that face competition from multimarket banks. Empirical results are found to be consistent with the many implications of the model. We find that even with multimarket banks present in the market, local market concentration influences the pricing behavior of single-market banks; however, this relationship weakens as the market share of multimarket banks grows. We also find that, on average, multimarket banks offer lower deposit interest rates than do single-market banks operating in the same market, and, in most cases, greater multimarket bank presence is associated with lower deposit interest rates offered by single-market banks.     

Determinants of Bank-Market Structure: Efficiency and Political Economy Variables

This paper analyzes how bank efficiency and political economy variables influence bank-market structure in 69 countries. Results for more than 2,500 banks over the 1996–2002 period indicate that the ability of the efficiency-structure hypothesis to explain bank-market structure varies across countries, depending on national political economy variables. Increased market monitoring and a better-quality contracting environment amplify the positive influence of bank efficiency on market share and market concentration. Stricter bank entry requirements and more generous deposit insurance schemes, however, mitigate the influence of bank efficiency on market share and market concentration.     

The impact of bank regulations, supervision, market structure, and bank characteristics on individual bank ratings: A cross-country analysis

We use country level data and bank level data from 71 countries and 857 banks to investigate the impact of bank regulations, supervision, market structure, and bank characteristics on individual bank ratings. The results indicate that less cost efficient banks, with higher than average levels of provisions relatively to their income, and lower liquidity tend to have lower ratings. Larger and more profitable banks tend to obtain higher ratings. Higher equity to assets ratio results in higher ratings only when we do not control for bank supervision and regulations. Capital requirements, restrictions on bank activities, official disciplinary power, explicit deposit insurance scheme, higher deposit insurer power, liquidity and diversification guidelines, entry requirements, fraction of entries denied, and economic freedom have a significant impact on ratings in all of our specifications. Disclosure requirements and foreign banks entry have a significant impact on ratings only when we simultaneously control for the regulatory environment and the market structure, while auditing requirements have a significant impact only when we control for the regulatory environment alone. Finally, banks in developed countries are assigned higher ratings. However, this impact disappears when we include the regulatory and supervision variables in the models.     

Deposit insurance coverage,ownership, and banks' risk-taking in emerging markets

We ask how deposit insurance systems and ownership of banks affect the degree of market discipline on banks' risk-taking. Market discipline is determined by the extent of explicit deposit insurance, as well as by the credibility of non-insurance of groups of depositors and other creditors. Furthermore, market discipline depends on the ownership structure of banks and the responsiveness of bank managers to market incentives. An expected U-shaped relationship between explicit deposit insurance coverage and banks' risk-taking is influenced by country specific institutional factors, including bank ownership. We analyze specifically how government ownership, foreign ownership and shareholder rights affect the disciplinary effect of partial deposit insurance systems in a cross-section analysis of industrial and emerging market economies, as well as in emerging markets alone. The coverage that maximizes market discipline depends on country-specific characteristics of bank governance. This “risk-minimizing” deposit insurance coverage is compared to the actual coverage in a group of countries in emerging markets in Eastern Europe and Asia.     

Interest margins and bank regulation in Central America and the Caribbean

This paper examines empirically the determinants of bank interest margins in Central America and the Caribbean over the period 1998–2014. A particular focus is set on the impact of differences in the regulatory environment and market structure across countries in explaining the interest margins of individual banks. Our results suggest that bank market power, operating costs, credit risk, and liquid asset holdings increase the margin between loan and deposit rates, while increased income diversification and GDP growth are associated with lower loan-deposit spreads. When considering information on banking regulation, we find strong evidence to support our main hypothesis that improvements in market quality and liberalization have a significant effect on interest margins. More specifically, reductions in entry requirements to banking, higher involvement of foreign banks, and increased financial statement transparency are associated with significant reductions in interest margins.     

商业银行效率及其影响因素实证研究

以我国14家商业银行2000～2009年的面板数据为分析依据,采用随机前沿分析(SFA)方法对商业银行效率进行计量,并从公司治理、市场结构、宏观经济政策、金融业结构和经营能力等方面分析商业银行效率的影响因素。结果表明:市场集中度和银行个体市场份额与银行效率反向变动;投资和货币供给对银行效率影响较大;经济周期、通货膨胀和存贷利差对银行效率影响较小;存款准备金率对银行效率影响最小。可以认为,在当前形势下,存款准备金率的调控作用只是暂时的,无法从根本上抑制货币的流动性;存贷利差对银行效率影响不大。因此,为控制通货膨胀实施不对称加息政策,不会对商业银行系统产生较大影响;从银行经营能力考察,传统的存贷业务已不能独立支持商业银行的进一步发展,应大力提倡金融创新,寻求新的业务增长点。     

Monetary policy effects in times of negative interest rates: What do bank stock prices tell us?

This paper investigates bank stock performance following different monetary policy actions in times of positive and negative interest rates. Controlling for the broader stock market, monetary policy announcements that cause an unanticipated downward shift in the yield curve and a flattening of the shorter-end of the yield curve are found to persistently reduce bank stock prices once the interest rate environment is negative. Consistent with the deposits channel of monetary policy, the effects are larger and more persistent for banks that are relatively dependent on deposit funding. By contrast, a surprise movement in the slope of the longer-end of the yield curve does not impact bank stock prices in times of negative interest rates. Accounting data confirm that a parallel drop in the yield curve following a monetary policy decision in a negative interest rate environment hurts banks through shrinking deposit margins.     

Deposit market competition,wholesale funding,and bank risk

Empirical research on the effect of bank competition on bank risk has so far produced very inconclusive results. In this paper we revisit this long-standing debate and propose a new empirical approach that is concentrated on the relationship between deposit market competition and bank risk. This approach closely follows the traditional theoretical views of the competition and risk relationship and is focused on testing the classical moral hazard problem of the bank: deposit market competition raises the optimal risk choice of the bank by raising the costs of bank liabilities. Since banks can substitute between retail and wholesale funding, we relate deposit market competition to wholesale market conditions and examine their joint effect on the risk of bank assets. The analysis is based on a unique, comprehensive dataset, which combines retail deposit rate data with data on bank characteristics and data on local deposit market features for a sample of 589 US banks. Our results support the notion of a risk-enhancing effect of deposit market competition.     

A note on the “risk-adjusted” price–concentration relationship in banking

Price–concentration studies in banking typically find a significant and negative relationship between consumer deposit rates (i.e., prices) and market concentration. This implies highly concentrated banking markets are “bad” for depositors. It also provides support for the Structure-Conduct-Performance hypothesis and rejects the Efficient-Structure hypothesis. However, these studies have focused almost exclusively on supply-side control variables and neglected demand-side variables when estimating the reduced form price–concentration relationship. For example, previous studies have not included in their analysis bank-specific risk variables as measures of cross-sectional derived deposit demand. We find that when bank-specific risk variables are included in the analysis the magnitude of the relationship between deposit rates and market concentration decreases by over 50%. We offer an explanation for these results based on the correlation between a bank’s risk profile and the structure of the market in which it operates. These results suggest that it may be necessary to reconsider the well-established assumption that higher market concentration necessarily leads to anticompetitive deposit pricing behavior by commercial banks. This has direct implications for the antitrust evaluations of bank merger and acquisition proposals by regulatory agencies. And, in a more general sense, these results suggest that any Structure-Conduct-Performance based study that does not explicitly consider the possibility of very different risk profiles of the firms analyzed may indeed miss a very important set of explanatory variables. And, thus, the results from those studies may be spurious.     

Bank Mergers and the Dynamics of Deposit Interest Rates

Despite extensive research interest in the last decade, the banking literature has not reached a consensus on the impact of bank mergers on deposit rates. In particular, results on the dynamics of deposit rates surrounding bank mergers vary substantially across studies. In this paper, we aim for a comprehensive empirical analysis of a bank merger’s impact on deposit rate dynamics. We base the analysis on a unique dataset comprising deposit rates of 624 US banks with a monthly frequency for the time period 1997–2006. These data are matched with individual bank and local market characteristics and the complete list of bank mergers in the US. The data allow us to track the dynamics of bank mergers while controlling for the rigidity of the deposit rates and for a range of merger, bank, and local market features. An innovation of our work is the introduction of an econometric approach for estimating the change of the deposit rates given their rigidity.     

The effects of big-bank presence on the profit efficiency of small banks in rural markets

Because big banks could impact competition in rural markets, we investigate the effects of big-bank presence on the performance of rural, small banks. When competing against a big bank, rural one-county banks operate at lower levels of proit efficiency, but with higher ROA and increased levels of interest and fee income from loans. Lower profit efficiency and higher returns in the rural markets suggest that big banks possess market power in rural markets and that they can extract rents to earn higher returns with lower than average profit efficiency. Therefore, small banks in rural markets should not fear large competitors. Conversely, customers who rely on loans from rural, small banks are negatively impacted by higher rates and fees on loans when a big bank is present in the market.     

Islamic Banks,Deposit Insurance Reform,and Market Discipline: Evidence from a Natural Framework

Although it has been intensively claimed that Islamic banks are subject to more market discipline, the empirical literature is surprisingly mute on this topic. To fill this gap and to verify the conjecture that Islamic bank depositors are indeed able to monitor and discipline their banks, we use Turkey as a test setting. The theory of market discipline predicts that when excessive risk taking occurs, depositors will ask higher returns on their deposits or withdraw their funds. We look at the effect of the deposit insurance reform in which the dual deposit insurance was revised and all banks were put under the same deposit insurance company in December 2005. This gives us a natural experiment in which the effect of the reform can be compared for the treatment group (i.e., Islamic banks) and control group (i.e., conventional banks). We find that the deposit insurance reform has increased the market discipline in the Turkish Islamic banking sector. This reform may have upset the sensitivities of the religiously inspired depositors, and perhaps more importantly it might have terminated the existing mutual supervision and support among Islamic banks.     

Bank Mergers and Diversification: Implications for Competition Policy

This paper analyses competition and mergers among risk averse banks. We show that the correlation between the shocks to the demand for loans and the shocks to the supply of deposits induces a strategic interdependence between the two sides of the market. We characterise the role of diversification as a motive for bank mergers and analyse the consequences of mergers on loan and deposit rates. When the value of diversification is sufficiently strong, bank mergers generate an increase in the welfare of borrowers and depositors. If depositors have more correlated shocks than borrowers, bank mergers are relatively worse for depositors than for borrowers.     

Internet finance development and banking market discipline: Evidence from China

Depositor discipline is the only viable and universal source of banking market discipline in China. This paper investigates whether the depositor discipline of banking works in the context of an emerging economy under financial repression and implicit government guarantee, such as the Chinese economy; how banking market discipline is affected by Internet finance development; and whether the impact of Internet finance development on market discipline changes across heterogeneous banks. The results suggest that, in general, measures of bank risk are negatively associated with the growth of deposit volumes. Internet finance development alters the sensitivity of deposit growth ratios to some bank risk measures. For non-state-owned banks, fewer measures of bank risk are significantly negatively associated with the growth of deposit volumes, and the attenuation impact of Internet finance development on market discipline for bank capitalization instead relatively increases. For large banks, market discipline works significantly, except in the case of the bank capitalization variable; moreover, these significant market disciplines are strengthened with the development of Internet finance.     

Branching,lending and competition in Italian banking

With the liberalization of legal barriers to the opening of bank branches in 1990, both market structure and competitive conditions in Italy changed profoundly as banks expanded their branching networks. This paper provides novel empirical evidence on how changes of the branch network structure at the province level affect the performance and lending activity of banks across the period 1993–2011. In particular, we adopt two modes of analysis. The first focuses on the impact of diversification strategies on performance, lending and funding strategies at the province level. The second one examines how the increase of big banks' local presence affects single-market bank performance and lending strategies. Our results show that geographical diversification strategies can reduce performance, the adjusted Lerner Index of banks and lending activities, but increase the Lerner Index in deposit markets. Furthermore, we find that the expansion of branches by large-medium sized banks in concentrated markets can reduce the Lerner Index for the deposit market and the amount of loans offered by single-market banks.     

宏观调控、市场收益与理财消费——来自我国银行理财产品市场的经验证据

考察2009～2011年我国银行理财消费市场发展的现状并利用经验数据对影响其发展的主要原因进行了实证分析,研究表明:我国银行理财消费规模与股票市场收益率不存在显著关系,但居民可支配收入、物价水平都对银行理财市场的发展发挥了重要作用。此外,我国银行理财消费市场的发展还受到国家宏观经济政策的影响,尤其是当提高存款准备金率导致银行资金面紧张时,商业银行则通过提高收益率来刺激人们的理财消费需求。     

Aggressive CEOs and bank mergers and acquisitions

The U.S. banking industry has seen waves of mergers since the 1980s. Despite a significant body of research on the determinants of these waves, there are few studies of how CEOs influence banks’ mergers and acquisitions (M&As). This paper studies the effect of CEO aggressiveness on bank M&As. We construct a new measure of bank CEO aggressiveness based on CEOs’ ancestral countries of origin and data on inter-country wars. We find that aggressive CEOs are more likely to acquire other banks. Moreover, the impact of CEO aggressiveness on bank M&A decisions is more pronounced when the CEOs are from larger and more profitable banks, when CEOs have a longer tenure, and when CEOs’ ancestral country of origin has a more masculine culture. Moreover, we show that aggressive CEOs are more likely to make acquisitions when CEOs possess more cultural maintenance, which captures the extent to which CEOs retain their original cultural values and beliefs. Finally, we document positive short-term stock market reactions to bank M&As initiated by aggressive CEOs.     

资产透明度、监管套利与银行系统性风险

资产不透明的金融机构过度依赖批发性融资进行监管套利不利于系统性风险的防控。在此背景下,本文首先在经典银行道德风险模型的基础上引入关联性,从资产透明度和监管套利的视角分析银行系统性风险累积的内在机理。而后利用2007-2018年中国上市银行微观数据,构建资产透明度指标和系统性风险指标(SRISK、MES),对理论推论进行实证检验。主要结论有:(1)资产不透明、监管套利会提高银行的系统性风险。(2)监管套利弱化了资产透明度和资本监管机制对银行系统性风险承担的约束作用,资产透明度与资本监管机制在约束系统性风险承担中的协调作用不明显。(3)以大银行为主的债权银行受监管套利的影响相较于受资产透明度的影响更明显。在此基础上,我们对完善金融风险防范体系以及监管机制提出了若干建议。     

Bank Competition with Financing and Savings Substitutes

This paper models the banking competition in loan and deposit markets on two levels. We measure the competition among different banks and among banks and non-bank financing and saving alternatives. We estimate a model of demand, cost, and market equilibrium equations for differentiated products by using data from the confidential reports that Spanish banks provide to the Bank of Spain during the period from 1988 to 2003. This database contains information on the effective interest rates on new loans and deposits, and the expected loan losses obtained from the Spanish Credit Register. The estimated price elasticities show that the products offered by different banks are close substitutes, which puts pressure on the banks’ profits margins. However, the substitutability between bank and non-bank products is much lower than the substitutability among products offered by different banks. The results also show that Spain’s entrance into the Eurozone did not cause a structural change in the demand and cost conditions of Spanish banks. The banks financed most of the imbalances between bank loans and domestic deposits before the crisis through the interbank market.