Bank loan-loss provisioning,central bank rules vs. estimation: The case of Portugal

A fair level of provisions on bad and doubtful loans is an essential input in mark-to-market accounting, and in the calculation of bank profitability, capital and solvency. Loan-loss provisioning is directly related to estimates of loan-loss given default (LGD). A literature on LGD on bank loans is developing but, surprisingly, it has not been exploited to address, at the micro level, the issue of provisioning at the time of default, and after the default date. For example, in Portugal, the central bank imposes a mandatory provisioning schedule based on the time period since a loan is declared ‘non-performing’. The dynamic schedule is ‘ad hoc’, not based on empirical studies. The purpose of the paper is to present an empirical methodology to calculate a fair level of loan-loss provisions, at the time of default and after the default date. To illustrate, a dynamic provisioning schedule is estimated with micro-data provided by a Portuguese bank on recoveries on non-performing loans. This schedule is then compared to the regulatory provisioning schedule imposed by the central bank.     

Evergreening in banking

In the dynamic model of banking, a bank's option to hide its loan losses by rolling over non-performing loans is shown to worsen moral hazard. Contrary to the classic theory, moral hazard may arise even when a bank cannot seek a correlated risk for its loans. The loans seem to be performing and the bank makes a profit although it is de facto insolvent. When the bank's balance sheet includes hidden non-performing loans, the bank may optimally shrink lending or gamble for resurrection by growing aggressively. To eliminate this type of moral hazard, which is broadly consistent with evidence from emerging economies, a few regulatory implications are suggested.     

Moral Hazard and Optimal Subsidiary Structure for Financial Institutions

Banks and related financial institutions often have two separate subsidiaries that make loans of similar type but differing risk, for example, a bank and a finance company, or a “good bank/bad bank” structure. Such “bipartite” structures may prevent risk shifting, in which banks misuse their flexibility in choosing and monitoring loans to exploit their debt holders. By “insulating” safer loans from riskier loans, a bipartite structure reduces risk‐shifting incentives in the safer subsidiary. Bipartite structures are more likely to dominate unitary structures as the downside from riskier loans is higher or as expected profits from the efficient loan mix are lower.     

金融发展、银行贷款与公司投资

本文从公司投资的角度,考察了我国银行贷款的控制效应,结果表明,我国的银行贷款对于上市公司的过度投资行为具有控制效应,但是这一控制效应并没有随着我国地区金融发展水平的逐渐提高而有所增强;进一步的研究发现,银行贷款对于民营上市公司的控制效应要强于国有上市公司,而且前者的控制效应会随着地区金融发展水平的提高而有所增强,始于2003年的银行业第三阶段的改革,对于两类公司中银行贷款的控制效应都没有起到加强的作用。     

Bank exposure to market fear

We find that increases in implied market volatility (a proxy for market fear) have a significant impact on returns of bank stocks, above and beyond systematic risk proxied by the expected excess market return during a bad economic regime. Large bank returns are favorably affected by increases in implied market volatility during the crisis, while small banks are adversely affected by increases in implied market volatility. We attribute the different effects among the size-categorized bank portfolios to the perception that large banks are protected by too-big-to-fail policies. Within the sample of small banks, the adverse share price response to increased implied market volatility is more pronounced for banks that rely more heavily on non-traditional sources of funds, use a high proportion of loans in their assets, have a higher level of non-performing assets, and have a relatively low provision for loan losses. The adverse effect of negative innovations in implied market volatility on small bank returns during the crisis is primarily driven by exposure of their loan portfolio to weak economic conditions.     

Financial liberalization and banking crises: The role of capital inflows and lack of transparency

This paper shows that the liberalization of capital inflows may undermine bank stability in emerging markets. After financial liberalization, uninformed international investors rationally provide large amounts of funds at low cost. This enables insolvent banks to accumulate bad loans. In equilibrium, when a substantial amount of losses may have been accumulated, solvent banks do not find it any longer optimal to issue debt at the interest rate that would compensate investors for risk. Investors anticipate this and stop holding bank debt. When the market for bank liabilities breaks down, insolvent banks default. I show that, because of wasteful investment, the liberalization of capital inflows may decrease aggregate welfare.     

Common (stock) sense about risk-shifting and bank bailouts

If a bank is facing insolvency, it will be tempted to reject good loans and accept bad loans so as to shift risk onto its creditors. We analyze the effectiveness of buying up toxic mortgages in troubled banks, buying preferred stock, and buying common stock. If bailing out banks deemed “too big to fail” involves buying assets at above fair market values, then these banks are encouraged ex ante to gamble on bad assets. Buying up common (preferred) stock is always the most (least) ex ante- and ex post-efficient type of capital infusion, regardless of whether the bank volunteers for the recapitalization.     

后危机时代商业银行不良资产形成因素的实证研究——基于江西省数据的经验分析

2009年,我国信贷高增长引致未来银行不良资产大量积聚的潜在风险引起了各方关注。在后金融危机背景下,研究商业银行不良贷款的现状,发掘不良贷款存在的根源,对信贷风险管理具有重要的现实意义。本文在回顾以前研究成果的基础上,试图以更加全面的视角,从宏观经济金融环境、宏观调控政策以及银行业运行情况等三个方面深入分析商业银行不良资产的影响因素。文章运用协整分析、格兰杰因素检验和脉冲响应模型对资产价格、固定资产投资、通胀率、存款准备金率、基准利率、银行利润等指标与不良贷款率（或不良贷款余额）的因果关系、影响程度进行了实证分析。结果表明,宏观经济金融形势的变化和货币政策调整都是影响不良贷款变化的重要原因,而不良贷款率的变化对商业银行利润影响明显。     

Impaired bank health and default risk

Empirical studies in corporate finance have long been focused on the role of banks in reducing the costs of financial distress. The environment and events in Japan provide a “natural experiment” that allows such empirical studies. The number of bankruptcies steadily increased throughout the 1990s, and peaked in 2000. During this period, Japan's banking sector, in contrast, faced considerable problems regarding the disposal of their bad loans. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how various measures of bank health and how defaults of major trading partners affected the probability of bankruptcy among medium-size firms in Japan. Using probit models, we examine the causes of bankruptcy for unlisted Japanese companies in the late 1990s and early 2000s. We find that several measures of bank-specific financial health have had significant impacts on a borrower's probability of bankruptcy, even when observable characteristics relating to these borrower's financial variables are controlled. In particular, a close bank–firm relationship—which usually reduces the probability of bankruptcy—exacerbates the impacts of a financial crisis, which substantially damages other bank health measures as well.     

Does carbon emission of firms matter for Bank loans decision? Evidence from China

In the context of global climate governance, greater carbon emissions of enterprises often result in a higher potential risk of environmental violations. Taking the non-financial companies listed in China from 2008 to 2018 as research samples, this paper empirically examined the impact of firm carbon emission on their acquisition of new bank loans and its mechanism of action. This paper empirically finds that if the carbon emission of an enterprise is higher, it will be granted with less new bank loans. The results remain robust after pairing analysis and instrumental variable analysis. The mechanism analysis shows that corporate credit rating plays a significant moderating role in the relationship between corporate carbon emission and new bank loans. Carbon emission leads to the improvement of earnings management of enterprises and the significant decline in the conservatism and comparability of accounting information, which is likely to be an important channel for the reduction of corporate bank loans. Upon further analysis, we find that the carbon emission of enterprises will not significantly affect the cost of acquiring bank loans, but it will significantly reduce the loan term structure. The cross-sectional analysis shows that the effect of carbon emission on new bank loans is more obvious in state-owned listed enterprises, enterprises with high internal control quality and enterprises with strong environmental law enforcement. The research results of this paper enrich the research on the economic consequences of carbon emission, reveal the implementation effect of green credit policies, provide empirical evidence for bank credit to play a role in green governance, and promote enterprises to actively reduce carbon emission.     

信用卡不良资产管理环节的法律风险及应对

通过对某商业银行信用卡中心信用卡不良资产管理现状的分析,剖析该中心信用卡不良资产管理中的法律风险,特别是催收主体及各种催收方式的法律风险,提出防范信用卡不良资产管理环节法律风险的意见和建议。     

Checking for asymmetric default dependence in a credit card portfolio: A copula approach

Traditional credit risk models adopt the linear correlation as a measure of dependence and assume that credit losses are normally-distributed. However some studies have shown that credit losses are seldom normal and the linear correlation does not give accurate assessment for asymmetric data. Therefore it is possible that many credit models tend to misestimate the probability of joint extreme defaults.This paper employs Copula Theory to model the dependence across default rates in a credit card portfolio of a large UK bank and to estimate the likelihood of joint high default rates. Ten copula families are used as candidates to represent the dependence structure. The empirical analysis shows that, when compared to traditional models, estimations based on asymmetric copulas usually yield results closer to the ratio of simultaneous extreme losses observed in the credit card portfolio.Copulas have been applied to evaluate the dependence among corporate debts but this research is the first paper to give evidence of the outperformance of copula estimations in portfolios of consumer loans. Moreover we test some families of copulas that are not typically considered in credit risk studies and find out that three of them are suitable for representing dependence across credit card defaults.     

Identification of a loan supply function: A cross-country test for the existence of a bank lending channel

Using the theoretical predictions of the Bernanke–Blinder [Bernanke, B.S., Blinder, A.S., 1988. Is it money or credit or both or neither? Credit, money, and aggregate demand. American Economic Review 78, 435–459] model, we seek to examine the existence of a bank lending channel through the empirical identification of a loan supply function and to assess the impact of differential bank characteristics on banks’ ability to supply loans. To this end, we estimate a loan supply model and test for the restrictions implied by perfect substitutability between loans and bonds in bank portfolios. Estimations are carried out on bank panel data for six OECD countries, the results showing that a bank lending channel is at work in only two of them. Moreover, we find that the relevance of bank characteristics is hardly a decisive factor in the identification of a loan supply function.     

信贷诉讼中商业银行的债权保护——基于887份司法判决书的实证研究

本文基于中国各省(市)法院于2016-2017年间做出的与某大型商业银行贷款相关的887份司法判决书进行实证检验。研究结果表明:(1)担保环节是银行信贷流程中风险主要集中的环节;(2)住房、传统实体行业和存在多个担保人的贷款在流程上更易出现问题;(3)律师、贷款特征和案件审理层级都对诉讼结果有显著影响,聘请律师可有效提升银行胜诉概率。     

Interbank competition and information production: Evidence from the interest rate difference

In this paper, using firm-level cross-sectional data in the US, we report that interest rates on loans extended by inside banks are significantly lower than those on loans extended by outside banks for younger firms in concentrated loan markets, while such loan rate differences are not clearly observed in competitive loan markets. The analytical model presented in this paper predicts that an inside bank is more likely to quote rates lower than those of outside banks to capture a customer in order to gain time to establish exclusive access to the customer’s private information, counting on the consequent future rent from informational advantages over rival banks, if the inside bank intends to acquire private information about the borrower’s creditworthiness. In light of this prediction, we conclude that the above empirical finding is consistent with the hypothesis that increased competition discourages banks from collecting borrower-specific private information.     

国家信誉退出的双重约束及松释

国家信誉从国有商业银行退出,存在着低资本金充足率及高不良资产率约束,同时存在金融安全网缺失约束。随着国有银行股份制改造中资本金注入主体的多元化,资本金问题已不再成其为问题;随着中国经济体制改革的深入所带来的国民经济结构的调整,原来国有商业银行存在的体制性脆弱性逐步得到消解,不良资产问题越来越与银行机构自身经营高度相关。存款保险制度的显性化以及审慎监管制度的确立可以加快国家信誉从银行机构退出的速度。     

Bad luck or bad management? Emerging banking market experience

A large number of bank failures occurred in transition countries during the 1990s and at the beginning of the 2000s. These were related to increases in non-performing loans and deteriorated cost efficiency of banks. This paper addresses the question of the causality between non-performing loans and cost efficiency in order to examine whether either of these factors is the deep determinant of bank failures. We extend the Granger-causality model developed by [Berger, A., DeYoung, R., 1997. Problem loans and cost efficiency in commercial banks. J. Banking Finance 21, 849–870] by applying GMM dynamic panel estimators on a panel of Czech banks between 1994 and 2005. Our findings support the bad management hypothesis, according to which deteriorations in cost efficiency precede increases in non-performing loans. Banking supervisors should consequently focus on enhanced cost efficiency of banks in order to reduce the likelihood of bank failures in transition countries.     

Shadow banking of non-financial firms: Arbitrage between formal and informal credit markets in China

In China's credit markets with financial repression, state-controlled non-financial firms (SOEs) are privileged in gaining access to bank credit, while non-SOEs, especially those small- and medium-sized firms, are disadvantaged. Corporate re-lending emerges as a response wherein the former secure bank loans and then re-lend to the latter. We document the characteristics of inter-corporate loans from a sample of legal cases. We employ four empirical strategies to conduct a forensic study of re-lending by detecting abnormal relations between financial accounts of listed firms. State-controlled companies conduct more re-lending, and firms with better growth opportunities, stronger corporate governance, and more financial constraints engage less. We compare re-lending with entrusted loans and find that firms extending nonaffiliated entrusted loans conduct re-lending actively, while firms offering affiliated entrusted loans do not. We also compare inter-corporate loans with micro-credit company loans in a review of legal cases.     

A note on regulatory responses to COVID-19 pandemic: Balancing banks’ solvency and contribution to recovery

We discuss the implications on banks and the economy of prudential regulatory intervention to soften the treatment of non-performing exposures (NPEs) and ease bank capital buffers. We apply these easing measures on a sample of Globally Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs) and show that these banks can play a constructive role in sustaining economic growth during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, an empirical analysis shows that prudential regulatory responses to COVID-19 along with high regulatory capital and low non-performing loans ratios are positively associated with economic growth. Thus, banks should maintain high capital ratios in the medium-term horizon to absorb future losses, as the effect of COVID-19 on the economy might take time to fully materialize.     

转型过程中金融发展和开放的作用：来自中国的经验

金融市场和金融机构的发展与经济增长密切相关,这一点学术界已经达成了共识。然而在中国,尽管1978年至2003年期间GDP年真实增长率达9.4%,金融部门依然效率低下,金融改革也相对滞后。本文使用1978年至2003年的宏观数据,在VAR框架下分析了经济增长、银行贷款和FDI之间的长期关系。实证结果显示,如果不考虑结构变化,中国银行系统贷款总量与GDP之间不存在稳定的协整关系,但过去25年银行业的发展确实显著促进了中国经济增长。对数据的进一步分解显示,非国有银行贷款虽然总体贷款规模较小,但作为金融系统中较有效率的部门对于经济增长的贡献更为明显。虽然1978年到2003年外国直接投资(FDI)与经济增长也存在正协整效应,但由于资本控制政策和中国金融市场的独立性,这种效应相对于国内金融市场对经济增长的作用要小许多。