The Impact of Supervisory Stress Tests on Bank Ex-Ante Risk-Taking Behaviour: Empirical Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment

We use the Federal Reserve's stress-testing regime as a quasi-natural experiment to examine the impact of supervisory stress tests on bank ex-ante risk taking behaviour. Using a sample comprising large U.S. bank holding companies over the period from 2003Q1 to 2016Q4, we find that banks which are subjected to annual supervisory stress tests tend to reduce their overall risk by choosing asset portfolios of lower risk exposures. Nevertheless, this risk reduction happens mainly because stress-tested banks reduce the holding of low-risk assets rather than risky assets. We also find that stress-tested banks tend to reduce their on-balance sheet exposures rather than off-balance sheet exposures. Overall, our finding implies that, while supervisory stress tests can help to reduce the banks' overall risks, policy makers should also have a closer look at the mechanisms in which banks allocate risk to mitigate moral hazard and regulatory arbitrage behaviour.     

The regulations–risk taking nexus under competitive pressure: What about the Islamic banking system?

Does market power condition the effect of bank regulations and supervision on bank risk taking? We focus on three regulatory tools: capital requirements, the restriction of activities, and official supervisory powers. Employing 10 years of unbalanced panel data on 123 Islamic and conventional banks operating in the Middle East and Asia, we arrive at the following conclusions. First, banking market power strengthens the negative impact of capital regulation on bank risk taking. Second, our empirical results suggest that the negative effect of activity restrictions on stability is diminished when banks have greater market power. Finally, we do not find strong evidence that the negative effect of supervisory power on banks’ risk taking is conditioned by their competitive behavior. In further analysis, we differentiate between Islamic and conventional banks regarding their competition, as well as their risk behavior. The results differ according to the banking business model. These findings could be useful for bank regulators in light of the accomplishment of Islamic banks’ regulatory framework. Indeed, the adoption of Basel III represents a significant regulatory challenge, given that it does not take into account the specificities of Islamic banks.     

商业银行吸收存款能力、发行理财及其经济后果研究

本文分析了商业银行吸收存款能力和发行理财产品的关系及其经济后果。本文发现商业银行吸收存款能力越弱,通过理财产品募集资金越多,理财产品收益率越高。具体来说,非四大国有银行,通过理财产品募集资金越多,理财产品收益率越高;银行的网点数量越少,通过理财产品募集资金越多,理财产品的收益率越高;银行所在地区贷存比越高,通过理财产品募集资金越多,理财产品收益率越高;银行所在地区的金融机构密度越大,通过理财募集资金越多,理财产品收益率越高。进一步研究发现,非保本理财产品加大了银行经营业绩波动,从而增大了银行经营风险。     

Common ownership and bank stability: Evidence from the U.S. banking industry

We empirically test competing theoretical arguments about the impact of common ownership on bank stability: the common ownership hypothesis, where banks decrease risk-taking by internalizing risk externalities on commonly held banks, and the diversification hypothesis, where banks increase risk-taking influenced by common owners who hold diversified portfolios and are less risk averse. Using data from the U.S. banking industry from 1991 to 2016, we find that banks with more common ownership linkages undertake lower risk, as predicted by the common ownership hypothesis. This relation is statistically significant and economically sizable, which is consistent across alternative measures of common ownership and bank risk and robust to potential endogeneity. Our study adds the financial stability perspective to the ongoing discussions on common ownership and antitrust regulations.     

Do stress tests affect bank liquidity creation?

We examine the impact of Federal Reserve stress tests from 2009 to 2016 on U.S. bank liquidity creation. Empirical results show that regulatory stress tests have a negative effect on both on-and off-balance sheet bank liquidity creation and asset-side liquidity creation. As banks enter the stress tests, they reduce their liquidity creation to avoid failing the stress tests. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that banks manage their risk exposures to meet higher capital requirements. The negative effect of stress testing on liquidity creation continues to persist in the quarters after the stress tests. Finally, stress test banks appear to increase liability-side liquidity creation. These findings highlight that the enhanced financial stability from greater regulatory scrutiny may be achieved at the expense of financial intermediation.     

Don’t Stand So Close to Me: The role of supervisory style in banking stability

With the establishment of an integrated Banking Union, the harmonization of supervisory styles (regulation being equal) plays a central role. Our paper addresses a central question: what supervisory culture has been demonstrated to be most effective at ensuring the stability of European banks? We identify six different supervisory cultures and observe to what extent the words used in public speeches by the deans of the national supervision authority reflect the national cultural values of the Hofstede framework (Hofstede et al., 2010). By analyzing a panel of banks operating in the EU-15 from 1999 and 2011, our paper provides empirical evidence that supervisory culture influences the stability of banks. Our results have important policy implications: our paper is the first to provide empirical evidence of heterogeneity in the supervision styles in Europe and its effect on banking stability.     

Bank regulation and supervision in the context of the global crisis

We provide novel evidence on regulatory and supervisory practices around the world in the context of the global financial crisis, using data from a new World Bank survey covering 143 countries. Analyzing differences between crisis and non-crisis countries, we find that crisis countries had less stringent and more complex definitions of capital but exhibited lower actual capital ratios, faced fewer restrictions on non-bank activities, were less strict in the regulatory treatment of bad loans, were less able to demand banks to adjust their equity, provisions or compensation schemes, and had greater disclosure requirements but weaker incentives for private agents to monitor banks. Comparing regulatory and supervisory practices before and after the global crisis, there is evidence of few changes. While capital ratios increased, bank governance and resolution regimes were strengthened, private sector incentives to monitor banks deteriorated.     

Mandatory Disclosure,Voluntary Disclosure,and Stock Market Liquidity: Evidence from the EU Bank Stress Tests

We use the EU stress tests and the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis to study the consequences of supervisory disclosure of banks’ sovereign risk exposures. We test the idea that a mandatory one‐time disclosure induces an increase in voluntary disclosures about sovereign risk in the following periods and, through the shift in the voluntary disclosure equilibrium, increases the liquidity of banks’ shares. First, we find that the timing and content of different mandatory disclosure events helps explain the levels of stress‐test banks’ voluntary disclosures about sovereign risk. Second, although the bid‐ask spreads of stress test participants generally increased after the mandatory stress test in 2011, our results suggest that the decrease in market liquidity is entirely attributable to those stress‐test participants that did not commit to voluntarily maintaining the disclosures of sovereign risk exposure.     

Assessing banks’ resilience: A complementary approach to stress testing using fair values from banks’ financial statements

For more than a decade, supervisory banking authorities in Europe and the United States have sought to assess the resilience of banks to adverse economic episodes to safeguard the financial system's stability. They rely on regulatory capital measures like Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) relative to risk-weighted assets in the aftermath of potential economic crises. We propose a new measure of banks' resilience based on financial statements. The fair value margin (FVM) is estimated as the difference between the fair value of assets and the book value of liabilities, scaled by the book value of equity. We find that FVM is positively associated with the surplus or shortfall of CET1 resulting from the stress testing results from 2014, 2016 and 2018. To corroborate the relevance of FVM for supervisory authorities, we compare the ability of the loan component of FVM to predict future credit losses with the capital surplus/shortfall metric derived from the stress test. The findings indicate that the fair value of loans predicts net charge-offs better than stress test outcomes. Therefore, we suggest that FVM could be used as a readily available and relatively low-cost tool to assess bank resilience, thus complementing the stress test exercises.     

金融科技与银行价值链的重塑

金融科技在显著提升银行服务水平和经营效率的同时,也对银行业的竞争环境产生了深刻影响,商业银行在服务场景和渠道、客户信息以及资金等方面的传统竞争优势受到挑战.为快速获取必要的金融科技能力,银行加速推进数字化转型,并在其价值链的多个环节与科技企业开展合作.银行价值链由封闭的自我循环模式转向开放的合作模式,且价值链中的高附加值活动存在向少数企业集中的趋势.银行业的风险特征也由此发生重要变化:传统的战略风险、信用风险、流动性风险、操作风险、法律风险与系统性风险依然存在且变得更加复杂;科技风险、网络风险与数据安全等问题日渐凸显.作为应对,我国应结合银行业的实际情况,对现有银行监管框架和模式进行再评估,督促指导银行在推进数字化转型的过程中密切关注相关风险,进一步加强监管能力建设,以更好地守住不发生系统性金融风险的底线.     

Financial crisis and international supervision: New evidence on the discretionary use of loan loss provisions at Euro Area commercial banks

We examine the discretionary use of loan loss provisions during the recent financial crisis, when Euro Area banks experienced not only a negative effect on the quality of their loans and a reduction in their profitability, but were also subject to a new form of stricter supervision, namely the EBA 2010 and 2011 stress test exercises. Overall, we find support for the only income smoothing hypothesis and we do not observe any difference in listed banks’ behavior when compared to unlisted banks. Banks subject to EBA stress tests had higher incentives to smooth income only for the 2011 EBA exercise, when a larger and more detailed set of information was released. This may suggest an unwilled side effect that accounting setters and banking regulators and supervisors should account for.     

Information Disclosure, Market Discipline and the Management of Bank Capital: Evidence from the Chinese Financial Sector

Is there evidence that market forces effectively discipline risk management behaviour within Chinese financial institutions? This study analyses information from a comprehensive sample of Chinese banks over the 1998–2008 period. Market discipline is captured through the impact of four sets of factors namely, market concentration, interbank deposits, information disclosure, and ownership structure. We find some evidence of a market disciplining effect in that: (i) higher (lower) levels of market concentration lead banks to operate with a lower (higher) capital buffer; (ii) joint-equity banks that disclose more information to the public maintain larger capital ratios; (iii) full state ownership reduces the sensitivity of changes in a bank’s capital buffer to its level of risk;(iv) banks that release more transparent financial information hold more capital against their non-performing loans.     

Explaining banking stability in Sub-Saharan Africa

The study examined banking stability in Sub-Saharan Africa. The results reveal that banking spread (Net Interest Margin – NIM) is the main determinant of stability and the major means to achieve stability during crises periods. We however find the existence of a threshold effect in NIM.Crises in the banking sector consistently showed to reduce stability. While the results show that high percentage of foreign banks reduce stability, we find foreign banks help stabilize the banking sector in periods of crises. The results show that diversification could also have a positive impact on stability (Z-score) even though this relationship was not robust enough. The results also largely support the competition-fragility view. Particularly, we find that less competition during crises periods can help improve stability. Again, we find evidence for both concentration-stability and concentration-fragility hypotheses depending on the stability measure used. We however find that when large banks in concentrated markets are well regulated, stability could be improved. Weak regulatory environment reduces stability (Z-score) directly and matters during crises periods. Our results are robust to the use of different indicators of stability and estimation methods.     

The Impact of Supervision on Bank Performance

We explore the impact of supervision on the riskiness, profitability, and growth of U.S. banks. Using data on supervisors' time use, we demonstrate that the top-ranked banks by size within a supervisory district receive more attention from supervisors, even after controlling for size, complexity, risk, and other characteristics. Using a matched sample approach, we find that these top-ranked banks that receive more supervisory attention hold less risky loan portfolios, are less volatile, and are less sensitive to industry downturns, but do not have lower growth or profitability. Our results underscore the distinct role of supervision in mitigating banking sector risk.     

The fall of Spanish cajas: Lessons of ownership and governance for banks

Ownership, governance, and institutional diversity among banks are a subject of public and regulatory concern. This paper addresses this issue by using a case study of Spain, where the retail banking market was split evenly between shareholder and stakeholder banks before the crisis. We examine how institutional diversity mattered in the accumulation of risk in the pre-crisis years, in the severity of losses caused by the crisis, and in the resilience to recover from the losses. The method of analysis consists in linking the risk position of the banks in the pre-crisis period and the losses arising during the crisis to the decisions of banks to migrate from business models based on deposit financing to models based on market-debt financing. We find that cajas migrated to more vulnerable business models following the strategy of the shareholder banks, but the losses in the crisis were much higher in the former than in the latter. The paper interprets this result as evidence that what matters the most about the ownership of banks is their resilience in bad times.     

Economic policy uncertainty and bank earnings opacity

Using a sample of U.S. banks and an index for economic policy uncertainty developed by Baker et al. (2016), we investigate whether economic policy uncertainty is systematically related to bank earnings opacity. When economic policy is relatively uncertain, it is easier for bank managers to distort financial information, as unpredictable economic policy changes make assessing the existence and impact of hidden “adverse news” more difficult for investors and creditors. Economic policy uncertainty also increases the fluctuation in banks’ earnings and cash flows, thus providing additional incentives and opportunities for bank managers to engage in earnings management. Our results show that uncertainty in economic policy is positively related to earnings opacity, proxied by the magnitude of discretionary loan loss provisions and the likelihood of just meeting or beating the prior year’s earnings, and negatively related to the level of accounting conservatism (i.e., the timeliness of recognition of bad news relative to good news). Collectively, our results suggest that economic policy uncertainty leads to greater earnings opacity. We also find that the impact of economic policy uncertainty on financial reporting distortion is less pronounced for stronger banks (i.e., banks with high capital ratios).     

Max headroom: Discretionary capital buffers and bank risk

This paper examines the association between discretionary capital buffers, capital requirements, and risk for the 99 largest European banks from 2013 to 2020. Discretionary buffers are banks’ own buffers, or headroom: the difference between reported and required capital. Against the backdrop of steadily increasing capital requirements over the sample period, I exploit unique and detailed Pillar 2 data that banks disclose since the release of a 2015 European Banking Authority opinion. I show that less headroom is associated with increased bank risk, even for well-capitalized banks. An additional examination of banks’ responses to the 2016 and 2018 EBA stress tests reveals that banks supervised by the ECB struggled to improve headroom. Overall, I document limitations of the effectiveness of bank capital requirements.     

Bank supervision and corruption in lending

Which commercial bank supervisory policies ease—or intensify—the degree to which bank corruption is an obstacle to firms raising external finance? Based on new data from more than 2500 firms across 37 countries, this paper provides the first empirical assessment of the impact of different bank supervisory policies on firms’ financing obstacles. We find that the traditional approach to bank supervision, which involves empowering official supervisory agencies to monitor, discipline, and influence banks directly, does not improve the integrity of bank lending. Rather, we find that a supervisory strategy that focuses on empowering private monitoring of banks by forcing banks to disclose accurate information to the private sector tends to lower the degree to which corruption of bank officials is an obstacle to firms raising external finance. In extensions, we find that regulations that empower private monitoring exert a particularly beneficial effect on the integrity of bank lending in countries with sound legal institutions.     

The impact of the sovereign debt crisis on the activity of Italian banks

We examine the implications of the sovereign debt tensions on the Italian credit market by estimating the effect of the 10-year BTP-Bund spread on a wide array of bank interest rates, categories of loans and income statement variables. We exploit the heterogeneity between large and small intermediaries to assess to what extent the transmission of sovereign risk differed in relation with different banks’ balance-sheet characteristics and business strategies. Regarding the cost of funding, we find that changes in the BTP-Bund spread have a sizeable effect on the interest rates on term deposits and newly issued bonds but virtually no effect on overnight deposits. Furthermore, the sovereign spread significantly affects the cost of credit for firms and households and exerts a negative effect on loan growth. All these results are magnified when considering alone the five largest banks, which are typically less capitalized, have a larger funding gap and incidence of bad loans and rely more on non-traditional banking activities. Sovereign tensions also affect the main items of banks’ income statement.     

Credit CARD Act of 2009: What did banks do?

The Credit CARD Act of 2009 was intended to prevent practices in the credit card industry that lawmakers viewed as deceptive and abusive. Among other changes, the Act restricted issuers’ account closure policies, eliminated certain fees, and made it more difficult for issuers to change terms on credit card plans. Critics of the Act argued that because of the long lag between approval and implementation of the law, issuing banks would be able to take preemptive actions that might disadvantage cardholders before the law could take effect. Using credit bureau data as well as individual data from a survey of U.S. consumers, we test whether banks closed consumers’ credit card accounts or otherwise restricted access to credit just before the enactment of the CARD Act. Because the period prior to the enactment of the CARD Act coincided with the financial crisis and recession, causality in this case is particularly difficult to establish. We find evidence that a higher fraction of credit card accounts were closed following the Federal Reserve Board’s adoption of its credit card rules, but not between May 2009, when the CARD Act was signed, and when most of its provisions became law in February 2010. However, we do find evidence that banks deteriorated terms of credit card plans at a higher rate during this period, especially lowered the credit limits. Among the survey respondents whose bank accounts were closed during that period, account holders were much more likely to close their own credit card accounts than to have them closed by their card issuers.