Does the cost of capital differ across countries? An agency perspective*

In this keynote speech, I ask the question: Does the cost of capital differ for firms located in different countries? I argue that there are two ways to look at the cost of capital. First, there is the neoclassical perspective, which assumes that there are no agency problems. In integrated markets, the neoclassical cost of capital is the same in every country. Second, there is the agency perspective. Agency costs increase the cost of capital understood as the expected rate of return necessary for an investment to leave the value of the firm unaffected. Adjusting the cost of capital for agency costs, I argue that it differs across countries because of differences in corporate governance. I then provide a comparison of the agency-adjusted cost of capital between Japan and the US.     

银行保险的制度变迁理论分析以及对我国的启示

20世纪80年代以来,无论是一直实施混业经营的欧洲,还是近几年重新走上混业经营之路的美国,银行保险都成为一种潮流和趋势。银行保险业务的产生及发展,既源于微观领域经营环境和竞争环境的变化,也源于宏观领域制度管制的放松和信息技术的迅猛发展,更源于银行保险经济学机理带来的范围经济和协同效益。银行保险作为一种制度创新的产物,更多地体现为从销售渠道创新到业务产品创新,再到组织模式创新的金融一体化的制度变迁过程。本文从制度变迁理论的角度对银行保险的产生动因以及演变发展进行分析,以期对我国银行保险的走向提供借鉴。     

综合化经营模式下商业银行的合规风险管理

随着综合化经营的发展,为更有效地进行全面风险管理,一些国家开始要求银行主动合规。与专业银行相比,综合经营的银行要面临更多机构监管,合规管理难度加大。国际银行业管理合规风险的方法和机构设置尽管各不相同,但基本上都包括高管层的总体把握、合规部门的具体管理与协调以及全体员工参与这三个层次。由于我国对合规管理的重视才刚刚开始,综合化经营后的商业银行还将面临法规缺位、监管不一致、合规管理能力不够等问题,这需要银行自身加强合规意识,树立流程管理理念、切实发挥合规部门作用;监管部门也要尽快完善法规、改进三大监管机构的协调机制,保持监管的一致性。     

Telecommunications policy and individuals with disabilities: Issues of accessibility and social inclusion in the policy and research agenda

Information and communications technologies have become an integral part of life in an information society, affecting employment, education and many other daily activities. For individuals with disabilities, equal access to telecommunications remains a concern, as many technologies that are developed do not allow for equal access. Law and policy have made significant progress in some nations, but sizeable barriers remain to the social inclusion of individuals with disabilities in telecommunications technologies and services. This paper examines the importance of equal access to telecommunications for individuals with disabilities in both the formulation and the implementation of policy. Analyzing issues of policy and implementation, this paper discusses policy questions and potential areas of research to better understand the relationship of telecommunications policy to access for persons with disabilities.     

银行保险的制度变迁理论分析以及对我国的启示

20世纪80年代以来，无论是一直实施混业经营的欧洲，还是近几年重新走上混业经营之路的美国，银行保险都成为一种潮流和趋势。银行保险业务的产生及发展，既源于微观领域经营环境和竞争环境的变化，也源于宏观领域制度管制的放松和信息技术的迅猛发展，更源于银行保险经济学机理带来的范围经济和协同效益。银行保险作为一种制度创新的产物，更多地体现为从销售渠道创新到业务产品创新，再到组织模式创新的金融一体化的制度变迁过程。本文从制度变迁理论的角度对银行保险的产生动因以及演变发展进行分析，以期对我国银行保险的走向提供借鉴。     

The Impact of Capital Requirements and Managerial Compensation on Bank Charter Value

This paper examines the joint impact of capital requirements and managerial incentive compensation on bank charter value and bank risk. Most of the previous literature in the area of banking and agency theory has focused on asymmetric information between either banks and regulators, (and therefore on the role of bank capital), or between bank shareholders and bank managers, (and therefore on the role of managerial ownership). In this paper we unify these issues and present empirical results from the regression of capital requirements jointly with measures of incentive compensation on Tobin's Q, our proxy for bank charter value, and on the standard deviation of total return, our proxy for bank risk. In a sample of 102 bank holding companies we find that capital levels are consistently a significant positive factor in determining bank charter value and a significant negative factor in determining risk. On the other hand, we find our six measures of incentive compensation to be generally insignificant relative to charter value but do provide some evidence consistent with a theory relating types of incentive compensation with risk.     

The Taxation of Banking in an Integrating Europe

The banking sector is subject to explicit taxation and to bank regulation and supervision with quasi-fiscal implications. The assignment of national fiscal policy rights and duties regarding international banks in the EU varies with the fiscal instrument and with whether the international bank owns foreign branches or subsidiaries. Decentralized national policy-making in the EU gives rise to fiscal burdens on banks that differ internationally and with the national origin of banks in the same country. This paper discusses the international aspects of the overall fiscal regime facing banks in the EU and it evaluates some avenues for reform.     

Ownership concentration and bank risk: international study on acquisitions

This paper explores the effects of different types of bank ownership concentration on changes in bank risk during acquisition years. Using multi-country data from 2000 to 2006, during which market failures caused by various crises and government interventions are less influential to acquisition decisions, we collect 505 banking acquisition deals from 23 countries to examine which type of ownership concentration (such as financial intermediary, capital investor, non-financial, and state ownership) brings larger changes to an acquirer’s risk from pre-acquisition year to post-acquisition year (including non-performing loans, capital adequacy ratio, loan loss reserve, and credit rating). The empirical analyses show that acquirer banks with a concentration of shares owned by financial intermediaries and non-financial firms experience larger risk changes during acquisition years. In contrast, the risk changes of acquirer banks with a concentration of capital investors and state ownership are lower. Robustness checks from the random effect estimation, instrumental variables model, reverse causality, and different subsamples of (non-)U.S. or different levels of regulation enforcement confirm these results.     

Stakeholder Returns of Islamic Banks Versus Conventional Banks

Sharia principle shaping the Islamic banking model is most determinant on collection and deployment of funds with its ban on interest. This study aims to look at the results of funded activities in isolation for a healthier comparison between Islamic and conventional deposit banks with respect to their financial stakeholders. The differences are reflected as lower asset returns and lower returns for depositors of Islamic banks. These differences sustain throughout normal and crisis periods. Our findings show that despite differences in asset structures and returns, Islamic banks retain similar returns for shareholders to position themselves close to and in competition with their conventional counterparts.     

Using clustering ensemble to identify banking business models

The business models of banks are often seen as the result of a variety of simultaneously determined managerial choices, such as those regarding the types of activities, funding sources, level of diversification, and size. Moreover, owing to the fuzziness of data and the possibility that some banks may combine features of different business models, the use of hard clustering methods has often led to poorly identified business models. In this paper we propose a framework to deal with these challenges based on an ensemble of three unsupervised clustering methods to identify banking business models: fuzzy c‐means (which allows us to handle fuzzy clustering), self‐organizing maps (which yield intuitive visual representations of the clusters), and partitioning around medoids (which circumvents the presence of data outliers). We set up our analysis in the context of the European banking sector, which has seen its regulators increasingly focused on examining the business models of supervised entities in the aftermath of the twin financial crises. In our empirical application, we find evidence of four distinct banking business models and further distinguish between banks with a clearly defined business model (core banks) and others (non‐core banks), as well as banks with a stable business model over time (persistent banks) and others (non‐persistent banks). Our proposed framework performs well under several robustness checks related with the sample, clustering methods, and variables used.