Bank efficiency in South‐Eastern Europe

This study examines the cost and profit efficiency of banking sectors in six transition countries of South‐Eastern Europe over the period 1998–2008. Using a stochastic frontier approach, our analysis reveals that the average cost efficiency of South‐Eastern European banks is 68.59 percent, and the average profit efficiency is 53.87 percent. Regressions on the determinants of bank efficiency show that foreign banks are characterized by higher profit efficiency but lower cost efficiency, and government‐owned banks are associated with lower profit efficiency than domestic private banks. However, the efficiency gap between foreign‐, domestic private‐ and government‐owned banks narrows over time. We also find that the market power of a bank has a positive association with both cost and profit efficiency. Institutional development, proxied by progress in banking regulatory reforms, privatization and enterprise corporate governance restructuring, also has a positive impact on bank efficiency.     

International Bank Portfolios: Short‐ and Long‐Run Responses to Macroeconomic Conditions

International bank portfolios constitute a large component of international country portfolios. Yet, banks' response to international macroeconomic conditions remains largely unexplored. We use a novel dataset on banks' international portfolios to answer three questions. First, what are the long‐run determinants of banks' international portfolios? Second, how do banks' international portfolios adjust to short‐run macroeconomic developments? Third, does the speed of adjustment change with the degree of financial integration? We find that, in the long‐run, market size has a positive impact on foreign assets and liabilities. An increase in the interest differential between the home and the foreign economy lowers foreign assets and increases foreign liabilities. Foreign trade has a positive impact on international bank portfolios, which is independent from the effect of other macroeconomic variables. Short‐run dynamics show heterogeneity across countries, but these dynamics can partly be explained with gravity‐type variables.     

Who Wants an Independent Central Bank? Monetary Policy‐making and Politics

The costs and benefits of cooperative monetary and fiscal policy are analysed in the framework of a partisan business-cycles model. It is shown that political parties with different ideologies prefer to choose different arrangements for macroeconomic policy-making. More specifically, right-wing parties favour independent central banks more than left-wing parties. An independent central bank is also the generally preferred option from a social welfare point of view. In addition, the form of policy-making arrangements between the fiscal and monetary authorities is shown to influence the extent of partisan cycles.
JEL classification : E 32; E 58; E 63; C 72     

Optimal Reserves and Short‐Term Interest Rates in a Model of Bank Runs

A global game framework of bank runs is used to analyse a bank's choice of its reserve level and short‐term interest rate. Higher level of reserves and a lower short‐term interest rate would decrease the probability of bank runs. When the bank's reserve policy is transparent, it will hold excess reserves to discourage withdrawals by patient depositors. This inefficiency of excess reserves increases with the proportion of impatient depositors. When the bank has private information about its reserve level, it will follow a more risky strategy of choosing lower reserves and higher early return than what maximizes depositor welfare and increases the probability of bank runs.     

Does Trade Credit Substitute Bank Credit? Evidence from Firm‐level Data

The paper examines micro data on Italian manufacturing firms' inventory behaviour to test the Meltzer (1960) hypothesis according to which firms substitute bank credit with trade credit (TC) during money tightening. We find that inventory investment of Italian manufacturing firms is constrained by their availability of TC and that this effect more than doubles during monetary restrictions. As for the magnitude of the substitution effect, however, we find that it is not sizeable. This is in line with the micro theories of TC and the evidence on actual firm practices, according to which credit terms display modest variations over time .     

Bank ownership type and temporal evolution of long‐term bank funding in the period 2005–2017

This study uses a large panel dataset of Western European banks to examine the determinants of bank funding stability. Banks are divided into three categories by bank ownership type; the ownership types in this study are commercial banks, cooperative banks and savings banks. Three sources of stable bank funding are investigated: customer deposits, equity, and long‐term liabilities. Furthermore, the sum of these funding components is used as a proxy variable for a bank's total available stable funding (ASF). A special focus is on the temporal evolution of these funding types. The regression results show that commercial banks’ funding became much more stable in the period 2005–2017. However, that funding remains, on average, less stable than does cooperative and savings banks’ funding. In addition, funding stability has remained at the pre‐crisis level in cooperative and savings banks, despite a steep dip in cooperative banks’ ASF during the sovereign debt crisis. Furthermore, banks substantially decreased financing from long‐term liabilities after the financial crisis, replacing it with customer deposits and equity.     

Implications of Shifting Retail Market Shares for Loan Monitoring in a Dominant‐Bank Model

This study utilizes a dominant‐bank model to investigate whether an increase in retail loan and deposit‐market concentration increases the incentives for both dominant and fringe banks to monitor their loans and thereby improve the quality of their loan portfolios. It shows that the effects on banks' incentives to engage in monitoring aimed at eliminating loan default losses in response to increased concentration of retail market shares of loans and deposits depend critically on whether the banks' asset and liability choices are interdependent. When the asset and liability decisions of both dominant and fringe banks are independent, a shift in market shares in favor of the dominant bank generates a straightforward increase in the incentives of all banks to monitor their loans. Under portfolio interdependence, the effects on monitoring outcomes at dominant banks and at banks within the competitive fringe depend on more complicated configurations of parameters. This fact helps explain mixed empirical evidence on the relationships between bank competition and measures of bank risk and soundness.     

Bank asset quality & monetary policy pass-through

The funding mix of European firms is weighted heavily towards bank credit, which underscores the importance of efficient pass-through of monetary policy actions to lending rates faced by firms. Euro area pass-through has shifted from being relatively homogenous to being fragmented and incomplete since the financial crisis. Distressed loan books are a crisis hangover with direct implications for profitability, hampering banks ability to supply credit and lower loan pricing in response to reductions in the policy rate. This paper presents a parsimonious model to decompose the cost of lending and highlight the role of asset quality in diminishing pass-through. Using bank-level data over the period 2008–2014, we empirically test the implications of the model. We show that a one percentage point increase in the impairment ratio lowering short run pass-through by 3%. We find that banks with severely impaired balance sheets do not adjust their loan pricing in response to changes in the policy rate at all. We derive a measure of the hidden bad loan problem, the NPL gap, which we define as the excess of non-performing loans over impaired loans. We show that it played a significant role in the fragmentation of euro area pass-through post-crisis.     

Motivation crowding‐out and green‐paradox‐like outcomes

We analyze the effectiveness of environmental policy in a framework in which households’ utility is determined by both private and social components, representing their extrinsic and intrinsic motivations to undertake green actions, respectively. Environmental policy, in the form of a subsidy aiming to incentivize the adoption of a green technology, on the one hand, directly increases households’ extrinsic motivation, while, on the other hand, indirectly decreases their intrinsic motivation. We show that, provided that the indirect effect dominates, the policy leads to crowding‐out of intrinsic motivation which ultimately undermines the effectiveness of the policy itself. Specifically, despite its positive effect on environmental outcomes in the short run, the policy will lead to a deterioration in long‐run environmental outcomes, giving rise to a reverse green‐paradox‐like outcome. Moreover, even in the case in which the direct effect dominates, provided that the indirect effect is large enough, the policy will generate a deterioration in short‐run environmental outcomes. These results clearly suggest that the optimal design of environmental policy is particularly complicated since it requires to take into account also its effects on intrinsic motivation.     

Long‐term care and pay‐for‐performance programs

Pay‐for‐performance programs are gradually spreading across Asia. This paper builds on the longer experience in the United States to offer lessons for Asia. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has introduced several pay‐for‐performance programs since 2012 to encourage hospitals to improve quality of care and reduce costs. Some state Medicaid programs have also introduced pay‐for‐performance for nursing homes. Long‐term care providers play an important role in hospital pay‐for‐performance programs because they can affect the readmission rate and also total episode payments. A good pay‐for‐performance program will focus on improving quality of care that affects health outcomes. In addition, that quality must vary across providers and be measurable. Furthermore, it is important that the measures be reported in a timely way, that both demand and supply respond to the measures, and that the measures be risk adjusted. Empirical data from Medicare beneficiaries in the state of Michigan show that mean episode payments and readmission rates in skilled nursing facilities vary widely and are sensitive to the number of observations. These practical matters create challenges for implementing pay‐for‐performance in practice. There is an extensive literature review of pay‐for‐performance in long‐term care in the United States and in Asia.     

国有银行与股份制银行的对比分析

国有银行与股份制银行运营效率存在着巨大差距，其深层原因在于产权制度差异引起的在对代理人的选择、控制与激励效率上的差异，本重点在于分析这种差异产生的机理与带来的后果，并提出相应的治理对策。     

Need,Merit and Politics in Multilateral Aid Allocation: A District‐level Analysis of World Bank Projects in India

We assess the targeting of foreign aid within recipient countries by employing Poisson estimations on the determinants of the World Bank's allocation of project aid at the district level in India. The evidence of needs‐based location choices is very weak as long as the poverty orientation of overall commitments is taken as the yardstick. It is only for some sectors that we find stronger indications of needs‐based allocation when combining sector‐specific commitments with corresponding measures of need. The evidence for a merit‐based allocation of World Bank aid is even weaker. We typically do not find evidence that aid allocation is affected by political patronage at the state or district level. However, the World Bank prefers districts where foreign direct investors may benefit from projects related to infrastructure.     

银行风险、贷款规模与法律保护水平

本文根据更加全面的中国银行业数据,首先研究了法律保护水平和银行风险(Z值)之间的关系;其次,分析了影响银行风险的中间途径,研究了法律保护水平和贷款规模之间的关系;最后,对法律保护水平和银行风险(Z值)各组成部分之间的关系进行了讨论。研究发现,法律保护水平越高(尤其是对知识产权的保护),银行信贷规模越大,银行经营业绩也越高,但银行的资本充足率较低,最终导致银行风险上升(Z值较低)。本文结论说明:法律制度的建设和完善以及加强对银行资本的监管等具有重要意义。     

浅议流程和银行再造与流程银行建设

本文在分析流程与流程再造、银行流程与银行再造关系的基础上,讨论了我国商业银行流程银行建设产生的背景,以及我国商业银行流程建设需要遵循的原则、实施路径等问题。     

行长薪酬、薪酬差距与银行绩效

文章不仅研究了银行高管薪酬的影响因素,还从中国上市银行内部薪酬差距的角度出发,依据锦标赛理论和行为理论探讨了银行内部薪酬差距与银行绩效之间的相关关系。研究结果显示,中国上市银行的薪酬结构具有一定的合理性。此外,通过对银行行长薪酬与银行绩效的回归分析发现,银行行长薪酬与银行绩效的联系程度还不够紧密,需要在今后的薪酬制度改革中进一步加强。     

Divestment and Bank Competition

We determine optimal divestment (partial privatization) and entry in banking in the context of a mixed oligopoly. When banks compete in deposits, greater entry is associated with higher divestment. However, social welfare improves with entry only when the private entrants are more efficient than the public bank. Further, when banks compete in interest rates with differentiated products, the public banks behavior resembles that of a price leader and it earns less profit than the private bank, if government holding in the public bank is sufficiently high. Competition becomes excessive in this case, and social welfare maximization requires greater divestment.