Effects of international institutional factors on earnings quality of banks

We examine the relation between legal, extra-legal and political institutional factors and earnings quality of banks across countries. We predict that earnings quality is higher in countries with legal, extra-legal and political systems that reduce the consumption of private control benefits by insiders and afford outside investors greater protection. Using a sample of banks from 35 countries during the pre-crisis period from 1993 to 2006, we find that all five measures of earnings quality studied are higher in countries with stronger legal, extra-legal and political institutional structures. We also find that banks in countries with stronger institutions are less likely to report losses, have lower loan loss provisions, and higher balance sheet strength during the 2007–2009 crisis period. Our findings highlight the implications of country level institutional factors for financial reporting quality and are relevant to bank regulators who are considering additional regulations on bank financial reporting.     

The global financial crisis and the evolution of markets, institutions and regulation

This paper analyses the recent global financial crisis in the context of the dual processes of market development and regulation. It discusses how, in the absence of a globally integrated financial framework, past and present regulations and interventions in reaction to national and global financial crises did not resolve the cross border regulatory arbitrage. The paper discusses how crises often lead to the emergence of new national and international institutions. It also analyses the proposed “new global framework” that needs to be in place if the policy recommendations contained in the G20 communiqué are going to be effectively implemented. The paper argues that unless international agreements are ratified by all nations and become part of national rules and laws, the presence of regulatory arbitrage and the lack of adequate cross border information and data may prevent the global economy from addressing the underlying causes of the recent global financial crisis. The paper also discusses the evolution of central banks and their new role in contributing to global financial stability. The paper argues that the recent global financial crisis has provided a unique opportunity to go beyond economic data and attempt to capture cross border financial data and other information that could assist international and national institutions to measure and manage financial risk more effectively. Finally, the paper discusses “too big to fail” and argues that only an internationally integrated financial system will make large banks global, both when operational and in the event of insolvency.     

The performance of banks in the MENA region during the global financial crisis

This paper examines the impact of the global financial crisis on the banking sector in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, as well as the main determinants of the profitability of both domestic and foreign banks. The empirical findings suggest that during the crisis the former outperformed the latter in that region. As for the determinants of profitability, size does not appear to play a role, whilst the liquidity ratio and net interest revenues seem to have a negative and positive effect respectively; GDP has a positive effect in the case of domestic banks.     

金融危机启示:金融一体化监管趋势下的保险监管

任何一次危机的爆发都是风险释放的过程,研究危机更重要的是关注风险的积累过程。因此,分析危机前的风险积累过程,查找危机产生的原因,对防范和化解危机具有现实意义。本文通过对新近发生的美国次贷危机进而延伸到对10年前亚洲金融危机分析,以及全球金融一体化监管最新演进趋势的借鉴,论述我国保险监管组织架构的未来展望。     

Market power in CEE banking sectors and the impact of the global financial crisis

The aim of this study is to undertake an up-to-date assessment of market power in Central and Eastern European banking markets and explore how the global financial crisis has affected market power and what has been the impact of foreign ownership. Three main results emerge. First, while there is some convergence in country-level market power during the pre-crisis period, the onset of the global crisis has put an end to this process. Second, bank-level market power appears to vary significantly with respect to ownership characteristics. Third, asset quality and capitalization affect differently the margins in the pre-crisis and the crisis periods. While in the pre-crisis period the impacts are similar for all banks regardless of ownership status, in the crisis period non-performing loans have a negative effect and capitalization a positive effect only for domestically-owned banks.     

Individual financial risk tolerance and the global financial crisis

We investigate individual investors’ tolerance towards financial risk by focusing on changes associated with the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2007–2009. Financial risk tolerance (FRT) is analysed longitudinally controlling for demographic, socio‐economic and regional variations. In absolute terms, the change in FRT is small and contrasts with a popular view that risk tolerance is an elastic psychological state overly influenced by the pervading market conditions. Even in the presence of significant financial events, FRT tends to be a reasonably stable attribute in the shorter term but possibly influenced and reshaped by events more gradually over time.     

Improving earnings quality: The effect of reporting incentives and accounting standards

We investigate the different effects on earnings quality of accounting standards and reporting incentives for Germany over the period 1994 to 2005. To this end, we control for reporting incentives at the firm level, instead of the country level, by using the timing of voluntary IFRS adoption as a proxy for reporting incentives. We then include reporting incentives in an analysis of earnings management and information asymmetry. Contrary to common expectation, we find that IFRS reporting potentially decreases earnings quality on average; but also that reporting incentives appear to have lower effects on earnings quality in IFRS statements than in GGAAP statements. Thus, IFRS may lead to more homogenous earnings quality across firms.     

Implications of bank regulation for loan supply and bank stability: a dynamic perspective

ABSTRACT

We show that internal funds play a particular role in the regulation of bank capital, which has not received much attention, yet. A bank's decision on loan supply and capital structure determines its immediate bankruptcy risk as well as the future availability of internal funds. These internal funds in turn determine a bank's future costs of external finance and its future vulnerability to bankruptcy risks. Using a partial equilibrium model, we study how internal funds affect these intra- and intertemporal links. Moreover, our positive analysis identifies the effects of risk-weighted capital-to-asset ratios, liquidity coverage ratios and regulatory margin calls on the dynamics of internal funds and thus loan supply and bank stability. Only regulatory margin calls or large liquidity coverage ratios achieve bank stability for all risk levels, but for large risks a bank will stop credit intermediation.     

The impact of opacity on bank valuation during the global financial crisis: A channel analysis

Prior literature suggests that opacity in the banking industry is mainly caused by a lack of informativeness in the assessment of the quality of bank assets. Examining a sample of bank holding companies in the United States, we find that there is a negative relationship between opacity and bank valuation during the 2007–2009 global financial crisis. We further attempt to identify two potential channels through which opacity negatively affects bank valuation during the financial crisis: a cash flow channel and an expected return channel. We show that one channel flows from bank profitability, measured by return on equity and return on assets, confirming a cash flow channel, whereas an expected return channel, proxied by the implied cost of capital, only works for small banks. Overall, this study sheds light on the relationship between in-transparency and bank value discount during a global recession.     

Credit risk,owner liability,and bank loan maturities during the global financial crisis

We relate credit risk and owners’ personal guarantees to bank loan maturities during the global financial crisis. The findings, which remain robust to reverse causality, show that firms rated as low risk, with a strong relationship with the bank, whose owners provided personal guarantees and with large loan sizes obtained longer maturities. Banks with larger nonperforming loans provided loans with shorter maturities. Firms with low‐ and high‐risk ratings that provided owners’ personal guarantees obtained longer maturities. These findings shed additional light on the relationship between risk and loan maturities and the role of personal guarantees in reducing information asymmetries.     

Market response to syndicated loan announcements from high-profile failed and acquiring banks during the global financial crisis

Previous studies that have examined the impact of the 2008 financial crisis on syndicated loans have ignored potential differences between lending banks by explicitly or implicitly aggregating all lenders together and focusing on borrower characteristics. One must jointly consider both borrower and lender to fully understand the complex role of the syndicate during this period. We consider the identity of the lender, with a focus on five major US banks that failed and their five corresponding acquirers. Our results highlight the distinct roles of investment and commercial banks and facilitate an understanding of relationship and transactional-based lending.     

Capital regulation,deposit insurance and bank risk: International evidence from normal and crisis periods

In this paper, we examine the impact of capital regulation on bank risk and the moderating role of deposit insurance on the relationship between capital regulation and bank risk during both normal and crisis periods. Using an international sample of banks from 111 countries, our results show that stringent capital regulation reduces bank default risk, in general, during normal growth period, and this effect is not conditioned by the existence of explicit deposit insurance. Further, stringent capital regulation in place during the pre-crisis period reduces bank default risk during the crisis period, and this effect is stronger for countries with explicit deposit insurance during the pre-crisis period. These results have important policy implications to design the optimal bank regulations.     

Bank soundness and bank lending to new firms during the global financial crisis

This paper examines how the soundness of financial institutions affected bank lending to new firms during the 2008 financial crisis by using a unique firm–bank match‐level dataset of 1,467 unlisted small and medium‐sized enterprises incorporated in Japan. We employ a within‐firm estimator that can control for unobserved firms’ demand for credit through firm ? time fixed effects. The major findings of this paper are the following four points. First, sounder financial institutions may be generally less likely to provide financing to new firms. Second, our results suggest that sounder financial institutions were less likely to provide loans to new firms during the 2008 financial crisis. Third, financial institutions were less likely to provide financing to new firms during such crisis as compared to those with the same soundness during non‐crisis periods. Finally, such lending relationships to new firms that are established during the financial crisis by sounder financial institutions are more likely to be continued than such lending by less sound financial institutions.     

Impact of the global financial crisis on Islamic and conventional stocks and bonds

This study explores the impact of the global financial crisis (GFC) on Islamic and conventional stock and bond indices in 11 Islamic and eight non‐Islamic countries. We find that there are benefits of Islamic stocks during the GFC, particularly during the early stage of the crisis because Islamic institutions are prohibited from holding sub‐prime mortgage securities and derivatives. The strongest benefits of Islamic stocks are in the UK and USA. We conclude that there are benefits of risk reduction and stability for Islamic stocks during a financial crisis, although not necessarily during a global recession.     

Changes in the measurement of fair value: Implications for accounting earnings

With the FASB's issue of staff position papers in 2009 and the relaxation of how fair value standards are applied, there has been a change in the practice of how fair value is measured. Since the FASB staff position papers in 2009, fair value measurement by financial institutions has increasingly relied on managerial assumptions. This study examines the impact of this change on the quality of earnings. Consistent with attribute substitution theory that emphasises reliability over relevance, we find that an apparent increase in managerial discretion in fair value measurement is associated with a higher probability of earnings management and lower earnings informativeness. The results indicate that allowing more managerial discretion in fair value measurement adversely affected the quality of financial reporting. Our study highlights the issue of reliable measurement in the debate among academics and practitioners of increasing the use of fair value accounting.     

Linkages between Indian and US financial markets: impact of global financial crisis and Eurozone debt crisis

This paper examines inter-linkages between Indian and US equity, foreign exchange and money markets using the vector autoregressive-multivariate GARCH-BEKK framework. We investigate the impact of global financial crisis (GFC) and Eurozone debt crisis (EZDC) on the conditional volatility and conditional correlation estimates derived from the multivariate GARCH model for Indian and US financial markets. Our results indicate that there is significant bidirectional causality-in-mean between the Indian stock market returns and the Rs./USD market returns, and significant unidirectional causality-in-mean from the US stock market returns to the Indian stock market returns. As regards volatility spillovers, we find that volatility in the Indian stock market rises in response to domestic as well as US financial market shocks but Indian financial market shocks do not impact the US markets. Further, impact of the recent crisis episodes on the covariance matrix is found to be significant. We find that volatility in the Indian and US financial markets significantly amplified during GFC. The conditional correlations across asset markets were significantly accentuated in the wake of the two crisis episodes. The impact of GFC on cross-market conditional correlations is higher for majority of the asset market pairs in comparison to the EZDC.     

Board monitoring and covenant restrictiveness in private debt contracts during the global financial crisis

We examine the association between board independence and restrictiveness of covenants in U.S. private debt contracts around the global financial crisis (GFC). We show that board independence is associated with less restrictive covenants suggesting lenders willingness to delegate some monitoring of firms with independent boards. More nuanced analysis between the pre-GFC, GFC and post-GFC periods shows mixed results and we suggest that, during the GFC and its aftermath, lenders place more emphasis on ex ante screening relative to ex post monitoring. We contribute to the literature by providing evidence on covenant use and lenders choices in periods of credit rationing.     

Bank funding structures and risk: Evidence from the global financial crisis

This paper analyzes the evolution of bank funding structures in the run up to the global financial crisis and studies the implications for financial stability, exploiting a bank-level dataset that covers about 11,000 banks in the U.S. and Europe during 2001–09. The results show that banks with weaker structural liquidity and higher leverage in the pre-crisis period were more likely to fail afterward. The likelihood of bank failure also increases with pre-crisis bank risk-taking. In the cross-section, the smaller domestically-oriented banks were relatively more vulnerable to liquidity risk, while the large cross-border (Global) banks were more vulnerable to solvency risk due to excessive leverage. In fact, a 3.5 percentage point increase in the pre-crisis capital buffers of Global banks would have caused a 48 percentage point in their probability of failure during the crisis. The results support the proposed Basel III regulations on structural liquidity and leverage, but suggest that emphasis should be placed on the latter, particularly for the systemically-important institutions. Macroeconomic and monetary conditions are also shown to be related with the likelihood of bank failure, providing a case for the introduction of a macro-prudential approach to banking regulation.     

Market-specific and currency-specific risk during the global financial crisis: Evidence from the interbank markets in Tokyo and London

This paper investigates how international money markets reflected credit and liquidity risk during the global financial crisis. After matching the currency denomination, we examine how the Tokyo Interbank Offered Rate (TIBOR) was synchronized with the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR). We find remarkably asymmetric responses in market-specific and currency-specific risk during the crisis. The regression results suggest that market-specific credit risk increased the difference across markets, whereas liquidity risk caused the difference across currency denominations. They also support the view that liquidity shortage of the US dollar occurred in international money markets during the crisis. Coordinated central bank liquidity provisions were useful in reducing the liquidity shortage of the US dollar, but their effectiveness was asymmetric across markets.     

Macro-financial determinants of the great financial crisis: Implications for financial regulation

We provide a cross-country and cross-bank analysis of the financial determinants of the Great Financial Crisis using data on 83 countries from the period 1998 to 2006. First, our cross-country results show that the probability of suffering the crisis in 2008 was larger for countries having higher levels of credit deposit ratio whereas it was lower for countries characterized by higher levels of: (i) net interest margin, (ii) concentration in the banking sector, (iii) restrictions to bank activities, (iv) private monitoring. The bank-level analysis reinforces these results and shows that the latter factors are also key determinants across banks, thus explaining the probability of bank crisis. Our findings contribute to extend the analytical toolkit available for macro and micro-prudential regulation.