Commercial bank ownership and performance in China

This study examines the determinants of bank performance based on proxy variables that assess the quality of assets, profitability, liquidity and overall performance. Using a sample of 111 Chinese commercial banks over the period of 2000–2012, we find that foreign banks appear to have better asset quality and overall performance although lower profitability compared to domestic banks. In contrast, the state-owned banks tend to be more profitable and have better liquidity position compared with other domestic banks and foreign banks. At bank level, equity/liability ratio exerts significant influence on overall bank performance, while at the macroeconomic level, per capital GDP, GDP growth, inflation and unemployment rates appear to have a bearing on bank performance.     

Labour unions and global bank loan market

This article attempts to collect a data set of labour unions in global 500 biggest banks and investigate whether labour unions of banks influence the designing of bank loan contracts. We use global syndicate loan market to examine this issue. For simplicity, banks with and without labour unions are referred to as ‘unionized banks’ and ‘nonunionized banks’, respectively. We find that unionized banks tend to loosen their lending standard in the bank loan contract: unionized banks are more likely to charge lower loan spread and favourable nonprice terms compared with nonunionized banks. Hence, our results support that unionized banks tend to lend more loans to reduce the negative effect of labour unions.     

提高银行资本能缓解小微企业融资难问题吗*——基于小微企业贷款风险权重降低改革的讨论

本文以银行资本为切入点,从银行提供小微企业贷款的角度,探讨解决小微企业融资难问题可能的路径。新资本监管降低了小微企业贷款的风险权重,改革前后可以视为“准自然实验”。通过构建双重差分模型,本文深入研究银行资本与小微企业贷款的关系,并对“小银行优势理论”进行再检验。结果表明：（1）小微企业贷款风险权重优惠政策显著促进了银行发放小微企业贷款,特别是对小银行来说,政策效果更好;（2）在优惠政策实施之前,资本水平较高的银行会紧缩小微企业贷款,而且这种惜贷行为在大银行中尤为突出;（3）在优惠政策实施之后,资本水平越高的银行对小微企业贷款的偏好反而越强,且这一促进作用的力度在大银行中更为显著。因此,应当继续执行小微企业贷款风险权重优惠,提高银行资本水平,构建多层次银行金融体系,以缓解小微企业融资难问题。     

委托-代理、薪酬激励与商业银行治理

本文建立了一个银行薪酬激励约束的博弈模型,分析薪酬激励机制的决定和约束因素,并运用中国16家上市商业银行2001至2010年的面板数据对其进行了检验。结果发现中国上市银行高管薪酬激励与经营业绩因素之间基本正相关,与经营业绩稳定性因素没有相关性。其中,净资产收益率是影响高管薪酬的主要因素,而高管薪酬约束与经营风险因素之间没有确切的相关性。银行治理结构在银行经营业绩上有正向激励作用．在经营风险控制上并没有起到太大的作用。     

Connections and performance in bankers’ turnover

In this paper we study the impact of the connections of the top executives (Presidents, CEOs and General Managers) of Italian banks on their turnover and on bank performance. We measure managers’ connections by the kilometer distance between the province of the bank's headquarter and the manager's province of birth. We show that top managers tend to be local in the sense that the distribution of this distance is heavily skewed towards zero. On the basis of this evidence we investigate whether connections affect the duration of the appointment at the bank, and whether connections entrench managers at the expense of the bank's performance. We find that connections generally decrease the probability of bank manager’s turnover, and that the positive effect of performance on tenure is strongly attenuated once connections are taken into account. Furthermore we find that for any bank type performance does not increase with connections. On the contrary, we show that having connected managers hurts performance in Mutual, Cooperative and Rural banks. Overall these findings suggest that connections are collusion devices to share and maintain rents at the expenses of bank performance.     

银行盈利的宏微观因素——对中国银行业的实证研究

This paper seeks to examine the determinants of the profitability of the Chinese banking sector during the post-reform period of 2000–2005. The empirical findings from this study suggest that all the determinants variables have statistically significant impact on China banks profitability. However, the impacts are not uniform across bank types. We find that liquidity, credit risk, and capitalization have positive impacts on the state owned commercial banks (SOCBs) profitability, while the impact of cost is negative. Similar to their SOCB counterparts, we find that joint stock commercial banks (JSCB) with higher credit risk tend to be more profitable, while higher cost results in a lower JSCB profitability levels. During the period under study, the empirical findings suggest that size and cost results in a lower city commercial banks (CITY) profitability, while the more diversified and relatively better capitalized CITY tend to exhibit higher profitability levels. The impact of economic growth is positive, while growth in money supply is negatively related to the SOCB and CITY profitability levels.      

Deposit insurance and depositor discipline: direct evidence on bank switching behaviour in Japan

As Japan's financial system becomes more market oriented, depositor discipline is playing a larger role in the monitoring of banks. Matching household survey data with banks’ financial data, we examine households’ response to bank risk and different deposit insurance schemes. We find that bank switching in response to risk increased between 1996 and 2001 and households’ choice of bank adequately reflects banks’ financial health. We also examine the determinants of households’ knowledge of the deposit insurance scheme and how this affects switching behaviour. The results suggest that depositor discipline works and could play an important supplementary role in bank monitoring.     

The Effects of Competition on Banks’ Risk Taking

We consider the joint effect of competition and deposit insurance on risk taking by banks when bank risk is unobservable to depositors. It turns out that the magnitude of risk taking depends on the structure and side of the market in which competition takes place. If the bank is a monopoly or banks are competing only in the loan market, deposit insurance has no effect on risk taking. Banks in this situation tend to take risk, although extreme risk taking is avoided. In contrast, introducing deposit insurance increases risk taking if banks are competing for deposits. Then, deposit rates become excessively high, thereby forcing banks to take extreme risks.     

Tipping the (Im)balance: Capital inflows,financial market structure,and banking crises

An emerging consensus among scholars and policy‐makers identifies foreign capital inflows as one of the primary determinants of banking crises in developed countries. We challenge this view by arguing that external imbalances are destabilizing only when banks face substantial competition from securities markets in the process of financial intermediation. We assemble a dataset of banking crises covering the advanced industrialized countries from 1976 to 2011 and find evidence of a conditional relationship between capital inflows, a well‐developed securities market, and the incidence of banking crises. We further explore the impact of capital inflows on banks’ actual risk taking as indicated by their capital adequacy levels and measures of insolvency risk. Our results demonstrate that prudential capital cushions tend to decline with the combination of capital inflows and prominent securities markets. We highlight the political decisions—often made during the early days of a country's financial development—that determine the relative prominence of banks vs. non‐bank financial institutions and conclude with policy recommendations.     

Pyramidal group structure and bank risk in Thailand

This paper investigates how banks and finance companies operate in business groups. Using uniquely detailed ownership data from Thailand, we find that the controlling shareholders extensively use pyramids to control banks and finance companies and assign different lending strategies across pyramidal tiers. Lower-tier banks tend to extend loans more aggressively and perform more poorly, while upper tier banks carry out more profitable investments. After the crisis hit, upper-tier banks survived and almost all lower-tier banks went bankrupt. Our results suggest that the multilayer organizational structure of bank ownership can affect a bank’s lending behavior and its resistance to economic shocks.     

The financial and economic performance of social banks

ABSTRACT

The financial crisis of 2008 provides evidence for the instability of the conventional banking system. Social banks may present a viable alternative for conventional banks. This article analyses the performance of social banks related to the bank business model, economic efficiency, asset quality, and stability by comparing social banks with banks where the difference is likely to be large, namely with the 30 global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) of the Financial Stability Board over the period 2000–2014. We also analyse the relative impact of the global financial crisis on the bank performance. The performance of social banks and G-SIBs is surprisingly similar.     

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。     

HOW DOES FOREIGN BANK OWNERSHIP IN THE BANKING SECTOR AFFECT DOMESTIC BANK BEHAVIOUR? A DYNAMIC PANEL DATA ANALYSIS

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how foreign bank ownership in the banking sector affects domestic bank behaviour and whether this relationship depends on the economic and financial conditions of the host country. This paper contains 795 individual banks in 39 countries covering the period 1999–2006. Foreign ownership is calculated using bank level data as a proxy for the degree of foreign bank ownership in the banking sector. First, we find that foreign bank ownership is associated with a decrease in both the profitability and overhead expenses of the domestic bank after applying the system panel Generalized Method of Moments model. Second, a lower level of economic development of the host country enhances the positive effects of foreign bank ownership on the income, profit and cost of domestic banks. Third, financial development plays an important role in determining the effect of foreign bank ownership. Fourth, while the use of aggregate foreign ownership data may provide us with a big picture, it may not explain why individual banks in the same country perform differently, which this study will answer.     

外资银行进入对发展中国家银行信贷可得性的影响研究

如何引导外资银行增加东道国的信贷可得性,尤其是中小企业的信贷可得性,是目前理论和政策界争论的焦点问题之一。本文通过构建一个理论模型,分析了外资银行进入和国内信贷供给的关系,从市场均衡结果、社会福利、成本效率等几个角度对外资银行进入发展中的东道国的影响进行综合分析。模型结果表明,外资银行的进入并不必然增加一国的总体信贷水平、也并不必然提高东道国银行业的成本效率和整体社会福利,甚至在某些特定条件下,结果可能适得其反。     

Political patronage in Ukrainian banking1

This paper empirically investigates the link between political patronage and bank performance for Ukraine during 2003Q3–2005Q2. We find significant differences between politically affiliated and non‐affiliated banks. The data suggest that affiliated banks have significantly lower interest rate margins and increase their capitalization. Furthermore, we show that the level of activity of affiliated deputies in parliament has a positive (negative) impact on banks’ capitalization ratio (interest rate margin). Our findings imply, in line with the related literature, that political affiliation has important effects on banks’ behaviour.     

Charter value,risk-taking and systemic risk in banking before and after the global financial crisis of 2007-2008

ABSTRACT

We investigate how bank charter value affects risk for a sample of OECD banks by using standalone and systemic risk measures before, during, and after the global financial crisis of 2007–2008. Prior to the crisis, bank charter value is positively associated with risk-taking and systemic risk for very large ‘too-big-too-fail’ banks and large U.S. and European banks but such a relationship is inverted during and after the crisis. A deeper investigation shows that such a behaviour before the crisis is mostly relevant for very large banks and large banks with high growth strategies. Banks’ business models also influence this relationship. We find that for banks following a focus strategy, higher charter value amplifies both standalone and systemic risk for large U.S. and European banks. Our findings have important policy implications and cast doubts on the relevance of the uniform more stringent capital requirements introduced by Basel III.     

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。     

Banking business models and risk: Findings from the ECB's comprehensive assessment

We use the results of the ECB's comprehensive assessment to evaluate the importance of the bank business model on risk assessment and the persuasive effectiveness of different supervisory styles on banks’ recapitalization. Our analysis reveals inconsistencies in the information content provided by the various regulatory measures used for assessing bank stability. Moreover, opposite to CET1 ratio, the leverage ratio provides assessments on business models more consistent with a market-based measure of bank risk exposure and Z-SCORE. Accounting for several control variables both at the bank and country level, we also find evidence that the effectiveness of the supervisory action depends on the specific type of supervisory model. In particular, countries adopting the hybrid model seem more effective in persuading banks to recapitalize preventively. Differently, countries adopting the integrated and the sectorial model seem less effective in their requests.     

Bank overall financial strength: Islamic versus conventional banks

A number of recent studies compare the performance of Islamic and conventional banks with the use of individual financial ratios or efficiency frontier techniques. The present study extends this strand of the literature, by comparing Islamic banks, conventional banks, and banks with an Islamic window with the use of a bank overall financial strength index. This index is developed with a multicriteria methodology that allows us to aggregate various criteria capturing bank capital strength, asset quality, earnings, liquidity, and management quality in controlling expenses. We find that banks differ significantly in terms of individual financial ratios; however, the difference of the overall financial strength between Islamic and conventional banks is not statistically significant. This finding is confirmed with both univariate comparisons and in multivariate regression estimations. When we look at the bank financial strength within regions, we find that conventional banks outperform both the Islamic banks and the banks with Islamic window in the case of Asia and the Gulf Cooperation Council; however, Islamic banks perform better in the MENA and Senegal region. Second stage regressions also reveal that the bank overall financial strength index is influenced by various country-specific attributes. These include control of corruption, government effectiveness, and operation in one of the seven countries that are expected to drive the next big wave in Islamic finance.     

The recourse rule,regulatory arbitrage,and the financial crisis

In November 2001, regulators finalized the “Recourse Rule.” The rule lowered risk weights, and therefore commercial bank holding company capital requirements, to 0.2 for holdings of AAA- and AA-rated “private label” securitization tranches, created by investment banks and securitizing commercial bank holding company subsidiaries; risk weights for A-rated holdings equaled 0.5. The rule’s aim was to encourage securitization, but not risk-taking. Regulators indicated that the rule would apply to larger holding companies, without identifying them. Using bank holding companies with subsidiaries that commented on the proposed rule-makings as a treatment variable, average treatment effects from a fully flexible difference-in-differences model indicate that treated banks increased their holdings of the highly rated tranches relative to total assets, while other holding companies, on average, did not. Holding companies with greater highly rated tranche holdings also experienced greater increases in risk after Q1 2008, which suggests that poor performance may have been unanticipated.