国有银行产权改革的可能取向:控股股东与民间资本博弈

四大国有银行改制上市后,国家股依然占据绝对控股地位,国有银行的所有者虚置问题并未得到解决,银行公司治理结构也不可能有效运作。国有银行今后的股权改革方向是进一步释放国有股权,不断提高监管能力和监管水平。     

Why Do Politicians Implement Central Bank Independence Reforms?

The purpose of this paper is to investigate why politicians around the world have chosen to give up power to independent central banks, thereby reducing their ability to fine-tune the economy. A new data-set covering 132 countries, of which 86 countries had implemented such reforms, was collected. Politicians in non-OECD countries were more likely to delegate power to independent central banks if their country has been characterized by a high variability in historical inflation and if they faced a high probability of being replaced. No such effects were found for OECD countries.     

Does “skin in the game” reduce risk taking? Leverage,liability and the long-run consequences of new deal banking reforms

This essay examines how the Banking Acts of the 1933 and 1935 and related New Deal legislation influenced risk taking in the financial sector of the U.S. economy. The analysis focuses on contingent liability of bank owners for losses incurred by their firms and how the elimination of this liability influenced leverage and lending by commercial banks. Using a new panel data set, we find contingent liability reduced risk taking. In states with contingent liability, banks used less leverage and converted each dollar of capital into fewer loans, and thus could survive larger loan losses (as a fraction of their portfolio) than banks in limited liability states. In states with limited liability, banks took on more leverage and risk, particularly in states that required banks with limited liability to join the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. In the long run, the New Deal replaced a regime of contingent liability with deposit insurance, stricter balance sheet regulation, and increased capital requirements, shifting the onus of risk management from bankers to state and federal regulators.     

The death blow to unlimited liability in Victorian Britain: The City of Glasgow failure

In 1878, one of Britain’s largest banks, the City of Glasgow Bank, collapsed, leaving a huge deficit between its assets and liabilities. As this bank, similar to many other contemporary British banks, had unlimited liability, its failure was accompanied by the bankruptcy of the vast majority of its stockholders. It is generally believed that the collapse of this depository institution revealed the extent to which ownership in large joint-stock banks had been diffused to investors of very modest means. It is also believed that the failure resulted in bank shareholders dumping their shares unto the market. Our evidence, garnered from ownership records, trading data, and stock prices, offers no support for these widely held beliefs.     

Central Banks' Management of Foreign Exchange Reserves

This paper analyzes whether currency instability results from official reserves management, as central banks strive to minimize risk, keep a degree of liquidity degree, minimize risk, and a good return on their portfolio. In recent years the dollar share in official reserves increased, at the expense of the Deutsche mark and yen. The evidence suggests that movements in the exchange rate exert the only influence on reserve currency shares; the long-term interest rate does not have a significant impact on reserves composition. These results confirm the World Gold Council thesis, according to which central banks, by investing excess reserves in short-terms assets, are believed to have optimized their portfolio return.     

Notes And Communications

This communication sketches in headlines long term developments in American and European banking. Contrary to the expectation of both practitioners and theorists in the nineties, has the role of banks in the economy not diminished but increased. This is demonstrated by the long term increase of bank credit as a percentage of GDP (resulting in a stronger growth of M2 and 3 than GDP), a growing contribution of bank sector income to GDP, growing employment (until recently) and a growing share of bank shares in total market capitalisation over the past three decades until 2004–2006. This growing share may have been induced by a comparatively superior performance, supported by a relatively high dividend yield, despite a lower-than-average price-earning ratio. Banks counteracted increased competition and disintermediation tendencies in their traditional lending business by a progressive involvement in capital markets. They developed themselves, in several functions, these markets. For this reason the often used distinction between bank-based and market-based financial systems is less meaningful. Capital markets function thanks to banks. Even more because a rapidly growing volume of new, unlisted investment instruments are constructed by banks and traded over their counter. By this development the risk absorbing and intermediating function of banks – being their basic function in the financial system – is also accentuated. The professional capability of leading banks to fulfil this basic function has in the current “sub prime” crisis come under severe criticism.     

Predictors of bank distress: The 1907 crisis in Sweden

This paper studies the Swedish experience of the international crisis of 1907, which is often compared with the crisis of 2008. By constructing a new dataset from previously unanalyzed monthly bank-level data, we document high-frequency changes in bank outcomes throughout the 1907 crisis. While distressed banks suffered substantial withdrawals of foreign funds and liquid domestic liabilities, we show that banks’ asset structures, along with observable fundamentals and institutional characteristics, played a more significant role in their subsequent fate. Higher shares of non-performing assets and lending against equities were the most important balance sheet predictors of distress. These balance sheet fundamentals, as well as over-extended branch networks, significantly shortened the lifespan of Swedish banks in the aftermath of the 1907 crisis.     

Fear and greed: The evolution of double liability in American banking, 1865-1930

This paper examines the pattern and timing of the enactment of double liability for state banks in the United States prior to the Great Depression. Under double liability, shareholders of failing banks could lose, in addition to the initial purchase price of shares, an amount equal to the par value of shares owned. The results suggest that double liability was adopted by states subject to greater economic risks, where bank failures were more likely, or where the economy and banking sector were more advanced and bank failures would be more costly (i.e., fear), and that single liability was adopted by more rapidly growing states, where the payoff to greater risk-taking was higher (i.e., greed).     

Comparing the performance of Chinese banks: A principal component approach

Using previously unavailable central bank data, this paper first uses principal component analysis to derive four measures of a bank's ability to perform the core task of financial intermediation. This study then compares the performance of China's state banks, joint-stock banks, and city commercial banks along these measures. In terms of overall performance and in credit risk management, joint-stock banks perform significantly better than both the state banks and the city commercial banks. In China, unlike in other developing countries, the size of the bank is not correlated with their performance. Mid-size national joint-stock banks perform considerably better than the Big Four banks and smaller city commercial banks (CCBs). We further conduct regional and jurisdictional analysis of the CCBs, which indicates that a mix of geographical and historical legacies drives the substantial variation in CCB performance.     

Implications of the Dual Banking System in the US

This paper examines the differences in characteristics of federal and state chartered banks by using individual commercial bank’s data sets from 1984 to 2006. The findings indicate significant differences between these two groups of banks in terms of their asset and liability management strategies. In line with these differences, credit channel of monetary policy is found to work differently for state and federal banks. Federal banks are found to be more responsive to monetary policy changes.     

Financial Deregulation and the Cost Structure of State and Private Banks in Indonesia: Some Evidence from Microeconomic Data

Since the major deregulation of Indonesian banking in the late 1980s the quality and availability of local banking services has significantly expanded. But controversy continues over the impact of deregulation on the industrial structure of banking in Indonesia. This paper uses micro data to examine the impact of deregulation on the costs and profitability of the state commercial banks in comparison with a benchmark sample of relatively efficient private banks. The sample period covers both the pre- and post- deregulation eras. The study finds that deregulation had a strong impact At the private banks, large cost reductions have been passed on to customers in the form of narrower intermediation margins By contrast, margins have barely changed at the state banks. Profitability measured in relation to equity has fallen significantly, especially at state banks For recent years, the margins are not out of line with available data on international comparators.     

我国商业银行与境外战略投资者的合作与竞争

近年来,我国商业银行改革不断深化,通过引进境外战略投资者提高银行经营管理水平,充实资本金成为潮流,在一定程度上促进了商业银行的健康发展。但是,境外战略投资者的进入也会导致国有资产巨额流失,对经济持续增长方向产生误导,大规模抛售的套利活动等问题,对我国银行业提出了新的挑战。本文认为,应因势利导,有利有力地与外资开展合作与竞争,并提出了相应建议。     

Does Property Rights Reform Improve the Efficiency of China＇s State-owned Banks？

China ＂s state-owned banks have undergone radical changes over the past two decades, including partial privatization and listing in both the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the Shanghai Stock Exchange. This paper evaluates the effects of these changes by analyzing the efficiency of Chinese banks over the period 1998-2012 using two frontier techniques and comparative analysis. The findings suggest that the performance and technical efficiency of the Big Four banks improved considerably after property rights reform, but this improvement is not sufficient to keep the banks at the production frontier. Tobit regressions confirm that static ownership effects are negative but that the property rights reform has had significant and positive effects on the technical efficiency of state-owned commercial banks. GDP growth and the financial crisis have had positive effects on the efficiency of Chinese banks, which is more significant for joint stock commercial banks than state-owned commercial banks. The results indicate the value of ownership reforms of state-owned asset management companies and insurance companies and the establishment of a countercyclical capital buffer.     

商业方法专利保护及其对中资银行的影响

商业方法专利是国家赋予权利主体对某种商业运作方式或模式的独占权。商业方法专利是服务经济的产物。率先向服务经济转型的西方发达国家已经打开了商业方法专利保护的大门。我国还处在工业化发展阶段,实行商业方法专利保护不利于我国服务经济的发展。但是发达国家商业方法专利保护的立法趋势对中资银行造成了一定的冲击。中国政府和中资银行应采取有效措施来应对这一挑战。     

教育信贷资产证券化：债性契约和股性契约的融合

教育信贷资产证券化的本质是债性合约与股性合约的分工与融合。银行利用其信息优势与贷款者形成债性合约，促成了学生融资的实现。然而，强风险特征与长周期特征与银行的“三性原则”相悖。资产证券化是解决相悖缺陷的有效方法，一方面证券化使得债性合约的持有主体发生转换，长周期问题得以解决；另一方面证券化的小额特征与合格投资人要求，使得风险得以一定程度的分散和适度的规避。但是，教育信贷资产证券化具有风险转移的特征，如果缺乏有效的约束机制，证券化制度可能会纵容银行发生道德风险。     

Local government and old-age support in the New Deal

A key question in the design of public assistance to the needy is how allocation of responsibility for funding and decision-making across different levels of government influences the level and type of assistance provided. The New Deal era was a period in which this allocation changed significantly in the United States, as provision of public assistance shifted from local governments to states and the federal government, accompanied by a large increase in government transfer payments. Focusing on assistance to the elderly and using variation in state laws governing the division of funding between local and state governments for the Old Age Assistance (OAA) Program, this paper investigates the responsiveness of OAA payments and recipiency to local government funding shares. Payments per elderly resident were significantly lower in states with higher local funding shares, driven largely by reductions in recipiency. The baseline results suggest that had local governments needed to fund half of OAA payments in 1939, on the lower end of local funding shares prior to the New Deal, the share of the elderly receiving OAA would have been 5 percent rather than 22 percent, and perhaps even lower. More speculative results suggest that greater local funding led to lower representation of blacks among OAA recipients relative to their share of the population, particularly in the South.     

外资银行参股中资银行的选择模式

至2006年12月11日,中国市场向外资全面开放。外国银行以参股中国的银行来迅速渗透市场,已成为外资银行投资的一种重要方式。四大国有银行轰轰烈烈的IPO,将股份制改革推向高潮。在这样的大环境下,外国银行参股国有商业银行,相比较中小银行,国有银行的优势对外资银行更加具有吸引力。参股时,外资银行应当注意针对国有银行关心的技术转移度提出合适的方案,同时分散投资以降低非系统风险,获得理想的投资状态。     

Competitiveness and Efficiency of the Banking Sector and Economic Growth in Egypt

Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of financial reforms on competitiveness and production efficiency of the banking sector, as well as the short‐term and long‐term impact on economic growth, in Egypt during 1992–2007. The results suggest that the reforms have a positive and significant effect on competitiveness and production efficiency. Also, the evidence shows that state‐owned banks are generally less competitive than private banks and foreign banks are less competitive than domestic banks. The average x‐inefficiency of Egyptian banks is around 30 per cent, which is comparable to those reported for other African countries. Finally, there is evidence to suggest a significant relationship between financial bank productive efficiency and economic growth in the short run but not in the long run. Overall, the results support the argument for continuing the financial sector reform programme in Egypt.     

浅论金融创新的风险及防范

金融创新在促进金融发展时若使用不当,会加大金融风险,因为创新促使商业银行改变经营策略,金融体系改变其构成,以及金融风险的隐蔽性更强。要防范金融创新带来的风险必须进行制度创新,对金融创新进行立法和完善金融监管体系。     

论我国现行商业银行风险管理法律制度的不足及完善

由于全球经济一体化与金融一体化的发展以及现代金融理论、信息技术和金融创新等因素，金融市场出现前所未有的波动性，商业银行等金融机构的经营管理面临日趋严重的金融风险，加强商业银行风险管理法律制度的建设已成为一国金融风险管理的中心工作。本文在分析了我国现行商业银行风险管理法律制度不足的基础上，就如何完善提出了自己的一点看法和建议。