How changes in market conditions affect screening activity,credit risk,and the lending behaviour of banks

The global financial crisis dramatically transformed the market conditions in the banking industry. We construct a theoretical model of spatial competition that considers the differential information between lenders and loan applicants to explore how changes in the market structure affect the lending behaviour of banks and their incentives to invest in screening and how this, in turn, affects the level of credit risk in the economy. Our findings reveal that enhanced competition reduces lending cost thus encouraging the entry of new customers in credit markets. Also, that the transportation cost that loan applicants are required to pay to reach the bank of their interest shrinks with respect to the degree of competition. We further lend support to the view that stiffer competition has an increasing impact on the level of credit risk. Notably, we find that competition strengthens the incentives of banks to engage in screening activity and that screening serves as a protection mechanism that can provide banks with a shield against bad loans. Overall, when market conditions are substantially distorted, this has a dilutive impact on the incentives mechanism of banks to screen their applicants. We provide empirical evidence which is consistent with the conceptual underpinnings of our theoretical model and the obtained findings.     

Breaking down the barriers: Competition,syndicate structure,and underwriting incentives

We argue that the entry of commercial banks into bond underwriting led to the evolution of co-led underwriting arrangements and lowered the screening incentives of underwriters. Lead underwriters in co-led syndicates faced weaker incentives to screen issuer quality. In boom markets, issues underwritten by co-led syndicates were more likely to be involved in financial misrepresentation events. Underwriter incentives in co-led syndicates were particularly weak in industries where commercial banks stole substantial market share. Similar patterns do not hold in bust markets where investors are likely to engage in their own information collection efforts. Our results suggest that competition may have an adverse effect on the incentives of financial intermediaries in market environments where their information production is more valuable to investors.     

Market discipline,disclosure and moral hazard in banking

This paper examines empirically the hypothesis that market discipline is effective in providing incentives for banks to limit their risk of default, by holding capital buffers against adverse outcomes in portfolio risk. We have constructed a large cross-country panel data set consisting of observations on 729 individual banks from 32 different countries over the years 1993 to 2000. Theory implies that the strength of market discipline ought to be related to the extent of the government safety net, the observability of bank risk choices and to the proportion of uninsured liabilities in the bank's balance sheet. Using panel data techniques, we test whether these factors provide incentives for banks to hold larger capital buffers against adverse outcomes in portfolio risk. Our results suggest that government safety nets result in lower capital buffers and that stronger market discipline resulting from uninsured liabilities and disclosure results in larger capital buffers, all else equal. While our results therefore point to the effectiveness of market discipline mechanisms in general, we also find that the effect of disclosure and uninsured funding is reduced when banks enjoy a high degree of government support. Our results finally suggest that while competition leads to greater risk taking incentives, market discipline is more effective in curbing these incentives in countries where competition among banks is strong.     

Securitization,competition and monitoring

We analyze the impact of loan securitization on competition in the loan market. Using a dynamic loan market competition model where borrowers face both exogenous and endogenous costs to switch between banks, we uncover a competition softening effect of securitization that allows banks to extract rents in the primary loan market. By reducing monitoring incentives, securitization mitigates winner’s curse effects in future stages of competition thereby decreasing ex ante competition for initial market share. Due to this competition softening effect, securitization can adversely affect loan market efficiency while leading to higher equilibrium profits for banks. This effect is driven by primary loan market competition, not by the exploitation of informational asymmetries in the secondary market for loans. We also argue that banks can use securitization as a strategic response to an increase in competition, as a tool to signal a reduction in monitoring intensity for the sole purpose of softening ex ante competition. Our result suggests that securitization reforms focusing exclusively on informational asymmetries in markets for securitized products may overlook competitive conditions in the primary market.     

Market Structure, Capital Regulation and Bank Risk Taking

This paper discusses the effect of capital regulation on the risk taking behavior of commercial banks. We first theoretically show that capital regulation works differently in different market structures of banking sectors. In lowly concentrated markets, capital regulation is effective in mitigating risk taking behavior because banks’ franchise values are low and banks have incentives to pursue risky strategies in order to increase their franchise values. If franchise values are high, on the other hand, the effect of capital regulation on bank risk taking is ambiguous. We then test the model predictions on a cross-country sample including 421 commercial banks from 61 countries. We find that capital regulation is effective in mitigating risk taking only in markets with a low degree of concentration. The results remain robust after accounting for financial sector development, legal system efficiency, and for other country and bank-specific characteristics.     

Reputation,risk-taking,and macroprudential policy

This paper examines the role of macroprudential capital requirements in preventing inefficient credit booms in a model with reputational externalities. In our model, unprofitable banks have strong incentives to invest in risky assets when macroeconomic fundamentals are good in order to avoid the stigma of being assessed as low ability by the market. We show that across-the-system countercyclical capital requirements that deter such gambling are constrained optimal when fundamentals are neither extremely weak nor extremely strong.     

Fintech,Credit Market Competition,and Bank Asset Quality

Journal of Financial Services Research - This study explores bank screening incentives under credit market competition between traditional banks and a Fintech startup. The bank screening incentives...     

Financial contagion and depositor monitoring

This paper analyzes market discipline in a many-bank economy where contagion and bank runs interact. We present a model with differently-informed depositors, where those depositors that are more informed have incentives to monitor banks’ investments. It is shown that when banks are undercapitalized, and the probability of success of the risky asset is low, depositors might prefer a contract that is subject to bank runs in the interim period to a contract that allows banks to gamble with their funds and maintain their investment.The results of the paper emphasize the benefits of private monitoring of banks in order to promote market discipline.     

Optimal credit risk transfer, monitored finance, and banks

We examine the implications of optimal credit risk transfer (CRT) for bank-loan monitoring, and the incentives for banks to engage in optimal CRT. In our model, properly designed CRT instruments allow banks to insure themselves against loan losses precisely in those states that signal monitoring. We find that optimal CRT enhances loan monitoring and expands financial intermediation, in contrast to the findings of the previous literature. Optimal CRT instruments are based on loan portfolios rather than individual loans and have credit-enhancement guarantees, pretty much as banks do in practice. But the extent of credit enhancement needs to be precisely delimited. Above that exact level, monitoring incentives are undermined (loan quality deteriorates) and wealth is transferred from the bank's financiers to the bank. Properly designed risk-based capital requirements are shown to prevent such a wealth transfer and to provide banks with the incentive to engage in optimal CRT.     

Conflicts of interest,information provision,and competition in the financial services industry

In some markets sellers have better information than buyers over which products best serve a buyer's needs. Depending on the market structure, this may lead to conflicts of interest in the provision of information by sellers. This paper studies this issue in the market for financial services. The analysis presents a new model of competition between banks, where price competition influences the ensuing incentives for truthful information revelation. We also compare conflicts of interest in two different firm structures, specialized banking and one-stop banking.     

Deposit insurance coverage,ownership, and banks' risk-taking in emerging markets

We ask how deposit insurance systems and ownership of banks affect the degree of market discipline on banks' risk-taking. Market discipline is determined by the extent of explicit deposit insurance, as well as by the credibility of non-insurance of groups of depositors and other creditors. Furthermore, market discipline depends on the ownership structure of banks and the responsiveness of bank managers to market incentives. An expected U-shaped relationship between explicit deposit insurance coverage and banks' risk-taking is influenced by country specific institutional factors, including bank ownership. We analyze specifically how government ownership, foreign ownership and shareholder rights affect the disciplinary effect of partial deposit insurance systems in a cross-section analysis of industrial and emerging market economies, as well as in emerging markets alone. The coverage that maximizes market discipline depends on country-specific characteristics of bank governance. This “risk-minimizing” deposit insurance coverage is compared to the actual coverage in a group of countries in emerging markets in Eastern Europe and Asia.     

有效抑制“冲时点”的逻辑起点

商业银行＂冲时点＂的行为,人为扭曲了信贷市场的供求状况,且通过引致货币市场流动性阶段性紧张,间接影响货币政策调控效果。商业银行＂冲时点＂现象的存在,既有内部激励因素,也有外部压力因素。有效治理商业银行＂冲时点＂行为,需要商业银行转变经营理念;亦需要监管部门从宏观审慎管理的角度,按照市场化监管逻辑建立银行自律与市场监管结合的激励相容机制。     

Deposit insurance, bank regulation, and financial system risks

Empirical evidence is presented to show that in modern times banks can hedge liquidity shocks but could not do so prior to FDIC insurance. However, the government's limitations in properly pricing FDIC insurance are leading to many current examples of moral hazard. A model is presented to show that if insurance premiums are set to be “actuarially fair,” incentives for banks to take excessive systematic risks remain. Motivated by empirical evidence that money market mutual funds also can hedge liquidity shocks, I consider an alternative government insurance system that mitigates distortions to risk-taking yet preserves liquidity hedging and information synergies.     

Does competition aggravate moral hazard? A Multi-Principal-Agent experiment

We conduct an experiment to determine whether market structure affects financial intermediary behavior. The intermediaries (Agents) are perfectly informed regarding project types and can recommend that their clients (Principals) either proceed or discontinue a project. Intermediaries earn revenues only when they recommend proceeding with the transaction. Thus, our design captures some of the incentives faced by financial advisers in commercial banks, where compensation depends on sales performance, and also by money-managers, whose income depends on the size of their portfolios. We find that a monopolist intermediary protects the interest of clients better than when intermediaries compete. Our results are robust to a significant fee increase and provide additional evidence on the impact of market structure on individual incentives and equilibrium outcomes.     

Loan Market Competition and Bank Risk-Taking

Recent literature (Boyd and De Nicoló, J Finance 60:1329–1343, 2005) has argued that competition in the loan market lowers bank risk by reducing the risk-taking incentives of borrowers. Using a model where competition arises from falling switching costs for entrepreneurs, we show that the impact of loan market competition on banks is reversed if banks can adjust their loan portfolios. The reason is that when borrowers become safer, banks want to offset the effect on their balance sheet and switch to higher-risk lending. They even overcompensate the effect of safer borrowers because loan market competition erodes their franchise values and thus increases their risk-taking incentives.     

Two Modes of Investment Banking: Technocrats,Relationship Managers,and Conflict

Efficient capital allocation in a market economy depends on the exchange of reliable information between providers of capital and companies that seek to put capital to work. One challenge, however, is that information exchange is at most only partly subject to verification and contractual arrangements. Take the case of securities issuance, including IPOs; whereas issuers of the new securities have incentives to overstate their prospects to attract higher bids, prospective investors have incentives to understate their interest. In principle, the counterparties could enter into an agreement that would prevent or discourage misrepresentations by both sides, but failure to perform would be very costly, if not impossible, for a court to verify. Investment banks have traditionally addressed this problem by creating extralegal markets for information whose functioning depends on the reputations of the banks for upholding the interests of both their corporate clients and the providers of capital. But committing to strike the right balance among all of the parties’ interests means that relational investment bankers inevitably face conflicts of interest. The authors of this article argue that such bankers exist to absorb and to manage conflicts of interest in financial markets—and that they do so by exercising judgment in ways that support their reputation for fair dealing. Modern full‐service investment banks, when addressing such conflicts, combine, or braid, such relational functions with technocratic banking activities involving the use of technical skills with advanced information technology. In so doing, however, technocratic bankers substitute formal contracts for the informal judgment exercised by relational bankers; and as a result, they are less dependent on their banks’ reputations for fair dealing. Moreover, technocratic bankers often have powerful incentives to pursue a personal reputation by executing complex transactions that demonstrate their skill, even at the expense of their clients and the bank's reputation for fair dealing. Well‐governed braided banks can benefit from complementarities between relational and technocratic skills. Nevertheless, full‐service banks continue to struggle with governance problems. The authors discuss several market responses to these struggles, such as the growing use of boutique banks offering “unconflicted” sell‐side advice in mergers and acquisitions and securities offerings. But the authors view such responses as at most a first step toward achieving a new understanding of the extent of the challenge facing today's investment banks in carrying out their economic function of bringing together and balancing the interests of companies and their investors.     

Profitability in Banks Affiliated to a Business Group: Evidence from Mexico

In certain institutional contexts, where there are business groups, banks affiliated to these business networks are faced by incentives that might condition their profitability. The objective of this article is to test whether there is a difference between the performance of affiliated banks and that of banks not affiliated to groups, in the context of an emerging market. In particular, a study is made of the case of Mexico in the period 2007–11. Findings suggest that banks affiliated to business groups show less profitability than non-affiliated banks, which may be a consequence of the provision of loans in an internal capital market.     

聚合营销与我国商业银行传统营销方式的变革

随着我国加入WTO和外资银行的准入,我国金融市场格局发生了深刻变化,市场参与者越来越多,新的金融产品和营销方式层出不穷,许多传统金融产品开始出现结构性的有效需求不足,使过去长期存在的银行服务卖方主导地位发生变化.本文针对目前我国商业银行存在的营销弊端,如指导理念落后、营销体系冗叠、营销方式单一、缺乏有效激励机制及未形成真正市场定价机制等状况,从一个全新角度引入"聚合营销"理论,设计了我国商业银行实施这种新型营销方式的具体步骤,从而提出商业银行实施聚合营销的三点方略,即客户与产品的聚合、促销与沟通的聚合以及管理与组织的聚合.     

Asymmetric information and the mode of entry in foreign credit markets

In a newly liberalized credit market, foreign banks with cost advantages are likely to be less informed than domestic banks that hold information on credit risks. These relative advantages may generate incentives for a foreign bank to negotiate acquisition of a domestic bank in order to capture information endowments. However, if it is difficult to assess the value of information held by banks, the foreign bank will face important choices about the optimal mode of entry and what acquisition price to pay. These choices have implications for the survival of domestic banks and how capital is allocated after liberalization.     

Surviving the perfect storm: The role of the lender of last resort☆

When banks are hit by a severe liquidity shock, central banks have a key role as lenders of last resort. Despite the well-established importance of this mechanism, it is challenging to analyze it empirically. We explore a unique setting in which banks suddenly lost access to market funding due to contagion fears at the onset of the euro area sovereign debt crisis. Using monthly data at the loan, bank, and firm level, we test the role of the central bank in a scenario of imminent collapse. We find that the liquidity obtained from the central bank played a key role in temporarily supporting the supply of credit to the real economy. However, the subdued loan demand, together with moral suasion and carry trade incentives, led to an increase in banks’ sovereign bond holdings using central bank funding.