Reporting choices in the shadow of bank runs

This paper investigates banks’ reporting choices in the context of bank runs. A fundamental-based run imposes market discipline on insolvent banks, but a panic-based run closes banks that could have survived with better coordination among creditors. We augment a bank-run model with the bank’s reporting choices. We show that banks with intermediate fundamentals have stronger incentive to misreport than those in the two tails. Moreover, reporting discretion reduces panic-based runs, but excessive discretion also reduces fundamental-based runs. The optimal amount of reporting discretion increases in the bank’s vulnerability to panic-based runs. Finally, a given bank’s opportunistic use of reporting discretion exerts a negative externality on other banks. Our paper answers the call by Armstrong et al. (2016) and Bushman (2016) to understand better the effects of banks’ special features on their reporting choices.     

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.     

The Regulation of Private Money*

Financial crises are bank runs. At root, the problem is short-term debt (private money), which while an essential feature of market economies, is inherently vulnerable to runs in all its forms (not just demand deposits). Bank regulation aims at preventing bank runs. History shows two approaches to bank regulation: the use of high-quality collateral to back banks’ short-term debt and government insurance for the short-term debt. Also, explicit or implicit limitations on entry into banking can create charter value (an intangible asset) that is lost if the bank fails. This can create an incentive for the bank to abide by the regulations and not take too much risk.     

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.     

The dark side of liquidity creation: Leverage and systemic risk

We consider a model in which the threat of bank liquidations by creditors as well as equity-based compensation incentives both discipline bankers, but with different consequences. Greater use of equity leads to lower ex-ante bank liquidity, whereas greater use of debt leads to a higher probability of inefficient bank liquidation. The bank's privately-optimal capital structure trades off these two costs. With uncertainty about aggregate risk, bank creditors learn from other banks’ liquidation decisions. Such inference can lead to contagious liquidations, some of which are inefficient; this is a negative externality that is ignored in privately-optimal bank capital structures. Thus, under plausible conditions, banks choose excessive leverage relative to the socially optimal level, providing a rationale for bank capital regulation. While a blanket regulatory forbearance policy can eliminate contagion, it also eliminates all market discipline. However, a regulator generating its own information about aggregate risk, rather than relying on market signals, can restore efficiency and market discipline by intervening selectively.     

Asset commonality,debt maturity and systemic risk

We develop a model in which asset commonality and short-term debt of banks interact to generate excessive systemic risk. Banks swap assets to diversify their individual risk. Two asset structures arise. In a clustered structure, groups of banks hold common asset portfolios and default together. In an unclustered structure, defaults are more dispersed. Portfolio quality of individual banks is opaque but can be inferred by creditors from aggregate signals about bank solvency. When bank debt is short-term, creditors do not roll over in response to adverse signals and all banks are inefficiently liquidated. This information contagion is more likely under clustered asset structures. In contrast, when bank debt is long-term, welfare is the same under both asset structures.     

银行市值的重要性与中国银行业估值偏低的讨论

中国大型银行股改上市后的规模和利润增长很快,核心指标也基本上与国际银行比肩,但估值水平却低于美国的银行同业.虽然业界对于银行的评价方法一直备受争议,越来越多的人已经意识到,资产规模、盈利能力、资产质量等评价指标只能反映银行某一方面的能力,不能全面反映银行的综合实力和竞争力;相对而言,市值指标是一种长期趋势性判断,隐含了...     

Optimal equity infusions in interbank networks

We study optimal equity infusions into a financial network prone to the risk of contagious failures, which may be due to insolvency or to bank runs by short term creditors. Bank runs can be triggered by failures of connected banks.Under complete information on interbank linkages, we show that the problem reduces to a combinatorial optimization problem. Subject to budget constraints, the government chooses the set of minimal cost whose survival induces the maximum network stability. Our results demonstrate that the optimal equity infusion might significantly mitigate failure contagion risk and stabilize the system. In the case of partial information on the network, the controllers’ focus swiftly changes from preventing insolvencies to preventing runs by short term creditors.     

Basel II and the Need for Bank Distress Resolution Procedures*

It is argued that without increased market discipline Basel II is not likely to resolve the regulatory problem caused by explicit and implicit guarantees of depositors and other creditors of banks. One way to enhance market discipline is to implement proposals for mandatory subordinated debt. For these proposals to achieve their objective, the non‐insurance of holders of subordinated debt must be credible. Increased credibility of non‐insurance of one or several groups of creditors could be enhanced if distress resolution procedures for banks were pre‐specified, and if they made possible bank failures without serious disruption of the financial system. The existence of rules for dealing with banks in distress not only enhances the credibility of non‐insurance of some creditors, it also allows for predictability of distress resolution costs for shareholders and management of banks. Such costs—if predictable—reduce the moral hazard incentives caused by deposit insurance schemes.     

Interbank contagion and resolution procedures: inspecting the mechanism

This paper develops a network model of a stylized banking system in which banks are connected to one another through interbank claims, which allows us to study the diffusion of default avalanches triggered by an exogenous shock under a number of different assumptions on the degree of interconnectedness, level of capitalization, liquidity buffers, the size of the interbank market and fire-sales. We expand upon the existing literature by comparing two alternative resolution mechanisms: (i) liquidations triggered by either illiquidity or insolvency-related distress implying asset sales and compensation of creditors; and (ii) a bail-in mechanism avoiding bank closure by forcing a recapitalization provided by bank creditors. Our model speaks to how contagion dynamics unravel via illiquidity-driven defaults in the first case and higher-order losses in the latter one. Within this framework, we show how the liquidity risk externality can be resolved, and we put forward a macro-criterion to assess the adequacy of the liquidity ratio introduced with Basel III.     

Corporate valuation and the resolution of bank insolvency in East Asia

We examine the valuation effect of the resolution of a bank’s insolvency on commercial clients. Our sample includes 29 insolvent banks in Indonesia, Korea, and Thailand that serve as main creditors for 269 publicly traded companies. Our findings suggest that a bank relationship adds value to a firm, and that this value depends on investors’ certainty in the continuity of the banking relationship. Significant cumulative returns for 50 days following the event date suggest that the type of resolution has real effects on the performance of related firms above initial expectations.     

Banks and Corporate Control in Japan

Using a large sample of Japanese firm level data, we find that Japanese banks act primarily in the short term interests of creditors when dealing with firms outside bank groups. Corporate control mechanisms other than bank oversight appear necessary in these firms. When dealing with firms in bank groups, banks may act in the broader interests of a range of stakeholders, including shareholders. However, our findings are also consistent with banks "propping up" troubled bank group firms. We conclude that bank oversight need not lead to value maximizing corporate governance.     

Real estate prices and bank stability

Real estate prices can deviate from their fundamental value due to rigid supply, heterogeneity in quality, and various market imperfections, which have two contrasting effects on bank stability. Higher prices increase the value of collateral and net wealth of borrowers and thus reduce the likelihood of credit defaults. In contrast, persistent deviations from fundamentals may foster the adverse selection of increasingly risky creditors by banks seeking to expand their loan portfolios, which increases bank distress probabilities. We test these hypotheses using unique data on real estate markets and banks in Germany. House price deviations contribute to bank instability, but nominal house price developments do not. This finding corroborates the importance of deviations from the fundamental value of real estate, rather than just price levels or changes alone, when assessing bank stability.     

新会计准则下银行资产分类会计选择的理论建模

2007年1月1日起实施的新会计准则对商业银行最重要的影响在于资产分类方面的新规定。新准则规定基于管理者持有该证券的动机和是否具有持有到期的能力对金融资产分类。资产分类的不同决定着市场价值变化对盈利水平和银行权益的影响。本文考虑新会计准则对银行资产分类的可能影响,设计了一个债券类产品和贷款,根据投资者效用和动机研究银行的资产分类决策,对银行考虑新会计准则对其影响时的资产分类决策建模。模型的解表明,风险中性的银行权衡流动性需求、权益稳定、资产收益几个方面决定其金融资产的分类,而银行收益和股东价值仍主要取决于银行的投资战略和对市场的预期,对资产分类规定的变化不会影响银行的实际收益,但短期银行会考虑其流动性需求和监管资本的稳定性,来决定银行的分类决策。     

Bank pay caps,bank risk,and macroprudential regulation

This paper studies the consequences of a regulatory pay cap in proportion to assets on bank risk, bank value, and bank asset allocations. The cap is shown to lower banks’ risk and raise banks’ values by acting against a competitive externality in the labour market. The risk reduction is achieved without the possibility of reduced lending from a Tier 1 increase. The cap encourages diversification and reduces the need a bank has to focus on a limited number of asset classes. The cap can be used for Macroprudential Regulation to encourage banks to move resources away from wholesale banking to the retail banking sector. Such an intervention would be targeted: in 2009 a 20% reduction in remuneration would have been equivalent to more than 150 basis points of extra Tier 1 for UBS, for example.     

Bank panics and the endogeneity of central banking

Central banking is intimately related to liquidity provision to banks during times of crisis, the lender-of-last-resort function. This activity arose endogenously in certain banking systems. Depositors lack full information about the value of bank assets, so that during macroeconomic downturns they monitor their banks by withdrawing in a banking panic. The likelihood of panics depends on the industrial organization of the banking system. Banking systems with well-diversified big banks are less prone to inefficient bank runs because diversification alleviates the information asymmetry. In addition, big banks can self-monitor through publicly observable branch closure. Systems of many small banks form incentive-compatible bank coalitions to emulate the big banks during times of crisis. Such coalitions improve efficiency by monitoring member banks and issuing money that is a kind of deposit insurance—a precursor of central banking.     

Shadow Banking,Risk Transfer,and Financial Stability

Shadow banking is the process by which banks raise funds from and transfer risks to entities outside the traditional commercial banking system. Many observers blamed the sudden expansion in 2007 of U.S. sub‐prime mortgage market disruptions into a global financial crisis on a “liquidity run” that originated in the shadow banking system and spread to commercial banks. In response, national and international regulators have called for tighter and new regulations on shadow banking products and participants. Preferring the term “market‐based finance” to the term “shadow banking,” the authors explore the primary financial instruments and participants that comprise the shadow banking system. The authors review the 2007–2009 period and explain how runs on shadow banks resulted in a liquidity crisis that spilled over to commercial banks, but also emphasize that the economic purpose of shadow banking is to enable commercial banks to raise funds from and transfer risks to non‐bank institutions. In that sense, the shadow banking system is a shock absorber for risks that arise within the commercial banking system and are transferred to a more diverse pool of non‐bank capital instead of remaining concentrated among commercial banks. The article also reviews post‐crisis regulatory initiatives aimed at shadow banking and concludes that most such regulations could result in a less stable financial system to the extent that higher regulatory costs on shadow banks like insurance companies and asset managers could discourage them from participating in shadow banking. And the net effect of this regulation, by limiting the amount of market‐based capital available for non‐bank risk transfer, may well be to increase the concentrations of risk in the banking and overall financial system.     

Market procyclicality and systemic risk

We develop a model that captures, at the same time, the temporal dynamics of single-firm credit risk and the contagion across banks via a network of obligations and common assets. In particular, we enrich the continuous-time modelling approach of default by accounting explicitly for the procyclical loop between asset prices and leverage. Contagion can spread well before any default occurs, through the value of the obligations held by counterparties. Moreover, the extent of procyclicality effects depends explicitly on the structure of both the interbank network and the asset bank network. We analyse the model in a simplified scenario of a densely connected core of banks and we carry out a systematic investigation of how procyclicality emerges from the multiplicative interplay of market illiquidity and tightness of capital requirements.     

The impact of IMF term loans on US bank creditors’ equity values: an event study of South Korea's case

This study investigates whether the IMF term loan announcements to South Korea in late November and early December 1997 significantly increased the implicit value of the U.S. bank loans and investments to South Korea and hence, the equity values of its U.S. bank creditors. Using both the market model and the SUR model, this paper examines the potential abnormal performance of a total of 230 U.S. banks during mid-November to early December 1997. The findings show that there was a statistically significant positive equity response to the international bank creditors during the major event announcements. Further, the evidence shows the existence of different pricing behavior of different groups: groups that were more exposed experienced a more positive equity-price response.     

Stock Market Reaction to the Bank Liquidation in Japan: A Case for the Informational Effect Hypothesis

Previous studies investigating the stock market reaction to U.S. bank failures rejected the bank run or domino hypothesis. However, if providing relevant bank information to the public is crucial to preventing bank panics, Japanese banks with limited disclosure are more vulnerable to bank runs than their U.S. counterparts. In this paper, I investigate the stock market reaction to Hyogo Bank's liquidation on August 30, 1995, which was the first bank liquidation in Japan and placed the financial burden on the general public. I find that stock market participants distinguished solvent banks from problematic banks. That is, my results, supporting the informational effect hypothesis, suggest that it is questionable even in Japan for the government to bail out an insolvent bank based on the potential risk of bank runs.