Resaleable debt and systemic risk

Many debt claims, such as bonds, are resaleable; others, such as repos, are not. There was a fivefold increase in repo borrowing before the 2008–2009 financial crisis. Why? Did banks’ dependence on non-resaleable debt precipitate the crisis? In this paper, we develop a model of bank lending with credit frictions. The key feature of the model is that debt claims are heterogenous in their resaleability. We find that decreasing credit market frictions leads to an increase in borrowing via non-resaleable debt. Such borrowing has a dark side: It causes credit chains to form, because, if a bank makes a loan via non-resaleable debt and needs liquidity, it cannot sell the loan but must borrow via a new contract. These credit chains are a source of systemic risk, as one bank’s default harms not only its creditors but also its creditors’ creditors. Overall, our model suggests that reducing credit market frictions may have an adverse effect on the financial system and even lead to the failures of financial institutions.     

TARP announcement,bank health,and borrowers’ credit risk

Theory suggests that unhealthy banks exhibit more pronounced flight-to-quality behavior during financial crises and, hence, the infusion of capital through unhealthy banks is less effective in relieving the liquidity shocks of vulnerable borrowers. We test these predictions by investigating how the financial health of leading US banks influenced their borrowers’ credit risk surrounding the announcement of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Changes in borrower credit risk, measured by credit default swap (CDS) spreads, should reflect the expected relief from liquidity shocks and other benefits of rescuing banks, such as maintaining the existing lending relationships. Consistent with the theory, prior to the TARP capital infusions, unhealthy banks’ borrowers with high leverage experienced a greater increase in their credit risk relative to similar healthy banks’ borrowers. Following the event, the CDS market anticipated less liquidity relief to these vulnerable unhealthy banks’ borrowers, but more liquidity relief to the vulnerable healthy banks’ borrowers.     

Liquidity risk management and credit supply in the financial crisis

Liquidity dried up during the financial crisis of 2007-2009. Banks that relied more heavily on core deposit and equity capital financing, which are stable sources of financing, continued to lend relative to other banks. Banks that held more illiquid assets on their balance sheets, in contrast, increased asset liquidity and reduced lending. Off-balance sheet liquidity risk materialized on the balance sheet and constrained new credit origination as increased takedown demand displaced lending capacity. We conclude that efforts to manage the liquidity crisis by banks led to a decline in credit supply.     

Securitization and systematic risk in European banking: Empirical evidence

Using a unique dataset of 592 cash and synthetic securitizations issued by 54 banks from the EU-15 plus Switzerland over the period from 1997 to 2007 this paper provides empirical evidence that credit risk securitization has a positive impact on the increase of European banks’ systematic risk. Baseline results hold when comparing estimated beta coefficients with a control group of similar non-securitizing banks. Building several sub-samples we additionally find that (a) the increase in systematic risk is more relevant for larger banks that repeatedly engage in securitization, (b) securitization is more important for small and medium financial institutions, (c) banks have a higher incentive to retain the larger part of credit risk as a quality signal at the beginning of the securitization business in Europe, and (d) the overall risk-shifting effect due to securitization is more distinct when the pre-event systematic risk is low.     

Government interventions and default risk: Does one size fit all?

We examine the effectiveness of the financial sector rescue packages provided by the national governments during the 2008 financial crisis. This study questions the implicit assumption that government interventions have an uniform effect on the default risk of individual banks. After testing the results for sensitivity, our main findings suggest that there exists a significant negative relationship between the announcement of the financial sector rescue packages and the daily change of the credit default premium. However, quantile regressions show that the effectiveness of these packages differs across banks: most interventions do not decrease the risk of intermediate to low-risk banks, while they do reduce the risk of high-risk banks. Besides, we find that interventions aimed at specific financial institutions are more effective in restraining banking risk than broad interventions taken to stabilize the financial market as a whole.     

Securitization and systemic risk: An empirical investigation on Italian banks over the financial crisis

This research examines the effects of securitization on the bank's risk exposure both in terms of individual expected shortfall and marginal expected shortfall as a measure of systemic risk. The relationship between securitization activity and tail risks is especially relevant in light of the consequences for financial stability, both for the individual securitizing banks and for the market as a whole, as the financial crisis 2007–2008 reveals. By using a sample of Italian listed banks over the period 2000–2009, we find that securitizing banks have, on average, higher expected losses in case of extreme events. This adds new evidence on the main findings in the literature that focused on the evidence that risk transfer through securitization is relatively insignificant compared to the risk retained by the originating bank. We show that this risk retention is in terms of an increase of tail risk. We also find that securitization increases the probability of banks to become “systemically” riskier, but we find no difference when comparing the pre-crisis with the post-crisis period. This suggests that the systemic exposures of Italian banks are still as high as before the crisis with severe implications for financial stability.     

Credit risk transfer and contagion

Some have argued that recent increases in credit risk transfer are desirable because they improve the diversification of risk. Others have suggested that they may be undesirable if they increase the risk of financial crises. Using a model with banking and insurance sectors, we show that credit risk transfer can be beneficial when banks face uniform demand for liquidity. However, when they face idiosyncratic liquidity risk and hedge this risk in an interbank market, credit risk transfer can be detrimental to welfare. It can lead to contagion between the two sectors and increase the risk of crises.     

The impact of securitization on credit rationing: Empirical evidence

We study whether banks’ involvement into different types of securitization activity – asset backed securities (ABS) and covered bonds – in Spain influences credit supply before and during the financial crisis. While both ABS and covered bonds were hit by the crisis, the former were hit more severely. Employing a disequilibrium model to identify credit rationing, we find that firms with banks that were more involved in securitization see their credit constraints more relaxed in normal periods. In contrast, only greater covered bonds issuance reduces credit rationing during crisis periods whereas ABS aggravates these firms’ credit rationing in crisis periods. Our results are in line with the theoretical predictions that a securitization instrument that retains risk (covered bond) may induce a more prudent risk behavior of banks than an instrument that provides risk transferring (ABS).     

The term structure of banking crisis risk in the United States: A market data based compound option approach

We use a compound option-based structural credit risk model to estimate banking crisis risk for the United States based on market data on bank stocks on a daily frequency. We contribute to the literature by providing separate information on short-term, long-term and total crisis risk instead of a single-maturity risk measure usually inferred by Merton-type models or barrier models. We estimate the model by applying the Duan (1994) maximum-likelihood approach. A strongly increasing total crisis risk estimated from early July 2007 onwards is driven mainly by short-term crisis risk. Banks that defaulted or were overtaken during the crisis have a considerably higher crisis risk (especially higher long-term risk) than banks that survived the crisis.     

Credit risk and financial integration: An application of network analysis

Credit plays a significant role in the performance of the banking sector. This research relates financial integration to the credit risk of banks. We compute a measure of financial connectivity based on network statistics using syndicated loans. Using instrumental variable techniques for a panel of 39 countries over the periods of 1988 to 2014, we analyse the link between credit risk and financial integration. Our findings suggest that borrowing banks do not alleviate credit risk. Also, borrowing banks that are more active in the network also help to compound credit risk. However, the closeness centrality reveals a significant reduction in the credit risk of the borrowing banks. Our findings from individual countries reflect the significance of the country of operation of these banks in the international market.     

Market liquidity in the financial crisis: The role of liquidity commonality and flight-to-quality

We examine the dynamics and the drivers of market liquidity during the financial crisis, using a unique volume-weighted spread measure. According to the literature we find that market liquidity is impaired when stock markets decline, implying a positive relation between market and liquidity risk. Moreover, this relationship is the stronger the deeper one digs into the order book. Even more interestingly, this paper sheds further light on so far puzzling features of market liquidity: liquidity commonality and flight-to-quality. We show that liquidity commonality varies over time, increases during market downturns, peaks at major crisis events and becomes weaker the deeper we look into the limit order book. Consistent with recent theoretical models that argue for a spiral effect between the financial sector’s funding liquidity and an asset’s market liquidity, we find that funding liquidity tightness induces an increase in liquidity commonality which then leads to market-wide liquidity dry-ups. Therefore our findings corroborate the view that market liquidity can be a driving force for financial contagion. Finally, we show that there is a positive relationship between credit risk and liquidity risk, i.e., there is a spread between liquidity costs of high and low credit quality stocks, and that in times of increased market uncertainty the impact of credit risk on liquidity risk intensifies. This corroborates the existence of a flight-to-quality or flight-to-liquidity phenomenon also on the stock markets.     

Contagion risk in the Australian banking and property sectors

The Australian banking system emerged from the global crisis virtually unhurt, with most banks still profitable, adequately capitalized, and with AA credit ratings. Are there any risks or vulnerabilities in this success story? This paper analyzes Australia’s systemic banking risk and attempts to determine if this risk increased with the recent global crisis and whether this risk is related to the downturn experienced in the real estate market. We use extreme value theory to measure banks’ and property firms’ univariate Value at Risk, as well as multivariate intra-sector and inter-sector contagion risks. Of the 13 sectors analyzed, we find that the property sector exhibits the highest level of extremal dependence with the banking sector. The credit crisis significantly increased the probability of a bank or property firm crashing. Moreover, contagion risks significantly increased not only within the banking and property sectors, but also between those sectors.     

Credit risk transfer in U.S. commercial banks: What changed during the 2007–2009 crisis?

Following the debate on the role of credit risk transfer (CRT) in exacerbating the 2007–2009 crisis, this paper investigates the usage and effects of loan sales, securitization, and credit derivatives in U.S. commercial banks over the last decade, with special emphasis on the financial crisis. We find that in times of severe funding constraints, the need to raise financial resources becomes the principal incentive behind CRT. We document some beneficial effects of CRT on the economy, since the funds released through CRT are subsequently invested by banks to sustain credit supply, also in recession. However, we report higher overall riskiness in banks that engage intensively in loans sales and securitization, which translates into higher default rates during the crisis. Interestingly, the benefits and drawbacks of CRT are much stronger for loan sales and securitization than for credit derivatives.     

Assessing the credit risk of money market funds during the eurozone crisis

This paper measures credit risk in prime money market funds (MMFs) and studies how such credit risk evolved during the eurozone crisis of 2011–2012. To accomplish this, we estimate the annualized expected loss on each fund's portfolio. We also calculate by Monte Carlo the cost of insuring a fund against losses amounting to over 50 basis points. We find that credit risk of prime MMFs, though small, doubled from 12 basis points in June 2011 to 23 basis points in December 2011 before receding in 2012. Contrary to common perceptions, this did not primarily reflect funds’ credit exposure to eurozone banks because funds took measures to reduce this exposure. Instead, credit risk in prime MMFs rose because of the deteriorating credit outlook of banks in the Asia/Pacific region. We conclude that the increase in the credit risk of prime MMFs in the second half of 2011 reflected contagion in the worldwide banking system coupled with slowing global economic growth, not actions taken by MMFs.     

Financial statements based bank risk aggregation

One of the major challenges involved in risk aggregation is the lack of risk data. Recently, researchers have found that mapping financial statements into risk types is a satisfactory way to resolve the problem of data shortage and inconsistency. Nevertheless, ignoring off-balance sheet (OBS) items has so far been regarded as the usual practice in risk aggregation, which may lead to deviations in conclusions. Hence, we improve the financial statements based risk aggregation framework by mapping OBS items into risk types. Based on 487 quarterly financial statements from all 16 listed Chinese commercial banks over the period 2007–2014, we empirically study whether the overall impact of OBS activities and the individual impact of each of the OBS risk types on total risk depend on bank size. Moreover, this research divides the sample into two subsets, during and after the subprime crisis, to find out how the subprime crisis affects risks of Chinese banks. Our empirical results show that although OBS credit risk is positively linked to total risk while OBS operational risk is negatively linked to total risk for both large and small banks, the overall impact of OBS activities on total risk depends on bank size. The overall OBS activities are positively related to the large bank’s total risk while they are negatively related to the small bank’s total risk. Besides, we also found that it is the increase of liquidity risk and market risk that leads to the larger total risk of Chinese banks during the subprime crisis.     

Banks' Liquidity and the Cost of Liquidity to Corporations

We consider the liquidity shock banks experienced following the collapse of the asset‐backed commercial paper (ABCP) market in the fall of 2007 to investigate whether banks' liquidity conditions affect their ability to provide liquidity to corporations. We find that banks that borrowed more from the Federal Home Loan Bank system or the Federal Reserve's discount window following that liquidity shock passed a larger portion of their borrowing costs onto corporations seeking access to liquidity when compared to the precrisis period. This increase is larger among banks with a bigger exposure to the ABCP market, credit lines that pose more liquidity risk to banks, and borrowers that are likely dependent on the credit‐line provider. Our findings show that the crisis that affected the banking system had a negative effect not only on the price of credit to corporations, but also on the price corporations pay to guarantee access to liquidity.     

Impact of FDICIA internal controls on bank risk taking

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act (FDICIA) of 1991 was designed, among other things, to introduce risk-based deposit insurance, increase capital requirements, and improve banks’ internal controls. Of particular interest in this study are the requirements for annual audit and reporting of management’s and auditor’s assessment of the effectiveness of internal control for banks with $500 million or more in total assets (raised to $1 billion in 2005). We study the impact of these requirements on banks’ risk-taking behavior prior to the recent financial crisis and the consequent implications for bank failure and financial trouble during the crisis period. Using a sample of 1138 banks, we provide evidence that banks required to comply with the FDICIA internal control requirements have lower risk taking in the pre-crisis period. Specifically, the volatility of net interest margin, the volatility of earnings, and Z score show less risk-taking behavior. Furthermore, these banks are less likely to experience failure and financial trouble during the crisis period.     

The use of credit default swaps by bond mutual funds: Liquidity provision and counterparty risk

Corporate bond mutual funds increased their selling of credit protection in the credit default swaps (CDS) market during the 2007–2008 financial crisis. This trading activity was primarily in multi-name CDS, greater among larger and established funds, and directed toward counterparty dealers in financial distress. Funds that sold credit protection during the crisis experienced greater credit market risk and superior post-crisis performance, consistent with higher expected returns from liquidity provision. Funds using Lehman Brothers as a counterparty experienced abnormal outflows and returns of –2% immediately following Lehman's bankruptcy, suggesting that funds’ opportunistic trading in CDS exposed investors to counterparty risk.     

Economic value,competition and financial distress in the European banking system

In this paper we examine the impact of a large number of factors at the bank level (liquidity and credit risks, asset size, income diversification and market power), at the industry level (banking concentration) and macro-level (real GDP growth) on bank financial distress using an unbalanced panel of 308 European commercial banks between 1996 and 2009. The observations falling below a given threshold of the empirical distribution of the Shareholder Value Ratio proxy bank financial distress. We employ a panel probit regression and, given the presence of overlapping data giving rise to residual autocorrelation, we use the Bertschek and Lechner (1998) robust estimator of the covariance matrix of parameters. We show that credit risk, liquidity risk and bank market power are the most influential determinants of distressed Shareholder Value Ratio. Finally we evaluate the model out-sample forecasting performance over the 2008–2009 crisis period.     

The multi-layer network nature of systemic risk and its implications for the costs of financial crises

The inability to see and quantify systemic financial risk comes at an immense social cost. Systemic risk in the financial system arises to a large extent as a consequence of the interconnectedness of its institutions, which are linked through networks of different types of financial contracts, such as credit, derivatives, foreign exchange, and securities. The interplay of the various exposure networks can be represented as layers in a financial multi-layer network. In this work we quantify the daily contributions to systemic risk from four layers of the Mexican banking system from 2007 to 2013. We show that focusing on a single layer underestimates the total systemic risk by up to 90%. By assigning systemic risk levels to individual banks we study the systemic risk profile of the Mexican banking system on all market layers. This profile can be used to quantify systemic risk on a national level in terms of nation-wide expected systemic losses. We show that market-based systemic risk indicators systematically underestimate expected systemic losses. We find that expected systemic losses are up to a factor of four higher now than before the financial crisis of 2007–2008. We find that systemic risk contributions of individual transactions can be up to a factor of one thousand higher than the corresponding credit risk, which creates huge risks for the public. We find an intriguing non-linear effect whereby the sum of systemic risk of all layers underestimates the total risk. The method presented here is the first objective data-driven quantification of systemic risk on national scales that reveal its true levels.