Chinese write-down bonds and bank capital structure

In this paper, we use a structural model to investigate a bank capital structure that contains deposits, straight bonds, Write-Down (WD) bonds and equity. We first explicitly give the default boundaries and the values of a deposit, straight bond, WD bond, equity and bank asset, and then use a numerical example to demonstrate the relations among leverage, deposits, WD bonds and bank value. Our results show that value-maximizing banks select the ratio of deposit, straight bond and WD debt so that endogenous default is consistent with exogenous bank closure. The bank increases its leverage by swapping both deposits and straight bonds for WD bonds. And the issuance of WD bonds not only reduces the expected bankruptcy loss and credit spread of straight bonds, but also improves the bank value. This indicates that WD bonds do help to stabilize banks. We also study the role of deposit insurance and the Chinese Financial Stability Bureau (FSB), and give a closed-form expression for the fair insurance premium. Lastly, to check the robustness of our results, we do the sensitivity analysis and investigate the effect of three sets of exogenous parameters on bank capital structure: WD parameters, bank business features, closure rules and insurance subsidy, and obtain some practically significant implications.     

Institutional development and bank stability: Evidence from transition countries

This paper takes advantage of the dynamic nature of institutional reforms in transition economies and explores the causal effects of those reforms on bank risk. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we show that banks’ financial stability increases substantially after these countries reform their legal institutions, liberalize banking, and restructure corporate governance. We also find that the effects of legal and governance reforms on bank risk may critically depend on the progress of banking reforms. A further examination of alternative risk measures reveals that the increases in financial stability among banks mainly come from the reduction of asset risk. Banks tend to have lower ROA volatility and fewer nonperforming loans after reforming the institutional environment. Finally, we split our sample into foreign and domestic banks and find that the enhancement of financial stability is more pronounced for domestic banks.     

Social capital and bank stability

Using a sample of public and private banks, we study how social capital relates to bank stability. Social capital, which reflects the level of cooperative norms in society, is likely to reduce opportunistic behavior (Jha and Chen 2015; Hasan et al., 2017) and, therefore, act as an informal monitoring mechanism. Consistent with our expectations, we find that banks in high social capital regions experienced fewer failures and less financial trouble during the 2007–2010 financial crisis than banks in low social capital regions. In addition, we find that social capital was negatively associated with abnormal risk-taking and positively associated with accounting transparency and accounting conservatism in the pre-crisis period of 2000–2006, indicating that risk-taking, accounting transparency, and accounting conservatism are possible channels through which social capital affected bank stability during the crisis.     

Bond market development and bank stability: Evidence from emerging markets

We investigate how bond market development shapes banks’ risk taking in terms of portfolio structure, liquidity risk, and overall bank risk. Exploiting a bank-level database of 26 emerging markets, we find that larger bond markets are associated with stronger bank liquidity positions, lower portfolio risk of banks, and higher overall stability of banks. The effect of bond market development on bank risk taking remains robust across different levels of bank size and capital sufficiency. Overall, we find new evidence of a complementary relationship between bond market development and bank soundness.     

Failed bank takeovers and financial stability

Current discussion about the design of bank resolution frameworks suggests that the takeover of a failed bank by an incumbent one has two effects on financial stability. First, the incumbent takeover may boost financial stability by providing bankers with incentives to be solvent so as to profit from their competitors’ failure. Second, the incumbent takeover may spoil financial stability by creating “Systemically Important Financial Institutions”. The innovation of this paper is to capture these two effects in a theoretical model. We show that when incumbent bankers are impatient enough (i.e., they have high discount rates), the second effect prevails over the first one. We discuss the implications of this result for the design of bank resolution policies.     

Optimal incentives and securitization of defaultable assets

We study optimal securitization in the presence of an initial moral hazard. A financial intermediary creates and then sells to outside investors defaultable assets, whose default risk is determined by the unobservable costly effort exerted by the intermediary. We calculate the optimal contract for any given effort level and show the natural emergence of extreme punishment for defaults, under which investors stop paying the intermediary after the first default. With securitization contracts optimally designed, we find securitization improves the intermediary's screening incentives. Furthermore, the equilibrium effort level and the surplus converge to their first best levels with sufficiently many assets.     

A theory of systemic risk and design of prudential bank regulation

Systemic risk is modeled as the endogenously chosen correlation of returns on assets held by banks. The limited liability of banks and the presence of a negative externality of one bank’s failure on the health of other banks give rise to a systemic risk-shifting incentive where all banks undertake correlated investments, thereby increasing economy-wide aggregate risk. Regulatory mechanisms such as bank closure policy and capital adequacy requirements that are commonly based only on a bank’s own risk fail to mitigate aggregate risk-shifting incentives, and can, in fact, accentuate systemic risk. Prudential regulation is shown to operate at a collective level, regulating each bank as a function of both its joint (correlated) risk with other banks as well as its individual (bank-specific) risk.     

Wholesale funding and bank stability: The impact of economic policy uncertainty

The primary aim of this paper is to examine the conditioning effects of economic policy uncertainty on the relationship between wholesale funding and bank stability. Based on a sample of 1829 commercial banks in 27 countries over the period 2005–2020, we provide evidence of a nonlinear relationship between wholesale funding and bank stability. Specifically, a small share of nondeposit funding to total deposit and short-term funding (below 22.3%) offers some risk reduction, but a substantial mixing of nondeposit and deposit funding increases bank fragility. Moreover, the adverse effects of excessive wholesale funding on bank stability are strengthened during periods of high policy uncertainty. Nevertheless, banks in advanced countries, large banks, and high-quality banks with better asset quality are less affected by the detrimental impact of excessive wholesale funding on bank stability when during periods of increased policy uncertainty.     

Chair-CEO generation gap and bank risk-taking

Poor bank governance has disastrous consequences for economies as the 2007–2009 financial crisis has shown. In the aftermath, board diversity is identified as an effective mechanism to enhance bank governance. Diversity, creating cognitive conflict between board members, is expected to enhance board's independence of thought to better perform monitoring and advising functions. Age is a key demographic measure and age dissimilarity between the chair and the CEO in non-financial firms leads to better economic outcomes (Goergen, Limbach, & Scholz, 2015). In this paper, we examine whether chair-CEO age dissimilarity can mitigate banks' excessive risk-taking behaviour. Using a unique sample of 100 listed banks in Europe between 2005 and 2014, we find that age difference between the chair and the CEO reduces bank risk-taking. A chair-CEO generational gap –defined as a minimum of 20 years' age difference– has a larger impact in reducing risk-taking.     

Community bank mergers and their impact on small business lending

There have been increasing concerns about the potential of larger banks acquiring community banks and the declining number of community banks, which would significantly reduce small business lending (SBL) and disrupt relationship lending. This paper examines the roles and characteristics of U.S. community banks in the past decade, covering the recent economic boom and downturn. We analyze risk characteristics of acquired community banks, compare pre- and post-acquisition performance, and investigate how the acquisitions have affected SBL. Contrary to the concerns, our analysis shows that the overall amount of SBL increases more after a merger when a community bank is acquired by a large bank. Data also suggest an overall (regardless of mergers) declining SBL trend for all bank size groups. In fact, the decline in the SBL ratio, on average, has been more severe among community banks, relative to large banks. Our results indicate that mergers involving community bank targets over the past decade have enhanced the overall safety and soundness of the banking system without adversely impacting SBL.     

A model of a systemic bank run

This paper provides a model of the view that the 2008 financial crisis is reminiscent of a bank run, focussing on six stylized key features. In particular, core financial institutions have invested their funds in asset-backed securities rather than committed to long-term projects: in distress, these can potentially be sold to a large pool of outside investors at steep discounts. I consider two different motives for outside investors and their interaction with banks trading asset-backed securities: uncertainty aversion versus adverse selection. I shall argue that the version with uncertainty averse investors is more consistent with the stylized facts than the adverse selection perspective: in the former, the crisis deepens, the larger the market share of distressed core banks, while a run becomes less likely instead as a result in the adverse selection version. Therefore, the outright purchase of troubled assets by the government at prices above current market prices may both alleviate the financial crises as well as provide tax payers with returns above those for safe securities.     

It takes more than two to tango: Multiple bank lending,asset commonality and risk

Multiple-bank lending is the most prevalent form of bank-firm credit relationships in nearly all countries. It results in high asset commonality and interconnectedness, allows idiosyncratic risks to become systemic, and makes the banking system more fragile and vulnerable to shocks. Using detailed, granular-level, supervisory data on large corporate loans, we show that multiple bank lending is driven, inter alia, by regulatory limits on large credit exposures. These limits, aimed at mitigating an individual bank's concentration risk, force firms to explore alternative sources of funding, making the common borrowers' phenomenon more prominent. We find that multiple bank lending is determined endogenously, and its likelihood increases with the level of portfolio similarity between lenders. The size of the original lender and its systemic importance magnifies this effect. We argue that banks do not internalize the systemic effect of their lending decisions and that multiple bank lending constitutes an insurance mechanism related to an implicit "too-many-to-fail" guarantee. Its externalities are suboptimal and should be reinforced with better monitoring by the related authorities.     

Capital regulation and bank risk‐taking – new global evidence

This study investigates the link between capital regulation and bank risk‐taking. Using a sample of over 1,800 banks in 135 countries, I find that the relationship between capital regulation and bank risk‐taking (measured by z‐score) is an inverse ‘U’ shape. That is, as capital ratios increase, a bank will take less risk initially, then more risk. These results are robust to numerous additional tests, including estimation methods. I also find that more stringent regulations mitigate the effect of higher capital on lowering bank risk‐taking. Increased capital requirements, even when risk‐based, induce risk‐taking at higher levels, irrespective of whether banks are well‐ or under‐capitalised.     

Bank risk,competition and bank connectedness with firms: A literature review

The outbreak of the 2007–2009 financial crisis and of the European sovereign debt crisis again raised questions about the vulnerability and the behaviour of banking institutions. The unconventional monetary policies that followed have flattened the yield curve and created a low interest rates environment. This can give rise to risk-taking behaviour from banks and can therefore undermine the stability of the banking system with negative impact of the credit supply, corporate investment and real economy. This article proposes a literature review on the main determinants of bank lending and risk-taking decisions, going through the competition in the banking market, the bank connectedness with firms and the role of monetary and banking authorities. The systemic risk concept is also discussed as well as its drivers and potential measures that should be monitored by prudential authorities in order to preserve financial stability.     

Competition and financial stability in European cooperative banks

Cooperative banks are a driving force for socially committed business at the local level, accounting for around one fifth of the European Union (EU) bank deposits and loans. Despite their importance, little is known about the relationship between bank stability and competition for these small credit institutions. Does competition affect the stability of cooperative banks? Does the financial stability of banks increase/decrease when competition is higher? We assess the dynamic relationship between competition and bank soundness (both in the short and long run) among European cooperative banks between 1998 and 2009. We obtain three main results. First, we provide evidence in line with the competition-stability view proposed by Boyd and De Nicolò (2005). Bank market power negatively “Granger-causes” banks' soundness, meaning that there is a positive relationship between competition and stability. Second, we find that this fundamental relationship does not change during the 2007–2009 financial crisis. Third, we show that increased homogeneity in the cooperative banking sector positively affects bank soundness. Our findings have important policy implications for designing and implementing regulations that enhance the overall stability of the financial system and in particular of the cooperative banking sector.     

The securitization of gold and its potential impact on gold stocks

We study the market impact of a very successful financial innovation – the SPDR Gold Trust exchange-traded fund (GLD). GLD holds physical gold, and provides traders with a convenient and cost-effective way to gain exposure to gold. We find that after the introduction of GLD, the liquidity of gold company stocks declined, and their adverse-selection risk increased. Over the two-month period after GLD’s introduction, the stocks’ relative effective bid-ask spreads increased by over 15%, while their adverse-selection cost, as measured by the price impact of trades, went up by more than 30%. Gold stocks also experienced significant negative abnormal returns (−12% on average) in the month after GLD started trading. Our findings suggest that GLD attracted traders, especially uninformed traders, away from gold company stocks, and that the resulting negative demand shocks and decrease in the stocks’ liquidity caused their prices to decline. Our results show that existing securities can be seriously adversely affected when a new security enters the market.     

Securitization and the dark side of diversification

Diversification by banks affects the systemic risk of the sector. Importantly, Wagner (2010) shows that linear diversification increases systemic risk. We consider the case of securitization, whereby loan portfolios are sliced into tranches with different seniority levels. We show that tranching offers nonlinear diversification strategies, which can reduce the failure risk of individual institutions beyond the minimum level attainable by linear diversification without increasing systemic risk.     

Implications of bank regulation for loan supply and bank stability: a dynamic perspective

ABSTRACT

We show that internal funds play a particular role in the regulation of bank capital, which has not received much attention, yet. A bank's decision on loan supply and capital structure determines its immediate bankruptcy risk as well as the future availability of internal funds. These internal funds in turn determine a bank's future costs of external finance and its future vulnerability to bankruptcy risks. Using a partial equilibrium model, we study how internal funds affect these intra- and intertemporal links. Moreover, our positive analysis identifies the effects of risk-weighted capital-to-asset ratios, liquidity coverage ratios and regulatory margin calls on the dynamics of internal funds and thus loan supply and bank stability. Only regulatory margin calls or large liquidity coverage ratios achieve bank stability for all risk levels, but for large risks a bank will stop credit intermediation.     

德意志银行风险管理的借鉴与启示

该文总结学习了德意志银行的全球风险管理框架、稳健的发展战略、国家风险管理以及科学的银行风险管理技术;认为我国商业银行应尽快构建完整独立的全面风险管理框架,完善商业银行全面风险的管理模式。