Credit risk securitization and bank soundness in Europe

Using a unique sample of 749 cash and synthetic securitization transactions issued by 60 stock-listed bank holdings in the EU-13 plus Switzerland over the period from 1997 to 2007 this paper provides empirical evidence that credit risk securitization has a negative impact on the issuing banks’ financial soundness. Baseline findings hold even when controlling for likely reverse causality by employing instrumental variable techniques and substituting the accounting-based z-score ratio by market-based indicators of bank risk. Moreover, investigating the relationship between credit risk securitization and single z-score components in order to evaluate significant transmission channels proposed by relevant theoretical literature, we find a negative impact of securitization on bank profitability and capital environment as well as a positive relationship between securitization and the issuing bank's return volatility. Against the background of our empirical results we underline that the decision by the Basel Committee to enhance the new Basel III framework in the field of securitization is a step in the right direction.     

The impact of bank competition and concentration on bank risk-taking behavior and stability: Evidence from GCC countries

This paper presents a comprehensive assessment of the impact of competition on bank fragility pre and post financial crisis period in the GCC banking market as measured by bank risk-taking behavior and bank stability during the period 1998–2016. Our results indicate that a higher level of bank competition and the greater degree of concentration adds to financial fragility. The findings further shows that during the 2008 crisis, lower bank competition maintain the stability of GCC banks. We also find that lower level of competition and lower concentration in the banking market increases the risk-taking behavior of the low capitalized, low liquid and small banks which add to fragility in the banking system. Our findings suggest that countries with greater capital stringency, greater supervisory power, greater market discipline, and private monitoring, with explicit deposit insurance schemes, higher shareholder protection, and higher legal efficiency decrease banks’ risk-taking and increase their stability. We also find that greater regulatory restrictions and higher creditor protection decrease banks’ stability and increase risk in concerned countries. We find support for both competition-fragility and competition-stability hypotheses in the GCC banking market. The results also confirm that the use of a single measure of competition is insufficient to assess the role of competition in banking stability.     

Bank competition,financial development and macroeconomic stability: Empirical evidence from emerging economies

In this study, we investigate the potential contribution of bank competition to macroeconomic stability, and the interactive role of financial development. We classify macroeconomic stability into economic and financial stability. Economic stability is represented by the volatility of actual and unexpected output growth, whereas financial stability is assessed by the aggregate Z-score and volatility of the private credit-to-gross domestic product ratio. We employ two structural and two non-structural measures of bank competition in our analysis. Applying a two-step dynamic panel system (GMM) to macroeconomic data from 48 developing nations from 1999 to 2018, we find a bell-shaped relationship between bank competition and macroeconomic stability. The findings imply that a higher level of bank competition promotes macroeconomic stability by reducing output growth volatility, fluctuations in private credit, and the probability of bank default. There is an optimal level of bank competition beyond which it may foster economic and financial instability. Moreover, financial development enhances bank competition’s positive impact on macroeconomic stability.     

Local indirect least squares and average marginal effects in nonseparable structural systems

We study the scope of local indirect least squares (LILS) methods for nonparametrically estimating average marginal effects of an endogenous cause X on a response Y in triangular structural systems that need not exhibit linearity, separability, or monotonicity in scalar unobservables. One main finding is negative: in the fully nonseparable case, LILS methods cannot recover the average marginal effect. LILS methods can nevertheless test the hypothesis of no effect in the general nonseparable case. We provide new nonparametric asymptotic theory, treating both the traditional case of observed exogenous instruments Z and the case where one observes only error-laden proxies for Z.     

How does investor attention matter for crude oil prices and returns? Evidence from time-frequency quantile causality analysis

This paper studies the time–frequency, nonlinear quantile relationship between investor attention (GSVI) and crude oil over the period from January 2000 to April 2020. To do so, the wavelet coherency, wavelet-based causality-in-quantiles test and quantile-on-quantile method are employed. The results indicate that first, the correlation between investor attention and crude oil is relatively high, and the highly correlated regions are concentrated from 8 to 16 months. In most cases, the GSVI is negatively correlated with the crude oil market. Additionally, under extreme market conditions, the explanatory ability is stronger than in the normal market, and it is greater in the low-frequency domain than in the high-frequency domain. Finally, investor attention has an apparent asymmetric impact on crude oil prices and returns at each scale, displaying a positive effect on the low quantiles of crude oil but a negative effect on the high quantiles across all quantiles of the GSVI. In the short term, when crude oil prices and returns are in a bear market, the larger volume of the GSVI has a greater impact on them. Moreover, the impact becomes greatest under extreme market conditions.     

When Necessity Becomes a Virtue: The Effect of Product Market Competition on Corporate Social Responsibility

We test whether Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is driven by strategic considerations by empirically studying the link between competition and firms' social performance. We find that firms in more competitive industries have better social ratings. In particular, we show that (i) different market concentration proxies are negatively related to widely used CSR measures; (ii) that an increase in competition due to higher import penetration leads to superior CSR performance; (iii) that firms in more competitive environments have a superior environmental performance, measured by firm pollution levels; and (iv) that more product competition is associated to a larger within‐industry CSR variance. We interpret these results as evidence that CSR is strategically chosen.     

An assessment of the Bank of Canada's term PRA facility

This paper empirically assesses the effectiveness of the Bank of Canada's term Purchase and Resale Agreement (PRA) facility in reducing funding pressures, as measured by the CDOR-OIS spread. It examines the behaviour of this spread around both term PRA announcement dates and term PRA operation dates, using an event-study methodology to control for developments in other money markets as well as proxies for Canadian banking sector credit risk. Overall, there is robust evidence that the term PRA announcements reduced bank funding costs at both 1-month and 3-month terms, whereas we find no evidence of an impact from term PRA operations.     

Dynamic gap transformations: Are banks asset – transformers or brokers? or both?

We study the sensitivity of bank stock returns to interest rates, by extending existing tests in two important directions. We incorporate dynamic gap adjustments and extend the traditional duration gap measure to new gap measures based on the general equilibrium term structure model developed by Longstaff and Schwartz [Longstaff, F. A., & Schwartz, E. S. (1992). Interest-rate volatility and the term structure: A two-factor general equilibrium model. Journal of Finance, 47(4), 1259–1282]. Consistent with previous studies, the results indicate that banks hedge against changes in interest rate levels, when the levels are low, and speculate when the levels are high, but the volatility is low.     

Economic policy uncertainty,investor sentiment and financial stability—an empirical study based on the time varying parameter-vector autoregression model

This paper applies the time varying parameter-vector autoregression model to explore the dynamic relationship between economic policy uncertainty, investor sentiment and financial stability in China in different periods and at different time points. The empirical results show that economic policy uncertainty has an obvious negative impact on investor sentiment before 2012 and financial stability in the short term, and the influence of economic policy uncertainty on investor sentiment is greater than that of economic policy uncertainty on financial stability. These influences were more significant during the period of the global financial crisis in 2008. Moreover, investor sentiment had a positive and gradually increasing effect on financial stability, while after 2010, the positive impact gradually weakened. Furthermore, economic policy uncertainty is negatively affected by financial stability, and the effect of financial stability on investor sentiment is positive. In terms of mediating effects, economic policy uncertainty has an indirect impact on financial stability through investor sentiment and vice versa. This paper provides a new solution to economic problems explored in behavioral finance research. Additionally, Chinese government agencies can achieve the goal of preventing financial crises and maintaining financial stability by monitoring investor sentiment and implementing targeted economic policies.

     

Risk reporting and stock return in the UK: Does market competition Matter?

This study examines the extent to which market competition influences risk reporting practice. It also explores how market competition affects the usefulness of risk reporting. The automated textual analysis measures the level of risk reporting [how much to report] and its tone [how it is reported] of UK FTSE 350 firms. The abnormal stock return is used as a proxy for the usefulness of risk reporting. In contrast to the proprietary cost hypothesis, our results indicate that the level of risk reporting is a positive function of market competition. Besides, UK firms are likely to disseminate more (less) negative (positive) news about their risks when market competition increases. However, after examining the informativeness of this reporting, we provide evidence that the level of reported risk information does not significantly enhance the abnormal stock returns of UK firms. Nevertheless, the tone of the reported risks carries incremental information indicative of a firm’s abnormal stock return, especially when market competition decreases. The findings suggest that firms are likely to alleviate their proprietary costs by framing their reporting of risk information in a way that deters potential competitors from entering their market and that market competition diminishes the perceived informativeness of such reporting. The results provide implications for investors as they should not acknowledge the disclosure of higher risk information when asking for more corporate transparency, as it lacks informativeness. Besides, policymakers may impose extra compulsory requirements on the UK firms to avoid reporting overly optimistic risk news to protect investors and avoid the adverse effects of this reporting.     

Impact of Basel III liquidity regulations on U.S. Bank performance in different conditional profitability spectrums

We study the impact of the Basel III liquidity constraints, represented by the liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) and the net stable funding ratio (NSFR), on bank profitability, by employing the simultaneous quantile regression framework with time fixed effects. We find a positive and significant relationship between the LCR and profitability and the NSFR and profitability over most quantiles. However, the small magnitudes of the coefficients on LCR and NSFR across all quantiles of profitability suggest that LCR and NSFR have a minor quantitative impact on bank profitability. We then test and find that the Basel III liquidity constraints have a significantly different impact on banks with very low profits compared to banks who enjoy high profitability, emphasizing the need to use a quantile approach. We plot the coefficients to illustrate the impact of liquidity constraints across different conditional profitability spectrums. Lastly, we find that small banks are more vulnerable to short term liquidity risks (LCR) and big banks are more susceptible to medium to long term liquidity risks (NSFR). This suggests that considerations should be given to tailoring liquidity regulations based on the bank size and the relative bank profitability. The quantitatively small impact of the constraints suggest that Basel III has successfully set liquidity requirements to minimize the impact on bank profitability and the likelihood of an industry-wide liquidity crisis.     

An anomaly in the pricing of bank non-interest mortgage charges

This paper uses a monopolistically competitive model to study the determinants of bank mortgage charges. The study shows that concentration and the loan-price ratio do not have significant effects on the bank mortgage charges. Significantly, the charges are found to be positively related to the number of banks and bank offices in a given market and inversely related to the market size or population. (JEL L130, G210)     

Uncovering financial markets' beliefs about inflation targets

This paper exploits the term structure of interest rates to develop testable economic restrictions on the joint process of long‐term interest rates and inflation when the latter is subject to a targeting policy by the central bank. In an empirical application to the Canadian inflation target zone, results indicate that financial markets perceive the band to be of approximately the same width as announced but asymmetrically distributed around the official target. This finding suggests that, in practice, the monetary authority might attach different weights to positive and negative inflation deviations from the target. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The impact of oil prices and the financial market on cost efficiency in the insurance and Takaful sectors: Evidence from a stochastic frontier analysis

The Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) insurance industry, including conventional insurance and Takaful, has witnessed remarkable growth during the last decade. However, the economies of this region rely on oil as the primary stream of revenue and lack development in financial markets. This could affect the insurance industry. For this reason, this paper examines the impact of oil prices and the financial market on the cost efficiency of the insurance and Takaful sectors in GCC countries using a stochastic frontier cost function with data from 2009–2016. The results show that the relationship between oil prices and efficiency changes from positive to negative when the prices increase, whereas the relationship between the financial market and efficiency is negative. No clear evidence of the impact of oil prices on efficiency arises from the differences between conventional insurance and Takaful. However, there are differences regarding the financial market, with a negative impact on conventional insurance and a positive one on the Takaful business. The results of this study have implications for regulators and management. The Takaful industry is rapidly growing compared to conventional insurance in the GCC and, therefore, the financial market may have added benefits for the GCC region. However, caution is required in relation to the impact of the financial market on conventional insurance. Furthermore, management may require the development of strategies to deal with the nature of GCC economies to avoid shocks to oil prices.     

The China effect: Evidence from data at firm level in Thailand

This study investigates how competition with Chinese imports affects firms in Thailand. Using World Bank data on Thailand and United Nations trade data from 2003 to 2006, the empirical results show that there is no significant impact of Chinese import competition on employment, wages, or labor income share. However, further checks show that for firms with lower productivity, the impact on employment and labor income share is more likely to be negative. The impact of Chinese import competition on profit margins is significantly positive. Considering the impact on labor income share and profit margins, we conclude that because of Chinese import competition, income distribution possibly goes in disfavor of labor. Our study shows that the impact of Chinese import competition on the skilled labor ratio is positive and significant. This result suggests that Thai firms are on the path to skill upgrading as a result of Chinese import competition, which is helpful for Thailand’s long-run economic growth. As firms with low productivity are more likely to be negatively affected by Chinese import competition, improving productivity is still an efficient way to counter such competition.     

Are commercial bank lending propensities useful in understanding small firm finance?

We consider recent criticism by Berger et al. (J Bank Finance 31:11–33, 2007) of the use of commercial bank lending propensities (e.g., small business loans/total assets) as research tools. We use 2SLS cross sectional regressions with bank fixed effects to examine the relationship between small business lending and bank size. Our results indicate that the propensity to lend to small businesses declines as bank size increases, and the growth in small business lending does not keep pace with the growth in bank size. An increase in bank asset size from $1 billion to $100 billion reduces the ratio of small business loans to total loans and leases by 28 percentage points. Contrary to Berger and Black (2007) we find that most small business loans are made by small banks. For 1993 to 2006 as a whole, small banks (those under $1 billion) accounted for only 14.1% of total deposits and 9.7% of total banking assets, but they accounted for 28.4% of small business loans outstanding. This is consistent with the pattern shown by lending propensities. We conclude that these propensities remain very useful tools in research on small firm finance.     

商业银行贷款风险及其防范

作为一种经济现象,商业银行贷款风险具有客观性。一直以来,商业银行的不良贷款比率都较高,情况十分不乐观。商业银行贷款风险一方面给商业银行的运营带来了不利影响,一方面还阻碍到了银行经济效益以及市场信誉的提升。因此,为了符合新协议的相关标准,在日益激烈的市场竞争中处于优势地位,商业银行就必须采取措施对贷款风险进行防范。文中从实际情况出发对商业银行贷款风险的相关现状进行了阐述,并在此基础之上分析了造成贷款风险的原因,进一步提出了相关的应对措施。     

On the evaluation of poly-t density functions

Poly-t densities are defined by the property that their kernel is a product, or a ratio of products, of multivariate t-density kernels. As discussed in Drèze (1977), these densities arise as Bayesian posterior densities for regression coefficients under a variety of specifications for the prior density and the data generating process. We have therefore developed methods and computer algorithms to evaluate integrating constants and other characteristics of poly-t densities with no more than a single quadratic form in the numerator (section 2). As a by-product of our analysis we have also derived an algorithm for the computation of moments of positive definite quadratic forms in Normal variables (section 3). In section 4 we discuss inference on the sampling variances associated with the models discussed in Drèze (1977).     

Asymptotic stability of a general equilibrium under perfect and monopolistic competition

This study examines the asymptotic stability of a general equilibrium for an economy under perfect and monopolistic competition in which delays in a production process arise. Crucially, we find that the sufficient conditions for the stability of the equilibrium in each model differ markedly. For the stability of the equilibrium under perfect (monopolistic) competition, it is favorable that the slope of every demand curve is gradual (steep).     

Systemic risk in banking networks: Advantages of “tiered” banking systems

This paper studies the risk and potential impact of system-wide defaults in a tiered banking network, where a small group of head institutions has many credit linkages with other banks, while the majority of banks have only a few links. A network is random and displays a given distribution of the number of banks׳ linkages, known as degree. We model tiering by a negative correlation between degrees of neighboring banks and by a scale-free degree distribution. The main findings of the paper highlight the advantages of tiering. Both the risk of systemic crisis and the potential scope of the crisis are lower in systems with negative correlation of bank degrees than in other types of systems. Similarly, in scale-free networks, the resilience of the system to shocks is increasing with the level of tiering.