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.     

Basel II and bank lending to emerging markets: Evidence from the German banking sector

This paper investigates whether the new Basel Accord will induce a change in bank lending to emerging markets using a comprehensive new data set on German banks’ foreign exposure. We test two interlinked hypotheses on the conditions under which the change in the regulatory capital would leave lending flows unaffected. This would be the case if (i) the new regulatory capital requirement remains below the economic capital and (ii) banks’ economic capital to emerging markets already adequately reflects risk. On both accounts the evidence indicates that the new Basel Accord should have a limited effect on lending to emerging markets.     

Consolidation in banking and the lending channel of monetary transmission: Evidence from Asia and Latin America

This paper examines the relationship between increased consolidation in banking and monetary policy transmission in eighteen Asian and Latin American economies, using bank-level data from 1996 to 2006. Our results provide consistent evidence that as concentration in banking increases, the bank lending channel is weakened, leading the monetary policy transmission mechanism to be less effective. We also investigate how this relationship between concentration and the strength of the lending channel depends on bank-specific characteristics. Using bank-level balance sheet and income statement data allows us, first, to better identify the effects of banking consolidation on the supply-side bank lending channel from those of the demand-side interest rate channel, and second, to test for any systematic differences in the impact of consolidation on monetary policy transmission across banks of different size and financial strength. We also discuss potential explanations for and policy implications of the main findings of this paper.     

Foreign bank penetration and the lending channel in emerging economies: Evidence from bank-level panel data

This paper examines the main implications of recently increasing foreign bank penetration on bank lending as a channel of monetary policy transmission in emerging economies. Using a dynamic panel model of loan growth, we investigate the loan granting behavior of 1273 banks in the emerging economies of Asia, Latin America, and Central and Eastern Europe during the period from 1996 to 2003. Applying the pooled OLS, system GMM, and panel VAR estimators, we find consistent evidence that foreign banks are less responsive to monetary shocks in host countries, as they adjust their outstanding loan portfolios and interest rates to a lesser extent than domestic private banks, independent of their liquidity, capitalization, size, efficiency, and credit risk, and although there exists a bank lending channel in the emerging economies, it is declining in strength due to the increased level of foreign bank penetration. We also explore possible driving factors for the different responses of foreign and domestic banks to monetary policy shocks by investigating foreign banks’ different behavior during banking crises and tranquil periods, the effects of mode of entry to host countries, the home-country effects, and the response of foreign banks from OECD countries vs. all foreign countries including non-OECD countries. We suggest the access of foreign banks to funding from parent banks through internal capital markets as the most convincing explanation.     

Determinants of capital structure in emerging markets: Evidence from Vietnam

Capital structure decision is an important corporate behavior which draws strong interest from different stakeholders. It is more important in emerging markets due to their unique legal, cultural and institutional characteristics. This paper sheds further light on the question of whether capital structure determinants are different in emerging markets. We utilize a new and unique data set containing firm specific attributes over the period from 2006 to 2015. Employing GMM estimator to control for endogeneity, the results indicate that the determinants of capital structure are different for long-term and short-term indicators.     

The effects of government capital and liquidity support programs on bank lending: Evidence from the syndicated corporate credit market

This study jointly evaluates the effects of the U.S. Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the Federal Reserve's Discount Window (DW), and Term Auction Facility (TAF) on bank syndicated lending during the 2007–2009 financial crisis, using a unique data set that tracks the exposure of each lender in each syndicated credit facility in each year. By comparing lending changes within a group of banks that lend to the same facility of the same firm in the same year, it eliminates the impacts of demand-side factors that often bias the results of empirical studies on bank credit supply. Overall, I find that TARP, DW, and TAF played only a marginal role in increasing bank syndicated lending. By examining lending changes at the facility-lender and firm-lender levels, this study is less prone to the reverse causality problem that is inherent in studies using bank-level data. Therefore, this study complements studies using bank-level data and provides policymakers with a balanced view on the effects of these programs.     

Assessing the effectiveness of financial reporting harmonization for emerging market banks: The case of Banco Serfin

In the last decade there has been a proliferation of financial crises in emerging markets. To some extent, the suddenness and magnitude of some of these crises have been blamed on poor financial reporting standards for bank loan losses. As a result, prior to providing countries with “financial bailout” funds, international investors and international financial organizations have increasingly required that countries harmonize their bank financial reporting standards with international financial reporting standards.Given this trend, this case requires students to assess the effectiveness of efforts to harmonize loan financial reporting (with International Financial Reporting Standards) for Mexican banks during (and after) the country’s financial crisis of the late 1990s. Students are required to assess the extent to which both pre-crisis standards as well as new, post-crisis standards complied with international financial reporting standards. They are also required to assess the impact of the new standards on the reporting practices for loans of one particularly troubled financial institution. Through the examination of this institution’s accounting practices for loans, students obtain a familiarity of the shortcomings of emerging markets’ banks’ loan financial reporting as well as the factors which influence the adoption of international financial reporting standards by emerging market banks.     

Changes in the value relevance of accounting information over time: Evidence from the emerging market of China

We investigate the changes in the value relevance of accounting information among Chinese firms over the past two decades, during which accounting reforms are launched to provide decision makers with increased disclosure and higher quality financial information. We also investigate the factors that differentiate firms showing significant value relevance improvement from firms showing little improvement. We find increases in the value relevance of some financial variables and decreases in others, which suggests that accounting numbers help to explain the pricing process of stock shares although at different levels. In addition, we find that value relevance improvements are more pronounced for smaller firms, firms with lower growth rates, and those with greater asset tangibility. We also document that value relevance improvements are generally lower in an exuberant stock market. These results have implications for a variety of information users and policy makers in emerging countries which are reforming their accounting systems.     

The conditioning role of performance on the bank risk-taking channel of monetary policy: Evidence from a multiple-tool regime

The study investigates how monetary policy affects bank risk-taking under a multiple-tool regime of Vietnam during 2007–2018. Particularly, we also consider the conditioning role of bank performance, broken down by bank profitability and cost efficiency, in this nexus. Using both dynamic and static panel models, we show that the liquidity injection initiated by the central bank’s asset purchases induces banks to take more risks, captured by the traditional Z-score and two alternative measures of credit risk. However, monetary policy easing through decreased interest rates is beneficial to the credit portfolio and financial stability of banks, which therefore challenges the functioning of the bank risk-taking channel. This startling result is robust across three different interest rate measures, including lending rates, refinance rates and rediscount rates. Further analysis reveals that our observed effects are alleviated for banks with higher performance — i.e., more profitable and efficient banks. This in-depth finding offers more insights into the “search for yield” incentive, based on the theory of information asymmetry and the two competing hypotheses of “bad management” and “cost skimping”.     

The positive side of bank wealth management products: Evidence from bank lending rate

The systemic risk and negative social impacts from bank-issued wealth management products (WMPs) are well studied by scholars and practitioners in China. Using hand-collected bank data, we find that WMPs help reduce banks’ cost of funds, which is then passed on to their borrowers as lower borrowing cost. This finding shows an upside of this controversial but increasingly popular bank product. We propose four mechanisms through which WMPs can lower banks’ cost of funds: structural change in deposits, cross-subsidization, liquidity effect, and related-party transactions. We find supporting evidence for those mechanisms, and their effects vary across state-owned, joint-stock, and city commercial banks. Those variations are consistent with the unique characteristics of each bank group. We further explore the competition for capital between state-owned and non-state-owned banks. The results suggest that state-owned banks offer significantly higher interest rates for deposits as non-state-owned banks expand in the same region. WMP issuance is likely a differentiation strategy in response to the competition for deposits.     

Crossing the lines: The conditional relation between exchange rate exposure and stock returns in emerging and developed markets

This paper examines the importance of exchange rate exposure in the return generating process for a large sample of non-financial firms from 37 countries. We argue that the effect of exchange rate exposure on stock returns is conditional and show evidence of a significant return impact to firm-level currency exposures when conditioning on the exchange rate change. We further show that the realized return to exposure is directly related to the size and sign of the exchange rate change, suggesting fluctuations in exchange rates as a source of time-variation in currency return premia. For the entire sample the return impact ranges from 1.2 to 3.3% per unit of currency exposure, and it is larger for firms in emerging markets compared to developed markets. Overall, the results indicate that foreign exchange rate exposure estimates are economically meaningful, despite the fact that individual time-series results are noisy and many exposures are not statistically significant, and that exchange rate exposure plays an important role in generating cross-sectional return variation. Moreover, we show that the relation between exchange rate exposure and stock returns is more consistent with a cash flow effect than a discount rate effect.     

MENA stock market volatility persistence: Evidence before and after the financial crisis of 2008

The global financial crisis began with a financial meltdown in the United States in early 2008 and then it had spread to the rest of the world. In this paper we test whether the MENA equity market volatility presents a different behavior before and after the financial crisis of 2008. Using long range dependence techniques we test for long memory in the returns, absolute and squared returns of the MENA equity markets. We subject the series to unit root tests that allow for structural breaks and use the Bai and Perron (1998, Econometrica, 66, 47; 2003a, J. Appl. Econometrics, 6, 72; 2003b, Econometrics J., 18, 1) to test for multiple breaks in the mean returns. The results indicate that the volatility measures represented by absolute and squared returns show evidence of long memory for the full and subsample periods, while the returns show a weak evidence of long memory. Considering the shift dates and corresponding to the 2008 financial crisis, the returns and volatility measures display less evidence of long memory in the after crisis period as opposed to the before crisis period. The change in the returns and volatility dynamics of these markets was due to financial and economic conditions that took place in the MENA region after the crisis.     

On the implications of market power in banking: Evidence from developing countries

This paper investigates how different degrees of market power affect bank efficiency and stability in the context of developing economies. It sheds light on the competition-stability nexus by documenting and analyzing the complex interactions between a tripod of variables that are central for regulators: the degree of market power, bank cost and profit efficiency, and overall firm stability. The results show that an increase in the degree of market power leads to greater bank stability and enhanced profit efficiency, despite significant cost efficiency losses. The findings lend empirical justification to the traditional view that increased competition may undermine bank stability, and may bear significant implications for stressed banking systems in developing economies.     

Interest rate dynamic effect on stock returns and central bank transparency: Evidence from emerging markets

Interest rate dynamic effect on stock returns is examined under different levels of central bank transparency under an asset pricing context. Using a large set of emerging countries in a panel data framework, we provide evidence for a negative link between stock returns and interest rate differences. However, this negative effect is reduced significantly under a transparent central bank, underlying a non-linear impact on stock returns. Our study is focused on a period from 1998 to 2008 where fundamental changes in the level of central banks’ transparency were occurred. Our findings imply that restrictive monetary policies under high levels of transparency lead to smoother reductions on stock returns with significant benefits for financial stability.     

Financial liberalization and changes in the dynamic behaviour of emerging market volatility: Evidence from four Latin American equity markets

This paper examines whether the dynamic behaviour of stock market volatility for four Latin American stock markets (Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico) and a mature stock market, that of the US, has changed during the last two decades. This period corresponds to years of significant financial and economic development in these emerging economies during which several financial crises have taken place. We use weekly data for the period January 1988 to July 2006 and we conduct our analysis in two parts. First, using the estimation of a Dynamic Conditional Correlation model we find that the short-term interdependencies between the Latin America stock markets and the developed stock market strengthened during the Asian, Latin American and Russian financial crises of 1997–1998. However, after the initial period of disturbance they eventually returned to almost their initial (relatively low) levels. Second, the estimation of a SWARCH-L model reveals the existence of more than one volatility regime and we detect a significant increased volatility during the period of crisis for all the markets under examination, although the capital flows liberalization process has only caused moderate shifts in volatility.     

The impacts of risk-taking behaviour and competition on technical efficiency: Evidence from the Chinese banking industry

This paper tests the impact of risk and competition on efficiency in the Chinese banking industry over the period 2003–2013. Comprehensive types of risk-taking behaviour are considered including credit risk, liquidity risk, capital risk, and insolvency risk. Competition is measured by the Lerner index. The results are cross-checked using an alternative econometric technique as well as an alternative competition indicator. The findings show that the technical and pure technical efficiencies of Chinese commercial banks are significantly and negatively affected by liquidity risk. They further show that greater competition precedes declines in technical and pure technical efficiencies of Chinese commercial banks. The results suggest that Chinese bank efficiency is significantly affected by bank diversification, banking sector development, stock market development, inflation and GDP growth rate. The findings also indicate that, compared to state-owned commercial banks, joint-stock commercial banks and city commercial banks have lower technical and pure technical efficiencies.     

The relevance of earnings and cash flows in a heavily regulated industry: Evidence from the Greek banking sector

This study examines the informational quality of annual accounting earnings within Greek banking institutions taking into consideration the most significant risks facing by such firms and specifically interest rate risk, credit risk, liquidity risk and solvency risk, alongside with the persistence of earnings and bank size as significant determinants of ERCs. Data analysis over a period of ten years (1995-2004) revealed that earnings have higher incremental importance in explaining stock return movements compared to cash flows since earnings change has been found to affect stock returns positively. Additionally, interest rate risk has a positive but not significant impact on the return-earnings relation but on the contrary solvency risk, credit risk and liquidity risk proved to have a negative impact on the valuation process for both small and big-sized banks. Finally, tests on the incremental informativeness of cash flows when earnings are transitory provide significant results suggesting that investors seek for alternative measures of banks' performance when earnings are characterized by increased extremity but inversely cash flows and earnings seem to be equally value relevant when investors evaluate big-sized banking institutions. The results are generally robust to the specification of the empirical models and the research design employed in our study.     

The roles of alternative data and machine learning in fintech lending: Evidence from the LendingClub consumer platform

There have been concerns about the use of alternative data sources by fintech lenders. We compare loans made by LendingClub and similar loans that were originated by banks. The correlations between the rating grades (assigned by LendingClub) and the borrowers’ FICO scores declined from about 80% (for loans originated in 2007) to about 35% for recent vintages (originated in 2014–2015), indicating that nontraditional data (not already accounted for in the FICO scores) have been increasingly used by fintech lenders. The rating grades perform well in predicting loan default. The use of alternative data has allowed some borrowers who would have been classified as subprime by traditional criteria to be slotted into “better” loan grades, allowing them to obtain lower priced credit.     

The International Dimension of Inflation: Evidence from Disaggregated Consumer Price Data

We estimate the contribution of international common factors to the dynamics of price inflation rates of a cross-section of 948 CPI products in four OECD countries: United States, Germany, France, and United Kingdom. We find two main results. First, on average, and at least in the sample 1991–2004, one international common factor explains between 15% and 30% of the variance of consumer prices (depending on the transformation applied to the data). Given the high level of disaggregation of our panel, this estimate is best viewed as a lower bound for the contribution of international factors to inflation dynamics. Second, we find a strongly positive and statistically significant relationship between exposure of consumer inflation to international shocks and trade openness at the sectoral level. The latter result holds regardless of whether the original data are expressed in local as opposed to common currency.     

Beyond internal capital markets: The in-house transmission of adverse sales shocks and the collateral channel

We study how shocks to some business segments affect investment in a firm's non-shock segments. We find that subsequent investment in the non-shock segments is significantly lower compared to segments of firms that do not experience shocks. Surprisingly, lower availability of internal funds does not account for the lower investment. We find that segment shocks propagate within the firm by decreasing the value of collateral assets and reducing the availability of external finance. Our results support the operation of an external finance collateral channel ([Kiyotaki, N., Moore, J., 1997. Credit cycles. Journal of Political Economy 105, 211–248.]) previously discussed in the literature.