Credit Risk Versus Capital Requirements under Basel II: Are SME Loans and Retail Credit Really Different?

Under Basel II, retail and SME credit (R&SME) receive special treatment because of a supposedly smaller exposure to systemic risk. Most research on this issue has been based on parameterized credit risk models. We present new evidence by applying Carey's (Carey, Mark. “Credit Risk in Private Debt Portfolios.” Journal of Finance 53, no. 4 (1998), 1363–1387.) nonparametric Monte-Carlo resampling method to two banks' complete loan portfolios. By exploiting that a sub-sample of all borrowers has been assigned an internal rating by both banks, we can compare the credit loss distributions for the three credit types, and compute both economic and regulatory capital under Basel II. We also test if our conclusions are sensitive to the definitions of R&SME credit. Our findings show that R&SME portfolios are usually riskier than corporate credit. Special treatment under Basel II is thus not justified. JEL classification: C14, C15, G21, G28, G33.     

Effects of the New Basel Capital Accord on Bank Capital Requirements for SMEs

Using data from three countries (US, Italy and Australia) and surveying related studies from several other countries in Europe, we investigate the effects of the New Basel Capital Accord on bank capital requirements for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). We find that, for all the countries, banks will have significant benefits, in terms of lower capital requirements, when considering small and medium sized firms as retail customers. But they will be obliged to use the Advanced IRB approach and to manage them on a pooled basis. For SMEs as corporate, however, capital requirements will be slightly greater than under the existing Basel I Capital Accord. We believe that most eligible banks will use a blended approach (considering some SMEs as retail and some as corporate). Through a breakeven analysis, we find that for all of our countries, banking organizations will be obliged to classify as retail at least 20% of their SME portfolio in order to maintain the current capital requirement (8%). JEL classification: G21, G28     

The Impact of Basel II on Lending to Small- and Medium-Sized Firms: A Regulatory Policy Assessment Based on Spanish Credit Register Data

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the impact on bank credit exposures to small- and medium-sized Spanish firms of the current proposal for reform of the 1988 Capital Accord using information from the Spanish Credit Register. Capital requirements for exposures to those firms, according to the various revisions of the proposed capital reform (from the January 2001 consultative document to the April 2003 one), are calculated to analyze whether the existing pattern of bank financing of small- and medium-sized firms might be altered. Finally, the incentives for individual banks to adopt the advanced internal ratings-based approach proposed by Basel II are evaluated.     

Pricing Sovereign Credit Risk of Poland: Evidence from the CDS Market

We analyze the market assessment of sovereign credit risk using a reduced-form model to price the credit default swap (CDS) spreads, thus enabling us to derive values for the probability of default (PD) and loss given default (LGD) from the quotes of sovereign CDS contracts. We compare different specifications of the models allowing for both fixed and time-varying LGD, and we use these values to analyze the sovereign credit risk of Polish debt throughout the period of a global financial crisis. Our results suggest the presence of a low LGD and a relatively high PD during a recent financial crisis.     

The impact of bank regulation on the cost of credit: Evidence from a discontinuity in capital requirements

We study the effect on credit relationships of the Small and Medium Enterprises Supporting Factor (SME-SF), a regulatory risk weight reduction on small loans to SMEs. Employing a regression discontinuity design and matched bank-firm data from Italy, we find that a 1 percent drop in capital requirements causes an average 13 basis points reduction in the cost of credit. Moreover, with a novel measure of bank regulatory capital scarcity, we show that the drop is larger for banks facing tighter constraints. Furthermore, the drop is larger for firms with low switching costs, while the sharp assignment rule may have led to the rationing of marginal borrowers. Such findings indicate that the entire distribution of firms and banks’ characteristics plays a crucial role in determining the impact of regulatory capital changes.     

Revolving versus Convenience Use of Credit Cards: Evidence from U.S. Credit Bureau Data

Credit card payments and revolving debt are important for consumer theory but a key data source—credit bureau records—does not distinguish between current charges and revolving debt. We develop a theory-based econometric methodology using a hidden Markov model to estimate the likelihood a consumer is revolving debt each quarter. We validate our approach using a new survey linked to credit bureau data. We estimate that for likely revolvers: (i) 100% of an increase in credit becomes an increase in debt eventually; (ii) credit limit changes are half as salient as debt changes; and (iii) revolving status is persistent.     

美国信用评级市场与监管变迁及其借鉴

美国信用评级业发展已经有上百年的历史。市场高度垄断、严重的"顺周期"现象、利益冲突、金融市场及监管当局对评级的严重依赖是当今美国信用评级市场存在的四大问题。目前美国信用评级业形成了以行业自律为基础、NRSRO注册与美国证券交易委员会(SEC)直接监管相结合的信用评级监管体系。美国信用评级市场发展及监管变迁对我国的启示是:应逐步打破国际评级市场完全由美国评级机构垄断的现有格局,必须逐步构建有中国自身特色的本土评级体系,并将本土评级体系的培育与国内债券市场建设、"走出去"战略及人民币国际化战略结合起来,降低国内监管部门及市场主体对外部评级机构的依赖。     

The Structure of Multiple Credit Relationships: Evidence from U.S. Firms

When firms borrow from multiple concentrated creditors such as banks they appear to differentiate their allocation of borrowing. In this paper, we put forward hypotheses for this borrowing pattern based on incomplete contract theories and test them using a sample of small U.S. firms. We find that firms with more valuable and more homogeneous assets differentiate borrowing more sharply across concentrated creditors. Moreover, borrowing differentiation is inversely related to restructuring costs and positively related to firms' informational transparency. The results suggest that the structure of credit relationships is used to discipline creditors and entrepreneurs, especially during corporate reorganizations.     

Cyclical adjustment of capital requirements: A simple framework

We present a model of an economy with heterogeneous banks that may be funded with uninsured deposits and equity capital. Capital serves to ameliorate a moral hazard problem in the choice of risk. There is a fixed aggregate supply of bank capital, so the cost of capital is endogenous. A regulator sets risk-sensitive capital requirements in order to maximize a social welfare function that incorporates a social cost of bank failure. We consider the effect of a negative shock to the supply of bank capital and show that optimal capital requirements should be lowered. Failure to do so would keep banks safer but produce a large reduction in aggregate investment. The result provides a rationale for the cyclical adjustment of risk-sensitive capital requirements.     

借鉴美国经验 防范我国CRMA风险

全球性金融危机将信用衍生品推上了风口浪尖,出于防范信用风险而设计的金融产品是危机的导火索。在经历了市场的深刻反省后,全球的信用衍生品规模又创新高,我国也适时推出了CRMA（信用风险缓释合约）系列信用衍生品,但在我国市场机制还不成熟的条件下对其监管是对监管部门的考验。本文分析了信用衍生产品市场的发展及其风险,指出我国金融监管当局应加强对CRMA风险的防范。     

中小企业信贷可得性的影响因素

本文利用中国人民银行征信系统的相关数据,实证研究湖南地区中小企业信贷可得性的影响因素,以检验银行对中小企业的贷款技术。实证结果表明:大型和跨区域性银行对中小企业未采取关系型贷款;贷款银行对中小企业的财务特征不太重视;大型和跨区域性银行对中小企业贷款主要采用信用评分技术。作者建议:第一,整合信息资源,发展独立的信用评估机构对中小企业进行信用评估,降低大型和跨区域性银行对中小企业贷款成本和信息不对称程度;第二,大力发展区域性中小商业银行,并鼓励其形成和充分发挥对中小企业进行关系型贷款的比较优势。     

CRT市场信用风险传染机制研究

本文依据信用风险相关理论和信用风险转移的已有研究成果,从CRT市场上信用风险本身和CRT交易过程中的潜在风险、信息不对称下微观银行CRT行为中的道德风险和逆向选择问题以及金融监管、货币政策和金融创新等宏观因素波动3个方面对CRT市场上信用风险传染的作用机理和生成机制进行了深入的理论探讨,以期为我国CRT市场发展和理论研究的进一步深入提供新的思路。     

Potential Competitive Effects of Basel II on Banks in SME Credit Markets in the United States

We examine the likely competitive effects of implementation of Basel II capital requirements on banks in the market for credit to SMEs in the U.S. Similar competitive effects from Basel II may occur for other credits and financial instruments in the U.S. and other nations. We address whether reduced risk weights for SME credits extended by large banking organizations that adopt the Advanced Internal Ratings-Based (A-IRB) approach of Basel II might significantly adversely affect the competitive positions of other organizations. The analyses suggest only relatively minor competitive effects on most community banks because the large A-IRB adopters tend to make very different types of SME loans to different types of borrowers than community banks. However, there may be significant adverse effects on the competitive positions of large non-A-IRB banking organizations because the data do not suggest any strong segmentation in SME credit markets among large organizations. JEL classification: G21, G28, G38, L51     

Forecasting Credit Spread Volatility: Evidence from the Japanese Eurobond Market

Different approaches to forecasting the volatility associated with the credit spreads on Yen Eurobonds are investigated. The actual volatility, historical volatility and estimated conditional volatility on spreads derived from a regression-based model with a GARCH and ARMA specification are compared within an adaptation of Black’s (J. Finance, 31, 1976, 361–367) option-pricing model. Surprisingly, the regression forecast over a medium forecasting horizon suggests that historic volatility provides the better forecast. The implications of these results for volatility forecasting and credit spread modelling are also discussed.JEL Classification: C32; G15     

Modelling Credit Risk for Innovative SMEs: the Role of Innovation Measures

Small-medium enterprises (SMEs) encounter financial constraints when they try to obtain credit from banks. These constraints are particularly severe for innovative SMEs. Thus, developing models for innovative SMEs that provide reliable estimates of their probabilities of default (PD) is important because the PDs can also serve as ratings. We examine the role of innovative assets such as patents in credit risk modelling due to their signaling value. Specifically, we add to a logit model two innovation-related variables in order to account for both the dimension and the value of the patent portfolio. Based on a unique data set of innovative SMEs with default years of 2005–2008, we show that, although the value of the patent portfolio always reduces the PD, its dimension reduces the firm’s riskiness only if coupled with an appropriate equity level.     

The Sensitivity of the Loss Given Default Rate to Systematic Risk: New Empirical Evidence on Bank Loans

We verify the existence of a relation between loss given default rate (LGDR) and macroeconomic conditions by examining 11,649 bank loans concerning the Italian market. Using both the univariate and multivariate analyses, we pinpoint diverse macroeconomic explanatory variables for LGDR on loans to households and SMEs. For households, LGDR is more sensitive to the default-to-loan ratio, the unemployment rate, and household consumption. For SMEs, LGDR is influenced by the total number of employed people and the GDP growth rate. These findings corroborate the Basel Committee’s provision that LGDR quantification process must identify distinct downturn conditions for each supervisory asset class.

证券投资基金市场风险与信用风险度量及其关系研究

运用VaR模型和KMV模型分别度量证券投资基金的市场风险和信用风险,并基于面板向量自回归模型(PVAR)考量两者之间的相互作用关系。结果表明：基金投资同时存在市场风险和信用风险,且它们互为Granger原因。同时,信用风险显著受前一期市场风险的正向影响,而市场风险显著受前一期信用风险的负向影响。因此,在衡量基金投资的总风险时,必须充分考虑其市场风险与信用风险之间的耦合关系。     

金融科技、最优银行业市场结构与小微企业信贷供给

小微企业融资问题一直备受各界关注,金融科技的发展或许会带来新变化,但相关研究尚不充分。本文构建包含贷款技术和银行业市场结构的理论模型,提出金融科技、银行业市场结构与小微企业信贷供给的关系假说。在此基础上,手工收集百度搜索指数数据,建立与银行小微企业信贷业务相关的各省金融科技发展水平指数,并利用2011-2018年省级面板数据进行相应的实证检验。研究结果表明:针对整个银行业体系,金融科技有助于促进银行小微企业信贷供给;银行业市场结构与小微企业信贷供给之间呈现"倒U"型关系,即推动银行增加小微企业信贷供给时,存在最优银行业市场结构;与此同时,金融科技发展水平将影响银行业最优市场结构,金融科技发展水平越高,促进小微企业信贷供给的最优银行业竞争程度越高。本文的研究结论能够进一步丰富小微企业信贷理论,补充中国经验证据,为促进银行小微企业信贷供给提供重要启示。