Liquidity creation and bank capital structure in China

This paper investigates the relationship between liquidity creation and bank capital structure in China. We test the so-called “financial fragility-crowding out” hypothesis and the “risk absorption” hypothesis on Chinese banks and find that bank capital is negatively related to liquidity creation, which supports the financial fragility-crowding out hypothesis. In contrast, we find that foreign banks in China have a weaker relationship between liquidity creation and bank capital, which is consistent with the risk absorption hypothesis and findings in prior studies.     

Liquidity and bank capital structure

Bank capital requirements reduce the probability of bank failure and help mitigate taxpayers’ sharing in the losses that result from bank failures. Under Basel III, direct capital requirements are supplemented with liquidity requirements. Our results suggest that liquidity provisions of banks are connected to bank capital and that changes in liquidity indirectly affect the capital structure of financial institutions. Liquidity appears to be another instrument for adjusting bank capital structure beyond just capital requirements. Consistent with Diamond and Rajan (2005), we find that liquidity and capital should be considered jointly for promoting financial stability.     

Bank liquidity creation following regulatory interventions and capital support

We study the effects of regulatory interventions and capital support (bailouts) on banks’ liquidity creation. We rely on instrumental variables to deal with possible endogeneity concerns. Our key findings, which are based on a unique supervisory German dataset, are that regulatory interventions robustly trigger decreases in liquidity creation, while capital support does not affect liquidity creation. Additional results include the effects of these actions on different components of liquidity creation, lending, and risk taking. Our findings provide new and important insights into the debates about the design of regulatory interventions and bailouts.     

Impact of regulatory interactions on bank capital structure

This article examines a bank's optimal capital structure and risk-taking decisions in a regulated environment. We focus on the interactive nature of the Fed's collateralized discount window lending and the FDIC's deposit insurance. Such regulatory interactions are shown to have nonlinear and nonuniform impacts on the bank's leverage and risk-taking decisions. Thus, bank moral hazard problems may persist, even when banks are charged risk-adjusted deposit insurance premia and are also subject to market discipline through subordinate debt. Our analysis yields several new policy implications about the design and pricing of bank regulations.     

The external effects of bank executive pay: Liquidity creation and systemic risk

We develop a conceptual framework that links the compensation incentives of bank executives to the risk and return externalities generated by banks but borne by society. Using 1994 to 2016 data from large U.S. commercial banks, we find that CEO pay-performance incentives reduce both negative systemic risk externalities and positive liquidity creation externalities, while pay-risk incentives increase both externalities. Our findings offer support for Federal Reserve guidelines that encourage greater reliance on long-term equity-based compensation, and they infer a regulatory tradeoff: Bank executive pay rules aimed at reducing systemic risk will result in reduced system-wide liquidity creation as well.     

Liquidity and capital structure

We examine the relation between equity market liquidity and capital structure. We find that firms with more liquid equity have lower leverage and prefer equity financing when raising capital. For example, after sorting firms into size quintiles and then into liquidity quintiles, the average debt-to-asset ratio of the most liquid quintiles is about 38% while the average for the least liquid quintiles is 55%. Similar results are observed in panel analyses with clustered errors and using instrumental variables. Our results are consistent with equity market liquidity lowering the cost of equity and, therefore, inducing a greater reliance on equity financing.     

The role of regulatory capital in international bank mergers and acquisitions

When investigating the role of regulatory capital in bank mergers and acquisitions (M&As) we finds that US targets are better capitalized than their acquirers and non-acquired peers and that US banks maintain higher capital levels than European banks. Thus, US banks strategically raise their capital levels to avoid regulatory scrutiny. Furthermore, more value is created for targets with high excess capital and in M&As involving targets with considerably higher excess-capital ratios than their acquirers. Thus, the excess regulatory capital hypothesis is supported. Finally, market prices reflect the influence that capital has on the probability of the merger's regulatory approval.     

Liquidity regulation and bank lending

Bank liquidity shortages during the global financial crisis of 2007–2009 led to the introduction of liquidity regulations, the impact of which has attracted the attention of academics and policymakers. In this paper, we investigate the impact of liquidity regulation on bank lending. As a setting, we use the Netherlands, where a Liquidity Balance Rule (LBR) was introduced in 2003. The LBR was imposed on Dutch banks only and did not apply to other banks operating elsewhere within the Eurozone. Using this differential regulatory treatment to overcome identification concerns and a difference-in-differences approach, we find that the LBR increased the volume of lending by Dutch banks relative to other banks located in the Eurozone. Increased equity, an inflow of retail deposits and subsequent increase in balance sheet size allowed Dutch banks to increase lending despite having to meet the LBR requirements. The LBR also affected the loan composition of Dutch banks (with corporate and retail lending increasing more than mortgage lending) and the maturity profile of loan portfolios. Our results have relevance for policymakers tasked with monitoring the impact of liquidity regulations on banks and the real economy.     

Human capital investment,new firm creation and venture capital

This paper studies the relation between firm investment in general human capital, new firm creation and financial development for new firm financing, such as the existence of a venture capital industry. On one hand, firm investment in general human capital leads employees to generate new innovative ideas for starting their own firm. Since employees need a venture capitalist to start their new firm, firm investment in general human capital encourages the creation of venture capitalists by increasing the need for their services, such as providing advice and monitoring. On the other hand, as new firm financing becomes available, firms’ willingness to invest in general human capital increases, and as a by-product, the creation of employee-founded and venture capital-backed new firms increases in the economy. Hence, our model provides a rational explanation for the emergence of new firms created by employees of established firms, which represents one of the most common type of new firms in many industries.     

The bank capital channel and bank profits

This paper develops a microeconomic model of banking to highlight an endogenous loan creation process that emerges from bank profits via the capital accumulation of retained earnings and uses a simple bank capital‐loan multiplier to illustrate constraints on lending. The study also analyzes how sufficient net interest margins are important for banks to maintain lending portfolios and avoid financial fragility. The model offers support to bank capital channel (BKC) economists by illustrating how changes in interest rates may influence bank lending through the bank's internal capital accumulation growth rate and on a bank's portfolio choices.     

The dynamics of US bank profitability

We examine the determinants of profitability for a large sample of US banks over the period 1984–2010. Specifically, we assess the extent to which short-run profits persist, and whether such persistence is affected by changes in regulation and the recent financial crisis. Our findings suggest that the competitive process reduces positions of abnormal profitability, albeit this is not immediate. There is also evidence that changes in regulation enacted during the 1990s affected both the level and persistence of bank profitability. The financial crisis of 2007–2010 appears to have resulted in an increase in the persistence of bank profitability.     

Politics,credit allocation and bank capital requirements

I develop a normative theory of political influence on bank lending and capital structure. Legislators want banks to make politically-favored loans that reduce bank profits but generate social or political benefits. The regulator uses asset-choice regulation and capital requirements to induce the lending desired by legislators. There are four main results. First, if regulators dislike bank fragility, then credit-allocation regulation should be accompanied by higher capital requirements. Second, banks will resist higher capital requirements, which will be lower when banks have more bargaining power. Third, when politics matters more in bank regulation, the banking sector is larger and more competitive, with higher capital requirements. Fourth, the optimal reporting mechanism, in which banks report their privately-known profitability and the regulator endogenously determines capital requirements and stringency of credit-allocation regulation in response, shows that political influence is stronger when banks are more profitable.     

Commercial bank mutual fund activities: Implications for bank risk and profitability

This paper examines the risk structure of bank holding companies and the effect of mutual fund activities on bank risk and profitability over the period 1987–1994. Findings from structural change tests indicate a significant decline in bank risk occurred near the mid-point of the study. Results from a confirmatory factor analytic model employed to examine the impact of mutual fund activities on banks suggest that mutual fund activities moderated bank industry systematic risk during the sample period. Mutual fund activities also increased the profitability of banks. These results suggest that mutual funds represent a productive avenue of expansion for bank holding companies.     

Liquidity, credit creation and international banking : An econometric investigation

For the past 18 months the Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee of the British House of Commons has been taking evidence from expert witnesses and interested parties concerning International Monetary Arrangements. An important concern of their work has been the inter-relationship between current problems in international bank lending and macroeconomic policies. Our presentation will review the opinions expressed in the Committee's Reports in the light of the econometric evidence we have obtained in our formal paper prepared for this conference. Basically we feel that the current problems facing the international banking system are in no small part due to the increased systematic risk introduced into the system by the macroeconomic policies followed by the industrial countries over the past decade, rather than simply to reckless and imprudent bank management. Further, our econometric evidence suggests that Eurocurrency flows may have a substantial effect on domestic liquidity, in contrast to the accepted view that such flows are unimportant. An underlying major theme of our paper concerns the importance of using modern econometric methods to shed light on current important problems of international financial interdependence.     

Liquidity and transparency in bank risk management

Banks may be unable to refinance short-term liabilities in case of solvency concerns. To manage this risk, banks can accumulate a buffer of liquid assets, or strengthen transparency to communicate solvency. While a liquidity buffer provides complete insurance against small shocks, transparency covers also large shocks but imperfectly. Due to leverage, an unregulated bank may choose insufficient liquidity buffers and transparency. The regulatory response is constrained: while liquidity buffers can be imposed, transparency is not verifiable. Moreover, liquidity requirements can compromise banks’ transparency choices, and increase refinancing risk. To be effective, liquidity requirements should be complemented by measures that increase bank incentives to adopt transparency.     

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.     

Venture capital and new business creation

Using a comprehensive database of firms from 21 European countries over the period 1998–2008, we find that venture capital investment has a positive effect on the rate of new business creation. This is especially true in countries with higher entry costs, higher protection of intellectual property rights, and lower taxes on capital gains. Our results suggest that, controlling for country and industry characteristics, venture capital is beneficial to bringing new ideas to the marketplace in the shape of new companies.     

Wholesale bank funding,capital requirements and credit rationing

This paper analyzes how different types of bank funding affect the extent to which banks ration credit to borrowers, and the impact that capital requirements have on that rationing. Using an extension of the standard Stiglitz–Weiss model of credit rationing, unsecured wholesale finance is shown to amplify the credit market impact of capital requirements as compared to funding by retail depositors. Unsecured finance surged in the pre-crisis years, but is increasingly replaced by secured funding. The collateralization of wholesale funding is found to expand the extent of credit rationing.     

Corporate social responsibility and bank liquidity creation

Under the stakeholder theory hypothesis, reputable corporate social responsibility (CSR) banks are expected to attract more loans and deposits, which in turn strengthens their ability to create liquidity. Our findings support this view. Further analyses reveal that the positive effect of CSR on liquidity creation differs depending on bank size, bank capital, and type of financial crisis. In addition, deposit growth, loan growth, lending rate, and funding rate are potential channels through which CSR influences bank liquidity creation. The findings are not driven by an endogeneity issue.