The role of regulatory credibility in effective bank regulation

This paper develops a model of regulated Brownian motion with an endogenous profit term to analyze the role of regulatory credibility on the stability and productivity of the banking system. We show that when regulatory intervention is perfect and costless, the volatility of the system can be substantially reduced with no loss of productivity. In fact, perfect credibility can actually reduce the volatility of intrinsically risky banking systems below the volatility of intrinsically less risky systems as banks anticipate intervention and mitigate their investment behaviour accordingly. However, when the credibility of the regime is weakened because of increased uncertainty stemming from regulation, such as random costs or imperfect timing of regulatory intervention, both the stability and productivity of the financial system are impaired. Importantly, we find that in the presence of regulatory costs and imperfect credibility, there is no universal optimal intervention policy rule. The optimal regulatory system depends on the regulator’s level of absolute risk aversion.     

The Future of Banking Regulation in Developed Countries: Lessons from and for Europe

If the bank regulatory structure in developed countries, particularly those in the EU (as well as the US), were not changed, considerable private and social costs could be incurred. We first outline the current EU regulatory framework and describe and analyze recent bank crises and failures. Based on this record and on the (beneficial for consumers) changes in EU banking regulation, on new data on bank capital/asset ratios in ten European countries, and on an analysis of market and technological changes, we conclude that the present regulatory structure is unlikely to achieve banking stability in the future. We then propose and describe a regulatory framework that can deal effectively with this situation and show how it would affect EU banks.     

银行资本监管与商业银行风险——对中国13家商业银行的实证研究

通过构建模型对2000～2005年我国商业银行风险与资本充足率变化进行实证检验,结果表明,我国实施银行资本监管能够促使已达到最低监管要求的银行提高资本充足率和降低银行风险,但对于达不到监管要求的银行,实施银行资本监管并不能促使其提高资本充足率和降低风险水平.实施银行资本监管不是我国商业银行风险降低的原因,资本监管在市场化程度较高的银行中会失效.市场及投资者并不因为银行资本充足率变化而对上市银行的收益或价值的评价产生变化.改革我国商业银行产权制度、建立显性的存款保险制度、加强市场约束是我国商业银行降低风险、提高资本监管有效性的基础.     

论银行市场风险的资本计提——兼评内部模型法的适用性

市场风险及其监管资本要求的计量历来为业界和监管当局所关注。近期,次贷危机爆发导致的市场动荡使得全球银行业和监管当局开始重新审视其市场风险管理和监管资本要求。文章结合国际银行业和监管机构计量市场风险及其监管资本要求的当前做法,针对我国银行业的实际情况,重点探索了内部模型法在我国银行业的适用性,尤其是从方法论、特殊风险计量、验证等角度探讨了内部模型法的主要工具——风险价值体系在我国银行业计量市场风险及其监管资本要求的适用性,并从方法论和应用层面提出了相应的政策建议。     

银行资本监管与商业银行风险——对中国13家商业银行的实证研究

通过构建模型对2000～2005年我国商业银行风险与资本充足率变化进行实证检验，结果表明，我国实施银行资本监管能够促使已达到最低监管要求的银行提高资本充足率和降低银行风险，但对于达不到监管要求的银行，实施银行资本监管并不能促使其提高资本充足率和降低风险水平。实施银行资本监管不是我国商业银行风险降低的原因，资本监管在市场化程度较高的银行中会失效。市场及投资者并不因为银行资本充足率变化而对上市银行的收益或价值的评价产生变化。改革我国商业银行产权制度、建立显性的存款保险制度、加强市场约束是我国商业银行降低风险、提高资本监管有效性的基础。     

Multiple bank regulators and risk taking

The potential for banks to arbitrage between regulators exists both in the US, with its multiple federal banking regulators, and in Europe, due to multinational banking. This paper models multiple regulators that have an agency bias, which can give rise to a “race to the bottom”. The model is used to analyze the interaction between the regulatory equilibrium and several salient pre-crisis features: rising bank leverage; wholesale funding with asymmetric information; and increasing supervisional costs to disentangling bank asset exposures. Each of these raises bank risk taking on its own, but regulatory competition is shown to be an amplification mechanism.     

构建符合我国国情的持续性监管工作框架

我国银行业监督管理委员会核心原则评估小组指出:持续性监管是有效银行监管的重要手段。如何充分借鉴先进国家和地区的经验,建立符合我国国情的持续性监管工作框架,实施对银行业的有效监管,是当前银行业监管面临的一个重要课题。为此,本文在对持续性监管的内涵进行深入细致分析,并总结了前期我国持续性监管的工作成果,在此基础上提出了我国持续性监管的工作框架,即包括监管环境、监管基础设施、监管过程和监管措施四个方面,通过监管法规和监管理念的落实,以及监管手段和监管措施的实施,按照监管标准的要求,取得最终监管目标。     

State contingent banking and asset price bubbles: The case of Islamic banking industry

This paper examines how state contingent banking can help neutralize challenges like debt overhang and lack of optimal risk takings, problems associated with conventional banking that can eventually manifest in the creation of asset price bubbles and a financial crisis. Our analysis also contributes to the literature on Islamic banking which considers state contingent contracts as ideal from a religious perspective. We develop a model of banking with state contingent contracts on the liability and asset sides. Our model shows that in state contingent banking, the returns for the depositors, bank and the borrowers are more aligned with the real economy, which reduces the incentive for excessive borrowing, lending and investing. Our model also shows that with the state contingent banking on the liability side, during periods of heightened macroeconomic risk, depositors' payoff would be more volatile reducing the liquidity influx from the real economy to the banking sector. This neutralizes the pressure on state contingent banks to excessively lend on the asset side. Our model further demonstrates that state contingent contracts on the asset side can help avoid too much (or too little) lending by reducing the managerial discretion in charging low (or high) interest rates. With returns linked to the prices of the underlying assets, state contingent contracts may prevent lack of optimal risk taking.     

Explaining banking stability in Sub-Saharan Africa

The study examined banking stability in Sub-Saharan Africa. The results reveal that banking spread (Net Interest Margin – NIM) is the main determinant of stability and the major means to achieve stability during crises periods. We however find the existence of a threshold effect in NIM.Crises in the banking sector consistently showed to reduce stability. While the results show that high percentage of foreign banks reduce stability, we find foreign banks help stabilize the banking sector in periods of crises. The results show that diversification could also have a positive impact on stability (Z-score) even though this relationship was not robust enough. The results also largely support the competition-fragility view. Particularly, we find that less competition during crises periods can help improve stability. Again, we find evidence for both concentration-stability and concentration-fragility hypotheses depending on the stability measure used. We however find that when large banks in concentrated markets are well regulated, stability could be improved. Weak regulatory environment reduces stability (Z-score) directly and matters during crises periods. Our results are robust to the use of different indicators of stability and estimation methods.     

Regulatory competition and forbearance: Evidence from the life insurance industry

Regulatory separation theory indicates that a system with multiple regulators leads to less forbearance and limits producer gains while a model of banking regulation developed by Dell’Ariccia and Marquez (2006) predicts the opposite. Fragmented regulation of the US life insurance industry provides an especially rich environment for testing the effects of regulatory competition. We find positive relations between regulatory competition and profitability measures for this industry, which is consistent with the Dell’Ariccia and Marquez model. Our results have practical implications for the debate over federal versus state regulation of insurance and financial services in the US.     

Contagion and banking crisis – International evidence for 2007–2009

Policy makers aim to avoid banking crises, and although they can to some extent control domestic conditions, internationally transmitted crises are difficult to tackle. This paper identifies international contagion in banking during the 2007–2009 crisis for 54 economies. We identify three channels of contagion – systematic, idiosyncratic and volatility – and find evidence for these in 45 countries. Banking crises are overwhelmingly associated with the presence of both systematic and idiosyncratic contagion. The results reveal that crisis shocks transmitted from a foreign jurisdiction via idiosyncratic contagion increase the likelihood of a systemic crisis in the domestic banking system by almost 37 percent, whereas increased exposure via systematic contagion does not necessarily destabilize the domestic banking system. Thus while policy makers and regulatory authorities are rightly concerned with the systematic transmission of banking crises, reducing the potential for idiosyncratic contagion can importantly reduce the consequences for the domestic economy.     

U.S. Banking Sector Risk in an Era of Regulatory Change: A Bivariate GARCH Approach

This paper assesses the impact of regulatory change on the risk and returns of the U.S. banking industry. The impact of five major regulatory changes on banking sector risk was assessed using daily data for eighteen major U.S. regional banks, money center banks and savings and loan type depository institutions. Risk in this case was proxied via the use of an M-GARCH model which generates time dependent conditional beta estimates. The evidence obtained suggests that the impact of deregulation and reregulation on banking sector risk is case specific. Further, the results obtained show that the market model incorporating dummy variables, which has proven so popular amongst existing studies, discards important information about the variability of beta which the time varying conditional betas capture.     

The regulations–risk taking nexus under competitive pressure: What about the Islamic banking system?

Does market power condition the effect of bank regulations and supervision on bank risk taking? We focus on three regulatory tools: capital requirements, the restriction of activities, and official supervisory powers. Employing 10 years of unbalanced panel data on 123 Islamic and conventional banks operating in the Middle East and Asia, we arrive at the following conclusions. First, banking market power strengthens the negative impact of capital regulation on bank risk taking. Second, our empirical results suggest that the negative effect of activity restrictions on stability is diminished when banks have greater market power. Finally, we do not find strong evidence that the negative effect of supervisory power on banks’ risk taking is conditioned by their competitive behavior. In further analysis, we differentiate between Islamic and conventional banks regarding their competition, as well as their risk behavior. The results differ according to the banking business model. These findings could be useful for bank regulators in light of the accomplishment of Islamic banks’ regulatory framework. Indeed, the adoption of Basel III represents a significant regulatory challenge, given that it does not take into account the specificities of Islamic banks.     

Interest rate linkages within the EMS and bank credit supply

The exchange rates between the currencies of European Monetary System (EMS) members are essentially fixed between narrow bands mandated by the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). the intent of such a fixed rate regime is to enhance policy co-ordination within the EMS. However, it has instead led to German policy dominance within the system according to several recent studies. We examine the optimal dynamic credit policy of a bank in an EMS country that is subject to such German ‘dominance’. Our stochastic control model reveals conditions under which German monetary policies can influence domestic bank lending behaviour. It also suggests that banks may be able to hedge such risk exposure by increasing in size. the model offers ‘credit supply' based explanations for recent regulatory reforms in Europe towards unified banking and the attempts of several EMS members to de-link their policies from that of the German Bundesbank.     

The effect of industry consolidation and deposit insurance reform on the resiliency of the U.S. bank insurance fund

We examine the effects of structural change in the U.S. banking industry, as well as key regulatory changes, including recently enacted deposit insurance reform legislation, on the resiliency of the FDIC-administered bank insurance fund (BIF) by estimating and comparing the probability of BIF insolvency over time. We do this using a Markov-switching model that relies on historical patterns of BIF disbursements to define the probability of switching among three “states” of the banking industry's financial health. Monte Carlo simulations are then performed to project the financial condition of the BIF over a 50-year period. Our results indicate that the insolvency risk to the bank insurance fund has increased significantly due to industry consolidation, and is mainly due to the concentration of deposits in the 10 largest U.S. banking companies. We also find that recent deposit insurance reforms will cause only a marginal reduction in the risk of BIF insolvency. The increased risk associated with a more concentrated industry structure simply dominates the reform effect.     

The Interplay among Financial Regulations,Resilience, and Growth

Interconnectedness has been an important source of market failures, leading to the recent financial crisis. Large financial institutions tend to have similar exposures and thus exert externalities on each other through various mechanisms. Regulators have responded by putting in place more regulations with many layers of regulatory complexity, leading to ambiguity and market manipulation. Mispricing risk in complex models and the arbitrage opportunities through the regulatory loopholes have provided incentives for certain activities to be more concentrated in the regulated entities and for other activities to leave the banking into new shadow banking areas. How can we design an effective regulatory framework that would perfectly rule out bank runs and TBTF and to do so without introducing incentives for financial firms to take excessive risk? It is important for financial regulations to be coordinated across regulatory entities and jurisdictions and for financial regulations to be forward looking, rather than aiming to address problems of the past.     

中国银行业隐性存款保险与资本充足监管机制下的联合效率分析

作为当代银行监管的重要手段,存款保险和资本充足率的重要性不言而喻,前人对于两者各自的监管效果及用途研究得已比较透彻,但对两者间的相关性和共同作用研究明显不足,本文在回顾前人研究的基础上,通过创造性地构建两者之间相关性的模型,得出了监管者如何选定适当的资本充足率监管水平使得银行在信贷过度冒险行为与过度审慎之间找到均衡,增进社会福利。同时结合当前中国隐性存款保险的实际背景,运用计算机仿真和曲线拟合进行实证,得出存在最优的资本使得社会福利最大化,在满足社会福利最大化的条件下,监管资本最佳与资本补充的外生成本两者不可得兼的重要结论。     

Model uncertainty and VaR aggregation

Despite well-known shortcomings as a risk measure, Value-at-Risk (VaR) is still the industry and regulatory standard for the calculation of risk capital in banking and insurance. This paper is concerned with the numerical estimation of the VaR for a portfolio position as a function of different dependence scenarios on the factors of the portfolio. Besides summarizing the most relevant analytical bounds, including a discussion of their sharpness, we introduce a numerical algorithm which allows for the computation of reliable (sharp) bounds for the VaR of high-dimensional portfolios with dimensions d possibly in the several hundreds. We show that additional positive dependence information will typically not improve the upper bound substantially. In contrast higher order marginal information on the model, when available, may lead to strongly improved bounds. Several examples of practical relevance show how explicit VaR bounds can be obtained. These bounds can be interpreted as a measure of model uncertainty induced by possible dependence scenarios.     

The Past, Present, and Probable Future for Community Banks

We review how deregulation, technological advance, and increased competitive rivalry have affected the size and health of the United States community banking sector and the quality and availability of banking products and services. We then develop a simple theoretical framework for analyzing how these changes have affected the competitive viability of community banks. Empirical evidence presented in this paper is consistent with the model’s prediction that regulatory and technological change has exposed community banks to intensified competition on the one hand, but on the other hand has left well-managed community banks with a potentially exploitable strategic position in the industry. We also offer an analysis of how the number and distribution of community banks may change in the future.     

The Volatility of European Banking Systems: A Two-Decade Study

This paper examines the trends and composition of volatility across European banking systems from January 1988 to December 2010. While there is no evidence of a long-term trend in the average level of banking system volatility, there is a change in its composition resulting from the growing importance of International and European nonfinancial components, especially in the largest banking systems. We argue that the changing composition of banking system volatility is the effect of a long-term integration process (with a growing importance of cross-border activities) that has not been influenced by the introduction of the Euro. Our results highlight the increasing vulnerability of the European banking systems to International and European shocks and an increasing likelihood of cross-border banking crises, and the need for regulatory reforms that focus on effective cross-border crisis management and resolution so as to safeguard the systemic stability of European banking in the near future.