Are Market‐Based Measures of Global Systemic Importance of Financial Institutions Useful to Regulators and Supervisors?

We analyze whether four market‐based measures of the global systemic importance of financial institutions offer early warning signals during three financial crises. The tests based on the 2007–2008 crisis show that only one measure (?CoVaR) consistently adds predictive power to conventional early warning models. However, the additional predictive power remains small and it is not normally confirmed for the Asian and the 1998 crises. We conclude that it is problematic to identify a market‐based measure of systemic importance that remains valid across crises with different features. The same criticism also applies to several conventional proxies of systemic importance, of which size is the most consistent performer.     

Foreign Bank Behavior during Financial Crises

This paper studies whether lending by foreign banks is affected by financial crises. We pair a bank‐level data set of foreign ownership with information on banking crises and examine whether the credit supply of majority foreign‐owned banks that underwent home‐country crises differ systematically from those of other foreign banks. In contrast to the literature, our broad global coverage allows us to exploit variations between foreign banks; this enables us to identify an average treatment effect directly attributable to crises. Our baseline results show that banks exposed to home‐country crises between 2007–08 exhibit changes in lending patterns that are lower by between 13% and 42% than their noncrisis counterparts. This finding is robust to potential alternative explanations, and also holds, though less strongly, for the 1997/98 Asian crisis.     

Public bank lending in times of crisis

This paper studies the role of government-owned banks in the event of financial crises. The study takes an empirical perspective focusing on bank lending. We compare the lending responses across government-owned and private banks to financial crises using the balance sheet information of 764 major banks headquartered in 50 countries over the period of 1994–2009. Using a nested panel regression framework that allows for parameter shifts in the bank lending equation, we find robust evidence that government-owned banks increase their lending during crises relative to normal times, while private banks’ lending decreases. Government-owned banks thus counteract the lending slowdown of private banks. The findings suggest that governments can play an active counter-cyclical role in their banking systems directly through government-owned banks.     

Do Sovereign Re‐Ratings Destabilize Equity Markets during Financial Crises? New Evidence from Higher Return Moments

This study investigates the effects of S&P's sovereign re‐ratings on the higher moments of equity market returns over recent financial crises. Using a set of intraday stock market index prices and sovereign credit ratings for a sample of 36 countries that experienced sovereign rating changes over the period from 1996 to 2013, we find that the higher moments of stock market returns are significantly more responsive to sovereign re‐ratings during financial crises, but the effects on stock markets are not the same across different financial crises. The effects during crises are, however, magnified for large downgrades and those that are associated with a loss of investment grade status. We find that there are asymmetric effects during financial crises in that downgrades are consistently more significant than upgrades in increasing realized volatility and realized kurtosis. Both upgrades and downgrades affect realized skewness in times of crises in the expected direction.     

Do Declines in Bank Health Affect Borrowers’ Voluntary Disclosures? Evidence from International Propagation of Banking Shocks

I examine whether declines in banks’ financial health affect their borrowers’ disclosures. Prior studies indicate that, in relationship lending, banks and borrowers rely on private communication, rather than public disclosures, to resolve information asymmetries. When banking relationships are threatened, borrowers must turn to new funding sources, inducing them to reconsider their disclosure policies. This paper predicts that borrowers, whose banking relationships are threatened by declining bank health, change their public disclosures of forward‐looking information. Using the emerging‐market financial crises in the late 1990s as shocks to the health of certain U.S. banks, I find that affected banks’ U.S. borrowers increase both the quantity and informativeness of their management forecasts following these shocks compared to borrowers of unaffected banks. The results are similar using conference calls or the length of the Management's Discussion and Analysis section as alternative proxies for voluntary disclosure. Overall, these results provide new insights into the impact of availability of relationship lending on firms’ disclosure choices.     

Trader Leverage and Liquidity

Does trader leverage drive equity market liquidity? We use the unique features of the margin trading system in India to identify a causal relationship between traders’ ability to borrow and a stock's market liquidity. To quantify the impact of trader leverage, we employ a regression discontinuity design that exploits threshold rules that determine a stock's margin trading eligibility. We find that liquidity is higher when stocks become eligible for margin trading and that this liquidity enhancement is driven by margin traders’ contrarian strategies. Consistent with downward liquidity spirals due to deleveraging, we also find that this effect reverses during crises.     

高管减持如何影响投资者预期?——基于超额融券的经验证据

随着我国融资融券业务逐步扩容,投资者向证券公司融券卖出的卖空交易成为市场消化负面信息的重要机制。本文以高管减持事件窗口期的超额融券量为研究对象,采用事件研究法考察我国企业高管减持所任职公司股票对市场预期的影响。实证结果表明,相比估计期,高管减持窗口期超额融券量显著增长,并且减持比例越高或者减持金额越大,超额融券量越高,表明高管减持显著降低了外部投资者对公司股票的价值预期。进一步研究显示,良好的信息透明度能够显著降低高管减持对超额融券量的正向影响。本文用超额融券量直观地度量投资者预期变化,丰富和发展了高管减持经济后果的研究,对规范我国上市公司高管减持行为及监管部门完善相关监管规定具有启示意义。     

PRICING CRB FUTURES CONTRACTS

This study provides a valuation model to price Commodity Research Bureau Index futures contracts, now traded at the New York Futures Exchange. An empirical analysis suggests that substantial mispricing was exhibited during the early months of trading in an unseasoned Commodity Research Bureau Index futures market.     

Credit Scoring and the Availability of Small Business Credit in Low‐ and Moderate‐Income Areas

This paper estimates that credit scoring is associated with about a $3,900 increase in small business lending per sample banking organization, per low‐ and moderate‐income (LMI) area served, and this effect is roughly equivalent to that estimated for higher‐income areas. For our sample, this corresponds to a $536 million increase in small business credit in LMI areas in 1997 than otherwise would have been the case. This effect appears to be driven by increased out‐of‐market lending by banking organizations, as in‐market lending generally declines. Overall, it does not appear that credit scoring has a disparate impact on LMI areas.     

Multinational Banks and the Global Financial Crisis: Weathering the Perfect Storm?

We use data on the 48 largest multinational banking groups to compare the lending of their 199 foreign subsidiaries during the Great Recession with lending by a benchmark of 202 domestic banks. Contrary to earlier and more contained crises, parent banks were not a significant source of strength to their subsidiaries during 2008–09. When controlling for other bank characteristics, multinational bank subsidiaries had to slow down credit growth almost three times as fast as domestic banks. This was in particular the case for subsidiaries of banking groups that relied more on wholesale funding.     

Global information distribution in the gold OTC markets

This paper aims to estimate the global information distribution in the OTC gold market. Using the two-scale realized variance as a proxy for information flow, we estimate the information shares of Asia, Europe, London/New York and the United States, with London/New York covering the two-hour overlapping trading in London afternoon and New York morning. We find that over the sample period of 1996 to 2012, the average daily information shares are 17%, 31%, 22%, and 30% for Asia, Europe, London/New York and the U.S., respectively. On a per-hour basis, the information share of London/New York is over two and half times of those of the rest of Europe and the U.S., and over five times of the information share of Asia. Despite doubling its share of OTC trading, Asia's information share actually declined from about 20% in the late 1990s to around 15% in 2009–2012, with the opposite trend for the London/New York market. Private information flow, measured by the volatility impact of unexpected order flows, has a flatter distribution across Asia, Europe, and the U.S., possibly due to the presence of the same large gold dealers in different markets. The declining information share of Asia and the concentration of information to the two-hour London/New York trading raise concerns for regional market development and global market stability.     

How Do Crises Spread? Evidence from Accessible and Inaccessible Stock Indices

We provide empirical evidence that stock market crises are spread globally through asset holdings of international investors. By separating emerging market stocks into two categories, namely, those that are eligible for purchase by foreigners (accessible) and those that are not (inaccessible), we estimate and compare the degree to which accessible and inaccessible stock index returns co‐move with crisis country index returns. Our results show greater co‐movement during high volatility periods, especially for accessible stock index returns, suggesting that crises spread through the asset holdings of international investors rather than through changes in fundamentals.     

Analysis of Stigma and Bank Credit Provision

Bank rescue programs are designed to provide assistance to struggling financial intermediaries during financial crises. A complicating factor is that participating banks are often stigmatized by accepting assistance from the government. This paper investigates stigma in two ways: (i) it examines how stigma changes a bank's decision to seek assistance from the rescue program, and (ii) it analyzes how stigma affects a bank's ability to operate as a financial intermediary using a joint model for bank‐level application, approval, and lending decisions. The empirical results indicate that stigma hinders the objectives of the rescue program and slows the production of credit.     

转融通基本问题研究

转融通实质上就是证券金融公司对证券公司的融资融券。证券金融公司是转融通业务的唯一主体,具有一定的垄断地位,但证券金融公司在开展转融通业务时,与证券公司是交易对手,处于平等的民事主体地位,证券金融公司不应定位为交易的中央对手方或者市场组织者。在《转融通业务监督管理试行办法》规定的框架下,证券金融公司可以根据实际情况和需要设计出不同的业务操作模式,但效率与安全应当是考虑设计转融通操作模式的两大基本出发点。从长远看,比照现有的融资融券业务操作模式构建证券金融公司的转融通业务操作模式,是一种可取的选择,值得作进一步的思考。     

Corruption in bank lending to firms: Cross-country micro evidence on the beneficial role of competition and information sharing

Building on the important study by Beck, Demirguc-Kunt, and Levine [2006. Bank supervision and corruption in lending. Journal of Monetary Economics 53, 2131-2163], we examine the effects of both borrower and lender competition as well as information sharing via credit bureaus/registries on corruption in bank lending. Using the unique World Bank data set (WBES) covering more than 4,000 firms across 56 countries with information on credit bureaus/registries, assembled by Djankov, McLiesh, and Shleifer [2007. Private credit in 129 countries. Journal of Financial Economics 84, 299–329], and bank regulation data collected by Barth, Caprio, and Levine [2006. Rethinking Bank Regulation: Till Angels Govern. Cambridge University Press, New York] to measure bank competition and information sharing, we find strong evidence that both banking competition and information sharing reduce lending corruption, and that information sharing also helps enhance the positive effect of competition in curtailing lending corruption. We also find that the ownership structure of firms and banks, legal environment, and firm competition all exert significant impacts on lending corruption.     

THE IMPACT OF MARKET MAKER CONCENTRATION ON ADVERSE‐SELECTION COSTS FOR NASDAQ STOCKS

We examine the impact of market maker concentration on adverse‐selection costs for NASDAQ stocks and find that more market makers results in lower costs. Furthermore, this reduction in adverse selection exceeds the overall reduction in spreads that is attributable to market maker competition. We hypothesize that order flow internalization is increasing in market makers and allows for greater information production, and is an explanation for our findings. Our results provide an explanation for the puzzle documented by previous work that finds that adverse‐selection costs for NASDAQ tend to be lower than for the New York Stock Exchange, whereas spreads tend to be higher.     

Syndicated Leveraged Loans During and After the Crisis and the Role of the Shadow Banking System

In an article published in this journal in 1998, Nobel laureate Merton Miller argued that one of the best weapons available to national economies in their defense against the macroeconomic effects of banking crises is the availability of non‐bank financial institutions and products—or what we now refer to as the “shadow banking system.” Although Miller may have exaggerated the independence of bank‐ and market‐based sources of financing, the author argues that events during and after the recent crisis have shown Miller's claims about the importance of non‐bank investors in the provision of credit to be fundamentally correct. Critics of securitization and the shadow banking system tend to focus on the subprime mortgage story in which the sudden re‐pricing of credit risk and the resulting disappearance of investment demand for ABCP, private‐label mortgage‐related ABS, and ABS CDOs created unexpected and significant downward price pressure on those asset types. But the leveraged loan market tells a very different story. In contrast to the near complete disappearance of private mortgage securitizations, the extraordinary recovery of the U.S. syndicated leveraged loan market demonstrates that the relation between commercial and shadow banking has proved to be a highly productive and resilient one—and very much a two‐way street. When leveraged loans and CLOs experienced problems from 2007 through 2009 due primarily to the widespread liquidity and credit market disruptions that affected essentially all structured credit products, institutional investors in leveraged loans disappeared and the leveraged loan primary market imploded. But when institutional participants recognized the value of the underlying asset—corporate loans—and regained confidence in shadow‐banking products, leveraged lending by banks recovered quickly and dramatically. This outcome is viewed as vindicating Professor Miller's statement about the benefits of shadow markets and securitization— namely, the role of non‐bank investors in diversifying the risk of credit creation while at the same time improving the price discovery process in different markets. The recent history of the U.S. leveraged loan market demonstrates that shadow banking system participants play a critical role in meeting the total demand for such loans, and that the ebbs and flows from institutional leveraged loan markets are strongly connected with the health and integrity of the underlying leveraged bank loan market.     

Collective Risk Management in a Flight to Quality Episode

Severe flight to quality episodes involve uncertainty about the environment, not only risk about asset payoffs. The uncertainty is triggered by unusual events and untested financial innovations that lead agents to question their worldview. We present a model of crises and central bank policy that incorporates Knightian uncertainty. The model explains crisis regularities such as market‐wide capital immobility, agents' disengagement from risk, and liquidity hoarding. We identify a social cost of these behaviors, and a benefit of a lender of last resort facility. The benefit is particularly high because public and private insurance are complements during uncertainty‐driven crises.     

The Role of Short‐Termism in Financial Market Crises

The purpose of this paper is to examine the contribution short‐termist behaviours have had in various financial market crises. The early warning signs and drivers of short‐termism are investigated, as well as ways to mitigate short‐termist behaviour and consequences in the future. Short‐termism as defined for the purposes of this paper is the excessive focus on short‐term performance, earnings and other metrics at the expense of attention being given to the development of a long‐term strategy that promotes sustainable long‐term value creation.     

Market Efficiency in Specialist Markets Before and After Automation

Using nonparametric statistical analysis, we measure the degree of market efficiency before and after automation at the New York and Toronto Stock Exchanges. Overall, the results show that the level of informational efficiency remains effectively unchanged during the automation period. Despite several deviations from a random walk process, the returns for stocks on these exchanges do not appear to exhibit consistent patterns that investors can exploit to generate abnormal returns. Automation also coincides with an improvement in market efficiency at the Toronto Stock Exchange when compared to the New York Stock Exchange.