Inside Shadow Banking in China: Credit Driven Growth vs. Financial Stability

Shadow banking has been growing rapidly in China since the 2008 global financial crisis. Shadow banking has also played an increasing role in supplying credit. I investigate the development of the shadow banking sector, and assess its impacts on financial stability and economic growth in China. I argue that, due to the loose regulations and institutional characteristics of the shadow banks, these banks tend to adopt business practices that elevate institutional risks. At the systemic level, shadow banks have contributed to credit expansion and credit-driven growth. However, such growth entails significant financial risks and renders the macro-economy financially fragile. I conclude with a discussion of imminent fullblown financial crisis, calling for policy actions.     

基于影子银行视角的我国金融体制改革探索

学术界普遍认为影子银行脱缰似的发展助推并加剧了2008年的全球金融危机。后金融危机时代,我国的监管机构越发重视影子银行的风险防范问题。首先对我国的影子银行进行界定,继而从融资方的需求、投资方的供给以及投融资中介的配合三方面分析了我国影子银行兴起之表面原因,进而在探讨其隐藏的流动性风险、信息不对称风险以及系统性违约风险的基础上,指出影子银行兴起之深层次原因在于我国金融抑制环境下的利率管制以及当下"一行三会"的分业监管模式对金融创新存在监管真空等金融体制方面的弊端,最后提出为防范影子银行的风险,当前我国的金融体制改革的举措主要是完善金融监管体制、推进利率市场化改革,健全信息披露制度,加快社会信用体系的建设。     

The Politics of Shadow Money: Security Structures,Money Creation and Unconventional Central Banking

ABSTRACT

For the first time in the history of central banks, the Federal Reserve has been pursuing monetary policies which allow shadow banks to access its reserves. The paper examines these policies in an analysis based on the concept of security structure. The aim is to facilitate a better understanding of complex institutional arrangements which convert credit claims into money or enable them to simulate the money-form. As the financial crisis reached its peak in September 2008, the Fed was not able to contain the impact precisely because the security structure existing between banks and the Fed did not extend to the shadow banking system, which had meanwhile become thebackbone of the global financial system. To address this situation, the Fed initiated new security structures that were designed to also give players in the shadow banking system access to liquidity and collateral. The concept ‘security structure’ serves as an analytical tool to explore dynamic forms of safety and liquidity generation and to distinguish between credit expansion and money creation. It also helps to differentiate between three qualitatively different stages of security: central bank money, quasi-money and shadow money. In this way, it foregrounds the politics of (shadow) money creation.     

The varying shadow of China's banking system

The rapid rise of shadow banking activities in China since 2009 has attracted a great deal of attention in both academia and policy circles. Most existing studies and commentary on China's shadow banking have treated it as a recent phenomenon that appeared after the Global Financial Crisis and China's response to it. In this paper, I argue that shadow banking is not a new phenomenon; it has always been a part of China's financial system since the 1980s, and arose from the need to get around various lending restrictions imposed by the central government on banks. I also emphasize that there are two types of shadow banking activities, those initiated by banks and those initiated by local governments or state-owned enterprises. I provide evidence suggesting that the shadow banking activities initiated by banks prior to 1996 helped directing credits to the more productive non-state sector and were efficiency enhancing. In recent years, however, I find that the shadow banking loans have a positive effect on real estate investments only, and their effects on investments by private firms outside the real estate sector have been negative.     

Relevance of the EU Banking Sector to Economic Growth

Using panel estimates and a sample including all 28 European Union (EU) countries, this paper seeks to improve upon the existing literature with empirical evidence on the role that banking institutions can play in promoting economic growth. Banking sector performance is proxied by relevant operational, capital, liquidity and asset quality financial ratios. Economic growth is represented by the annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate. The estimations take into account the recent international financial crisis and consider three panels: one for the time period 1998–2012, a second one for the years before the crisis (1998–2006) and another for the subinterval 2007–2012. The results allow us to draw conclusions not only about the importance of the various financial ratios to economic growth but also regarding reactions to the recent crisis.     

The determinants of cross‐border bank flows to emerging markets

This paper studies the determinants of cross‐border bank lending on a panel dataset comprising 17 advanced and 28 emerging market economies from 1993 to 2008. The empirical framework is based on a gravity model of financial flows. Our main findings are that the decrease in cross‐border lending in the 2007–2008 crisis was mostly due to global rather than country‐specific risk factors, and that central and eastern Europe was less affected by this decrease than other emerging market regions because of its stronger financial and monetary ties with creditor countries, and its relatively sound banking systems. These results are fairly robust to several different specifications, sub‐samples and econometric methodologies.     

How competitive is the Syrian banking sector? Empirical evidence from ‘pre/post’ war Syria

This paper investigates the degree of market power in the Syrian banking sector over the period 2005–2016 where research on competitive conditions does not exist. The degree of competitiveness is assessed based on the revenue elasticity to input prices approach and is related to a set of market indicators. To test whether the Syrian crisis has altered the competitive conditions over the years of the sample, I divide the full sample into two subsamples, namely the pre-crisis years (2005–2012) and the crisis years (2013–2016). The results suggest that banks in Syria earn their interest and total revenue under conditions of monopoly. I find that the trend of market structure—characterized by a monopoly—in the pre-crisis years continues over crisis years. My findings provide robust evidence that a collusive behaviour among banks is in operation in the banking sector of Syria. The difficult penetration into/exit from the market has led to the existence of a profit-curb mechanism for the Syrian banks, hence, an upward shift in the marginal cost curve will be associated with a reduction in revenue as a result of the optimal condition for these banks which act as monopolists.     

金融压力、所有制结构与银行风险承担——基于中国影子银行活动的实证研究*

2008年金融危机之后，监测与防范系统性金融风险、维护金融稳定成为各国监管机构的工作重点。本文构建了一个反映我国系统性金融风险的中国金融压力指数（FSIC）。基于此，本文研究不同所有制结构的商业银行将如何调整影子银行业务以应对系统性金融风险。实证结果表明，当金融压力上升时，相较于国有银行，非国有银行的风险承担水平显著上升。进一步研究发现，这一差异与两类银行对影子银行这一风险业务的调整有关。当金融压力上升时，国有银行会显著减少影子银行业务，而非国有银行的影子银行业务不会减少。本文提出了国有银行的双重职能这一观点来解释实证研究的发现。本文的研究结论对于指导我国金融市场化改革和防范系统性金融风险具有重要启示。     

Overcapacities in banking: Measurement,trends and determinants

Global banks face profitability challenges since the global financial crisis. Besides cyclical factors, structural features such as overcapacities have been identified as root causes. While policymakers agree on the need for bank consolidation, there is less consensus on the definition and measurement of overcapacities in banking. This paper contributes by conceptualising and formalising the different dimensions of overcapacities in banking and by constructing a novel measure thereof. In addition, it empirically tests the main determinants of overcapacities in banking from 2006 to 2017 and assesses their relative importance. The results indicate that non-bank competition, the interest rate environment and bank business models are the most important driving factors of banking sector overcapacities. This is because shadow banks, benefitting from regulatory arbitrage, have altered banks’ capacity needs, low rates compressed margins and increased pressure to improve cost efficiencies, and retail-oriented business models have operated extensive branch networks entailing heavy fixed costs.     

次贷危机后美国经济金融化趋势是否逆转?

20世纪70年代以来资本主义经济金融化趋势显著,以金融资本为主导的积累模式在一定时期内刺激了资本主义经济增长,但也为由美国次贷危机引发的2008年国际金融危机埋下了祸根.而今,距离危机的爆发已经十余年,危机后当代资本主义也经历了一系列调整.本文考察了危机后美国政府的系列"再工业化"政策、新自由主义持续强劲的势头、新形势...     

Credit Risk Determinants for the Bulgarian Banking System

Using an autoregressive distributed lag model, this paper examines the factors that influence the credit risk of the Bulgarian banking system over the decade 2001–2010, as measured by non-performing loans. Recent papers aim to identify the determinants of non-performing loans using a cross-country modelling framework. As the South East European region (SEE) is non-homogeneous, our analysis is country-specific and captures the timeline between the bank privatisation era up to the global financial crisis and the ensuing Greek crisis. The contribution of our paper is twofold: it uses the ARDL modelling framework that is scarcely employed in related studies but also investigates spillover effects from the Greek crisis in view of the material presence of Greek banks in Bulgaria. In accordance with previous studies, the findings suggest that the credit risk determinants of Bulgarian banks should be sought endogenously in macroeconomic variables and industry-specific factors but also in exogenous factors. We evidence a pronounced role of the global financial crisis and the country’s bank regulatory framework. The Greek debt crisis appears to play an immaterial role indicating that Greek banks have not been a Trojan horse in the Bulgarian banking system.     

影子银行规模变动的金融资产价格效应*

本文基于所构建的TVP VAR模型，检验了我国影子银行规模变动对金融资产价格的溢出效应。研究结果发现，影子银行规模的增加对商业银行同业拆放利率、房地产价格、股票市场价格指数和人民币实际有效汇率指数具有正向冲击。宏观经济政策调整使经济系统结构发生改变，从而导致金融资产价格对影子银行规模变动的冲击响应具有时变性。由于信息传导需要时间，因此影子银行规模变动的溢出效应具有时滞性。因此，应规范与引导影子银行的发展，在发挥其配置金融资源功能的同时提高资源配置效率，促进实体经济健康发展。     

The 2007–2009 financial crisis: changing market dynamics and the impact of credit supply and aggregate demand sensitivity

This article singles out the determinants of changes in US firms’ systematic risk and idiosyncratic return induced by the 2007–2009 financial crisis. After establishing that systematic risk changes during the crisis, the results show that higher operational and financial leverage coincide with an increase in systematic risk, while high cash availability is associated with a decrease in systematic risk. The crisis-induced idiosyncratic return worsens with increasing financial leverage, higher sensitivity to aggregate demand shocks and banking sector problems, and lower operational leverage. Additional results show that the aforementioned variables have economically large effects on firm performance during the crisis.     

The effects of financial crisis on fiscal positions

The recent financial crisis was characterized by the sizeable fiscal cost of banking sector bail out operations and the significant automatic and discretionary fiscal policy response to shrinking output, which have put increased pressure on public finances in many industrialized countries. This paper tries to evaluate the impact of financial crisis episodes on debt developments. The findings indicate that severe financial crisis episodes increase the stock of debt by 2.7%–4.0% of GDP, on average in the 20 OECD countries examined. Ιn countries with big financial sectors it ranges from 4.2%–5.3% of GDP and in countries with smaller financial sectors it is about 1.4%–1.7% of GDP. The primary balance and the cyclically adjusted fiscal policy stance ease by about 2.6% of GDP and 1.6% of potential GDP, respectively, in the event of a severe financial market crash. Expansionary fiscal interventions are more pronounced in countries with sizable financial sectors. I find significant evidence that a financial market collapse paves the way for a subsequent deterioration in debt ratios.     

Tracing the causes of the banking crisis

We add the Bernanke–Gertler–Gilchrist model to a modified version of the Smets–Wouters model of the U.S. in order to explore the causes of the banking crisis. The innovation of this article is estimating the model using unfiltered data allowing for non-stationary shocks in order to replicate how the model predicts the crisis. We find that ‘traditional shocks’ account for most of the fluctuations in macroeconomic variables; the non-stationarity of the productivity shock plays a key role. Crises occur when there is a ‘run’ of bad shocks; based on this sample they occur on average once every 64 years and when they occur around 10% are accompanied by financial crisis. Financial shocks on their own, even when extreme, do not cause crises – provided the government acts swiftly to counteract such a shock as happened in this sample.     

Analysing Systemic Risk in the Chinese Banking System

We examine systemic risk in the Chinese banking system by estimating the conditional value at risk (CoVaR), the marginal expected shortfall (MES), the systemic impact index (SII) and the vulnerability index (VI) for 16 listed banks in China for the 2007–2014 period. We find that these measures show different patterns, capturing different aspects of systemic risk of Chinese banks. However, rankings of banks based on these measures are significantly correlated. The time‐series results for the CoVaR and MES measures suggest that systemic risk in the Chinese banking system decreased after the global financial crisis but started rising in 2014.     

Liberalization,Regulatory Delays and Vulnerability to Systemic Banking Crisis

This work aims at contributing to the improvement of the early warning systems of banking crises using a new approach accounting for model uncertainty. We show that a multinomial logit model based on Bayesian model averaging (BMA) is a good strategy to predict banking crisis. To do this, we argue that differences in vulnerability to banking crisis can be largely explained by an asymmetry between financial market evolution and regulation update on a sample of 49 developed and developing countries between 1980 and 2010. When markets are liberalized, competition pushes bankers to take more risks and take advantage of regulatory delays thus increasing crises probabilities. Our empirical evidence supports that crisis probability is higher in country liberalizing their banking system when regulation is not updated. We developed an early warning system for systemic banking crises based on the multinomial logit model. Its main difference to existing prediction models and its contribution to the literature is that it is intended to identify and resolve what is called by Bussiere and Fratzscher [(2006). Towards a new early warning system of financial crises. Journal of International Money and Finance, 25(6), 953–973] as post-crisis bias in binomial models and to develop a new methodology of leading indicators selection based on BMA. Overall, our model predicts all banking crises during our sample period.     

Financial liberalization,disaggregated capital flows and banking crisis: Evidence from developing countries

The aim of this paper is to examine whether financial liberalization has triggered banking crises in some developing countries. We focus in particular on the role of capital flows as their volatilities threat economic stability and growth. In the empirical model, based on panel logit estimation, we use the two common financial liberalization indicators (defacto and dejure) for a panel of 58 developing countries observed during the period 1984–2007. Unlike the previous studies, this paper reveals that both indicators of financial liberalization did not trigger banking crises. However, the results show that foreign debt liabilities to total liabilities and foreign direct investment liabilities to total liabilities increase the likelihood of banking crises.     

Business fixed investment of Chinese manufacturing firms in the post-financial crisis era

ABSTRACT

I document the investment decline of Chinese manufacturing firms after 2011, following the end of the 4 trillion fiscal stimulus program and expansionary monetary policies for combating the 2008–2009 financial crisis. I employ a difference-in-difference strategy to show that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) acted as investment stabilizers. In the post-crisis era, SOEs’ investment rates fell less compared to their private counterparts. Moreover, they had a smaller chance of exiting the market than private firms. In the face of monetary tightening, SOEs enjoyed a much smaller increase in the interest rates of their long-term debts. Although these may fuel the growth of the SOE sector relative to the private sector, and thus raised concerns for capital misallocation, the adverse effect on reallocation was dampened by shadow banking.     

美国金融危机下金融监管模式的缺陷及对我国的启示

随着经济全球化的发展,国际金融的运行格局发生了巨大的变化,国际金融监管也出现了新的发展趋势。特别是2007年3月以来,美国的次贷危机引起了国际金融市场的大动荡,诱发了百年不遇的全球性金融危机。国际金融环境趋于恶劣,我国不可避免地受到了来自国际金融危机的影响,我国银行业能否抵抗这次金融危机的冲击,需要更深层次的慎思和积极应对。因此,我国需要从中吸取教训,防范金融风险,加强金融监管,弥补监管"缝隙",维护金融稳定。