The Banking Exposure to International Lending: Regional Differences or Common Fundamentals?

The present study unveils the importance of regional characteristics of sovereign debt crises in Latin America and South East Asia. It proposes and empirically corroborates a refinement of the logit approach, for assessing sovereign risk, which draws upon a region‐specific parameterization—composite estimator. The analysis identifies some common features of debt crises that largely reflect domestic solvency, liquidity factors and, to a lesser extent, trade‐balance variables and external shocks. Nonetheless, heterogeneity effects and regional signals point towards the use of region‐specific models. Such approach depicts specific risk factors such as openness and debt burden for Latin America and reserves, output and government expenditure for Asia, thereby suggesting distinctive aspects to debt crises. Out‐of‐sample forecast comparisons further support the use of the composite estimator. The latter outperforms the simple pooled and random effects approach on the basis of various criteria, albeit slightly biased towards false non‐crises predictions.     

Governance and bank characteristics in the credit and sovereign debt crises – the impact of CEO power

The global financial sector recently suffered from two interrelated crises: the credit crisis and the sovereign debt crisis. A common question is whether the recent experience with the credit crisis has helped in dealing with the sovereign debt crisis. We study more specifically whether banks with powerful CEOs perform better or worse than other banks, and if there is any difference in this relationship between the two crises. Using unique hand-collected data for 378 large global banks, we find that CEO power has a significant positive relation to bank profitability and asset quality, but also to insolvency risk, during the sovereign debt crisis. Thus, strong CEOs do not appear to be detrimental to bank performance. Our results also support the idea that deposit insurance may have contributed to the credit crisis.     

Sovereign debt and reserves with liquidity and productivity crises

During the recent financial crisis, emerging economies have kept accumulating both sovereign reserves and debt. To account for this empirical fact, we model the optimal portfolio choice of a sovereign that is subject to liquidity and productivity shocks. We determine the equilibrium level of debt and its cost by solving a contracting game between sovereign and international lenders. Although raising debt increases the sovereign exposure to liquidity and productivity crises, the simultaneous accumulation of reserves can mitigate the negative effects of such crises. This mechanism rationalizes the complementarity between debt and reserves.     

Domestic Banks As Lightning Rods? Home Bias and Information during the Eurozone Crisis

European banks have been criticized for holding excessive domestic government debt during the recent Eurozone crisis, which may have intensified the diabolic loop between sovereign and bank credit risks. By using a novel bank-level data set covering the entire timeline of the Eurozone crisis, I first reconfirm that the crisis led to the reallocation of sovereign debt from foreign to domestic banks. In contrast to the recent literature focusing only on sovereign debt, I show that the banks' private-sector exposures were (at least) equally affected by the rise in home bias. Consistent with this pattern, I propose a new debt reallocation channel based on informational frictions and show that the informationally closer foreign banks increase their relative exposures when the sovereign risk rises. The effect of informational closeness is economically meaningful and robust to the use of different information measures and controls for alternative channels of sovereign debt reallocation.     

基于希腊主权债务危机的危机预警研究——兼对社会保障支出比重的定量分析

为了研究债务危机的成因及其预警机制,本文在对希腊主权债务危机演变进行描述性分析的基础上,建立了债务危机预警的Logistic模型.通过SPSS18.0统计软件分析,我们发现了影响债务危机发生的主要指标,包括:一般政府净贷款占GDP比率、国际收支占GDP比率以及社会保障支出占GDP比率、总储蓄规模占GDP比率以及通货膨胀率.其中,所选取的欧洲国家的社会保障支出占GDP的比重约为25％,对于债务危机的爆发的影响系数高达0.620.结合我国的经济形势与社会保障发展现状,本文了提出相关的政策建议.     

希腊主权债务危机的成因与影响

日益严重的希腊主权债务危机将希腊推向了欧元区主权债务问题的风口浪尖,由此也形成了影响欧元区稳定运行的严峻挑战。该文基于国际金融危机对希腊经济与财政运行状况的影响,分析了引起希腊主权债务危机的成因及解决途径,指出解决希腊主权债务危机除了希腊自身的努力外,依然需要国际社会尤其是欧盟的援助。从全球的角度看,其他经济体的主权债务问题也同样值得警惕和重视。     

欧洲主权债务危机的根源与出路

欧洲主权债务危机是主权问题与银行问题相互作用的结果,其根源在于欧洲银行体系和政治结构的特殊性。要化解主权债务危机需要实现财政政策的一体化和银行监管的一体化,同时进一步推动欧盟和欧元区改革。     

Banks and sovereign risk: A granular view

We investigate the determinants of sovereign bond holdings of German banks and the implications of such holdings for bank risk. We use granular information on all German banks and all sovereign debt exposures in the years 2005–2013. As regards the determinants of sovereign bond holdings of banks, we find that these are larger for weakly capitalized banks, banks that are active on capital markets, and for large banks. Yet, only around two thirds of all German banks hold sovereign bonds. Macroeconomic fundamentals were significant drivers of sovereign bond holdings only after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. With the outbreak of the sovereign debt crisis, German banks reallocated their portfolios toward sovereigns with lower debt ratios and bonds with lower yields. With regard to the implications for bank risk, we find that low-risk government bonds decreased the risk of German banks, especially for savings and cooperative banks. Holdings of high-risk government bonds, in turn, increased the risk of commercial banks during the sovereign debt crisis.     

当前国际政府债务问题的影响与警示

为应对席卷全球的国际金融危机,各国政府纷纷采取经济刺激措施,代替民间企业和金融机构承担危机成本,这不可避免带来一定的政府债务问题。随着时间的推移,部分政府债务问题逐步凸显,成为全球经济走出危机阴影的障碍。文章分析认为,当前国际上政府债务问题呈现脆弱性、复杂性、集中性和长期性特征,成为全球经济复苏的绊脚石,甚至会给世界各国经济带来灾难性影响。文章同时总结了国际政府债务问题带给我国的启示。     

Sovereign debt markets in turbulent times: Creditor discrimination and crowding-out effects

In 2007, countries in the euro zone periphery were enjoying stable growth, low deficits, and low spreads. Then the financial crisis erupted and pushed them into deep recessions, raising their deficits and debt levels. By 2010, they were facing severe debt problems. Spreads increased and, surprisingly, so did the share of the debt held by domestic creditors. Credit was reallocated from the private sector to the public sector, reducing investment and deepening the recessions even further. To account for these facts, we propose a simple model of sovereign risk in which debt can be traded in secondary markets. The model has two key ingredients: creditor discrimination and crowding-out effects. Creditor discrimination arises because, in turbulent times, sovereign debt offers a higher expected return to domestic creditors than to foreign ones. This provides incentives for domestic purchases of debt. Crowding-out effects arise because private borrowing is limited by financial frictions. This implies that domestic debt purchases displace productive investment. The model shows that these purchases reduce growth and welfare, and may lead to self-fulfilling crises. It also shows how crowding-out effects can be transmitted to other countries in the euro zone, and how they may be addressed by policies at the European level.     

Sovereign debt disputes: A database on government coerciveness during debt crises

This paper measures “debt disputes” between governments and foreign private creditors in periods of sovereign debt crises. We construct an index of government coerciveness, consisting of 9 objective sub-indicators. Each of these sub-indicators captures unilateral government actions imposed on foreign banks and bondholders. The results provide the first systematic account of debt crises that goes beyond a binary categorization of default versus non-default. Overall, government behavior and rhetoric show a strong variability, ranging from highly confrontational to very smooth crisis resolution processes. In a preliminary analysis on the determinants of coercive behavior, we find political institutions to be significant, while economic and financial factors play a lesser role. These results open up an agenda for future research.     

Insurance companies’ trading behaviour during the European sovereign debt crisis: Flight home or flight to quality?

This paper empirically investigates if insurers exhibited a flight home or flight to quality during the European sovereign debt crisis and other stages of the financial crisis. Our dataset consists of over sixty insurance companies, for which we separately observe trading behaviour and portfolio revaluations at a quarterly frequency during 2006–2013. When explaining insurers’ trading behaviour we explicitly control for country risk and momentum strategies. The results show that insurers exhibited a flight to quality during the European sovereign debt crisis, while we find no evidence of a flight home. The flight to quality was not present before the European sovereign debt crisis and disappeared after ECB chairman Draghi's speech mid-2012. Interestingly, supervisory data suggests that the observed flight to quality was not driven by regulatory solvency constraints.     

Predicting sovereign debt crises using artificial neural networks: A comparative approach

Recent episodes of financial crisis have revived interest in developing models able to signal their occurrence in timely manner. The literature has developed both parametric and non-parametric models, the so-called Early Warning Systems, to predict these crises. Using data related to sovereign debt crises which occurred in developing countries from 1980 to 2004, this paper shows that further progress can be achieved by applying a less developed non-parametric method based on artificial neural networks (ANN). Thanks to the high flexibility of neural networks and their ability to approximate non-linear relationship, an ANN-based early warning system can, under certain conditions, outperform more consolidated methods.     

Guarantees,transparency and the interdependency between sovereign and bank default risk

Bank debt guarantees have traditionally been viewed as costless measures to prevent bank runs. However, as recent experiences in some European countries have demonstrated, guarantees may link the coordination problems of bank and sovereign creditors and induce a functional interdependence between the likelihoods of a government default and bank illiquidity. Employing a global-game approach, we model this link, showing the existence and uniqueness of the joint equilibrium and derive its comparative statics properties. In equilibrium, the guarantee reduces the probability of a bank run, while it increases the probability of a sovereign default. The latter erodes the guarantee’s credibility and thus its effectiveness ex ante. By setting the guarantee optimally, the government balances these two effects in order to minimize expected costs of crises. Our results show that the optimal guarantee has clear-cut welfare gains which are enhanced through policies that promote greater balance sheet transparency.     

西班牙债务危机治理对于结构性改革的启示

文章剖析了西班牙主权债务危机的演变逻辑与救助改革举措所带来的启示。从其演变逻辑看,西班牙债务危机经历了房地产泡沫一银行业危机一主权债务信用危机的传导过程。文章回顾了西班牙政府采取的系列结构性改革举措,指出要将房地产泡沫作为经济偏离均衡的重要预警信号,警惕房地产泡沫通过地方政府债务向银行业信贷的风险传递,通过切实转变经济发展方式、协调产业发展层次来提高经济发展的质量。     

欧洲主权债务危机演进及对中资银行的启示

受全球金融危机的持续影响和欧元区制度问题的激化,欧洲主权债务危机呈愈演愈烈之势,逐步从边缘国家扩散至核心国家,并从主权债务危机向银行业危机演化。目前,欧元区重债国采取的财务整顿政策难以在短期发挥缩减赤字的作用,反而加大复苏风险;对重债国援助资金总量有限,其发放门槛徒增短期违约风险;欧洲央行购买国债虽有利于缓解危机恶化,但量化宽松的政策与其控制通胀的设立宗旨存在矛盾。在此背景下,中资银行应调整涉欧资产配置,进一步加强国别风险研究和管理,积极稳健地推进国际化经营,打造资产、业务和经营地域多元化的国际化银行。     

Bank use of sovereign CDS in the Eurozone crisis: Hedging and risk incentives

Using a comprehensive dataset from German banks, we document the usage of sovereign credit default swaps (CDS) during the European sovereign debt crisis of 2008–2013. Banks used the sovereign CDS market to extend, rather than hedge, their long exposures to sovereign risk during this period. Lower loan exposure to sovereign risk is associated with greater protection selling in CDS, the effect being weaker when sovereign risk is high. Bank and country risk variables are mostly not associated with protection selling. The findings are driven by the actions of a few non-dealer banks which sold CDS protection aggressively at the onset of the crisis, but started covering their positions at its height while simultaneously shifting their assets towards sovereign bonds and loans. Our findings underscore the importance of accounting for derivatives exposure in building a complete picture and understanding fully the economic drivers of the bank-sovereign nexus of risk.     

Rating the rating agencies: Anticipating currency crises or debt crises?

We revisit the question whether sovereign ratings predict financial crises. In line with previous studies, we find that ratings do not predict currency crises and are instead downgraded ex-post. However, the likelihood of currency crisis and the implied probability of sovereign default are not closely linked in emerging markets post-1994. When debt crises are defined as sovereign distress – when spreads are higher than 1000 basis points or 10 percentage points – we find that access to international capital markets is reduced by half. In addition, although sovereign distress events last for typically 5.2 consecutive months, they can persist for longer periods up to nine quarters. Finally, lagged ratings and ratings changes, including negative outlooks and credit watches, are useful in anticipating sovereign distress.     

Greenspan's Retrospective of Financial Crisis and Stochastic Optimal Control

Alan Greenspan argues that the crisis was unpredictable and inevitable, given the ‘excessive’ leverage of the financial intermediaries. I focus upon the housing sector, which has been at the origin of the financial crisis because the value of the financial derivatives ultimately depended upon the ability of the mortgagors to repay their debts. The uncertainty concerns the capital gains – housing price appreciation – and the rate of interest. I explain why the application of stochastic optimal control (SOC) is an effective approach to determine the optimal degree of leverage, the optimum and excessive risk and the probability of a debt crisis. I show that the theoretically derived early warning signal of a crisis is the excess debt ratio, equal to the difference between the actual and optimal ratio. The excess debt of households starting from 2004‐05 indicated that a housing crisis was most likely.