Deposit Insurance and Forbearance Under Moral Hazard

We study the efficacy of forbearance using a real options approach. Our model endogenizes moral hazard embedded in credit risk undertaken by the bank. The bank's interest rate risk is modeled as duration mismatch. Other modeling improvements over previous studies include such features as stochastic interest rates and deposits, continuous interest payments on an ongoing deposit portfolio, and a stochastic forbearance period. We find that the bank does have an incentive to engage in undue risk taking. Even in the presence of moral hazard, however, forbearance can still be a desirable course of action in reducing the FDIC's expected liability. In addition, the capital ratio plays an extremely important role in determining the fair insurance premium. Finally, using the mismatch of asset and deposit durations as the correct measurement of interest rate risk, our model reveals that an optimal asset variance may exist for a particular bank, contrary to what the contingent claims framework would predict. Therefore, we resolve the puzzle that banks in practice do not increase asset risk to take full advantage of the limited liability.     

互联网金融对中国商业银行系统性风险的影响——基于SVAR模型的实证研究

首先运用主成分分析法测算我国商业银行的系统性风险,接着运用突变分析和 SVAR 模型等计量方法实证互联网金融对我国商业银行系统性风险的影响。结果表明：互联网金融发展影响商业银行系统性风险的路径为：“互联网金融—商业银行的资产负债结构—商业银行的成本收入比—商业银行的系统性风险”,且它对银行系统性风险的影响存在“期限结构效应”,即互联网金融在短期内会增加我国银行系统性风险,但从中长期来看,对我国银行系统性风险的影响并不大,两者可作为互利共生的事物共同发展。互联网金融的存在对我国金融改革有很好的倒逼作用,能在一定程度上促进金融监管的创新。     

Belief Networks for Expert System Development in Auditing

This study examines the use of a belief network based expert system for an auditing task—financial distress evaluation for banks. A belief network uses probability measures to store important dependencies across variables of interest in a problem domain, and makes inferences based on observed evidence using probability calculus. This paper discusses how belief network structures can be constructed, and used to assist auditor's in making appropriate recommendations regarding the financial health of a bank under audit. The ability of a belief network to make reliable predictions depends on how well the network structure reflects the underlying dependencies across variables in the problem domain (e.g. financial ratios and the financial health of a bank). The first part of this study illustrates how a computer program developed by the authors can be used to generate and evaluate different feasible belief network structures based on historical data. The program uses an information-theoretic measure to compare the alternative structures. The ability of the program to identify existing dependencies across variables is demonstrated by using it to reconstruct a known network structure from simulated data. Next, the program is used on a database of twelve important bank financial ratios over a three-year period. The predictive ratios identified by the program reflect important areas of a bank's health, such as loan quality, efficiency, profitability and capital adequacy. Finally, a belief revision mechanism is encoded for the belief network structure identified earlier, and is used to illustrate how it can assist auditors in making recommendations about financial health based on a bank's critical financial ratios. The probability estimates provided by the system are validated using data on banks not used in the network design stage, and are found to be reliable.     

A novel fuzzy neural approach to data reconstruction and failure prediction

Bank failure prediction is of great importance to a bank's clients, policy-makers and regulators. Various traditional models have been employed to study bank failures. Unfortunately, their performances are unsatisfactory. In this paper, the pseudo-outer product fuzzy neural network using the compositional rule of inference and singleton fuzzifier (POPFNN-CRI(S))-based bank failure prediction model is proposed. It employs computational bank failure analysis techniques coupled with reconstruction of missing financial data in financial covariates that are available from publicly available financial statements as inputs. The performance of the proposed model is assessed through the classification rate of 3636 US banks observed over a 21-year period. The effects of missing data reconstruction are investigated. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

This Time Is the Same: Using Bank Performance in 1998 to Explain Bank Performance during the Recent Financial Crisis

Are some banks prone to perform poorly during crises? If yes, why? In this paper, we show that a bank's stock return performance during the 1998 crisis predicts its stock return performance and probability of failure during the recent financial crisis. This effect is economically large. Our findings are consistent with persistence in a bank's risk culture and/or aspects of its business model that make its performance sensitive to crises. Banks that relied more on short‐term funding, had more leverage, and grew more are more likely to be banks that performed poorly in both crises.     

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.     

Inflation targeting,asset prices,and financial imbalances: Contextualizing the debate

This paper casts the debate regarding the role of asset prices and financial imbalances in the formulation of monetary policy from the perspective of theoretically optimal policy responses. Within the context of a standard model of the transmission mechanism, several possible motivations for responding to financial imbalances are highlighted. However, preventative policy actions against the build-up of financial imbalances cannot be easily understood within such a framework without fundamental modification to the underlying model. It is argued that a more practical way to evaluate such actions is through the inclusion of concerns for financial imbalances explicitly in the central bank's objective function.     

THE VALUE IMPACTS OF CAPITAL ADEQUACY REGULATION AND STOCHASTIC DEPOSITS

The relationship between a bank's soundness and the set of factors evaluated by supervisory agencies is so complex that the regulation of certain factors might have unintended consequences. This paper demonstrates that, ceteris paribus, binding capital adequacy regulation in the presence of stochastic deposits both reduces the expected future value of a bank and increases the uncertainty of that bank's future value. The uncertainty conclusion is not inconsistent with the notion of a decrease in the probability of financial distress as equity is substituted for debt; it involves an altogether different uncertainty and one that has heretofore not been recognized in either the theory of the banking firm or the literature of capital adequacy.     

Share of wallet's role in customer profitability

Understanding the financial contribution customers make to their organisations is an initial step in customer relationship management. Set in the banking industry, this paper examines the strength of ‘share of wallet’ as a proxy variable for measuring customer profitability. Data from a study of 1,100 personal retail banking customers of a New Zealand regional bank were used in combination with the bank's own customer contribution data for each of those respondents. Results indicate that although share of wallet might be used as a proxy for customer contribution at a macro level of customer classification, details of specific financial relationships customers have with their main bank are still necessary. Nevertheless, share of wallet ought to become a standard entry in a bank's customer database.     

Concentrated commonalities and systemic risk in China's banking system: A contagion network approach

China's banking system has seen increasing convergence in exposures to different asset types. These concentrated commonalities have far reaching implications on systemic financial risk. Based on the commonality structure of banks' balance sheets, we construct a bipartite financial network and design novel indicators to analyze the systemic risk of China's banking system and its relation to the real economy. Results show that (1) considering the interconnectivity, indirect loss arising from common exposure is much higher than direct loss; (2) concentrated common exposure to mortgage is demonstrated to be the most significant source of systemic vulnerability in China; (3) the derived contagion network shows the property of “small world”, which plays an important role in generating systemic risk, amplified non-linearly by multi-rounds of contagion; (4) a bank's systemic importance/vulnerability depends on complex interaction between asset volume, leverage rate, and its commonality of asset composition to other banks. The model proposed in this study provides a new structural perspective to investigate the systemic risk, and a macroprudential instrument to complement existing stress testing that contributes to more efficient and precise regulations. Moreover, we contribute a ranking framework to assess each bank's systemic importance as well as vulnerability corresponding to specific real sectors.     

EVA® FOR BANKS: VALUE CREATION, RISK MANAGEMENT, AND PROFITABILITY MEASUREMENT

This article presents a complete ranking of America's 100 largest bank holding companies according to their shareholder value added. This research, the first of its kind for the banking industry, defines an EVA measurement for banks and presents evidence of EVA's stronger correlation with bank market values than traditional accounting measures like ROA and ROE. Besides developing EVA and MVA as analytical tools for viewing the economic performance of the organization from a shareholder perspective, the authors also present a framework for calculating EVA at all levels of the organization, including lines of business, functional departments, products, customer segments, and customer relationships. The implementation of an EVA profitability measurement system at the business unit (or lower) level requires methods for three critical tasks: (1) transfer pricing of funds; (2) allocation of indirect expenses; and (3) allocation of economic capital. Although solutions to the first two are fairly straightforward, the allocation of capital to business units is a major challenge for banks today. In contrast to the complex, “bottom-up” approach used by a number of large banks in implementing their RAROC systems, the authors propose a greatly simplified, “top-down” approach that requires calculation of only the volatility of a business's operating profit (or NOPAT). The advantage of using NOPAT volatility is that it allows EVA analysis at any level of the organization in a way that captures the volatility effects from all sources of risk (credit, interest rates, liquidity, or operations). While such a top-down approach is clearly not meant to take the place of a comprehensive, bottom-up RAROC analysis, it is intended to provide a complement–a high-level “check” on the detailed, bottom-up risk management procedures and controls now in place at most banks. Moreover, for those banks that have developed extensive funds transfer pricing, cost allocation, and RAROCstyle capital allocation systems, the EVA financial management system can either be integrated with those systems or serve as an independent economic assessment of the bank's business risks and returns.     

The Cost of Deposit Insurance for Privately Held Banks: A Market Comparable Approach

Previous empirical studies that use an option pricing model to estimate deposit insurance costs have been limited to banks that issue publicly traded securities: a bank's security prices are used to infer its risk characteristics. However, if deposit insurance costs are needed for privately held banks, as would be the case under a system of risk-based insurance premiums, then an alternative method is required. This paper presents a “market comparable” approach for valuing private banks' deposit insurance. The approach first uses information on public depository institutions to identify the statistical relationships between a bank's supervisory accounting data and its risk characteristics derived from equity market data. Second, it uses these relationships to predict the risk characteristics of a private depository institution based on its supervisory accounting data. This approach is applied to over 7000 private banks and thrifts to estimate their risk characteristics and their implied risk-neutral and physical probabilities of insolvency. For the vast majority of institutions, these risk characteristics and insolvency probabilities are within a reasonable range.     

Intertemporal efficiency analysis of sales teams of a bank: Stochastic semi-nonparametric approach

The primary role of a bank branch is evolving from a service provider towards a sales channel. Previous branch-level studies of sales efficiency consider a static setting of a single time period, ignoring the stochastic nature of sales outcomes. In this paper, we examine efficiency and performance of sales teams in a bank branch network over time, taking into account the changing demand and operational conditions, as well as random disturbances. The intertemporal sales frontier is estimated from the panel of monthly data over the years 2007–2010 using the stochastic semi-nonparametric envelopment of data (StoNED) method. The efficiency scores of sales teams and the trajectories of performance over time allow managers and the sales force to learn from past events and to develop the managerial and work practices across the network. While this study focuses on the case of a specific bank, some of the innovative features of our approach are applicable to sales efficiency assessment in other banks and financial institutions, as well as other network-based sales organizations.     

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.     

Banks as lenders and shareholders: Evidence from Japan

This paper examines the effects of the main bank's equity–debt structure, (i.e., equity stakes and debt claims) on firm performance and financial policies in Japan over the period 1977–1987. Results show that firms with main bank equity stakes have lower performance than those without. However, among firms with main bank equity stakes, the equity–debt structure of claims has a positive effect on firm performance. The positive effect of the main bank's equity–debt structure is found to be greater in group-affiliated firms than in independent firms. The main bank maximizes its own interests by charging a higher interest rate when its equity stakes are relatively less than its debt claims and by prompting firms to pay more dividends when its equity stakes are relatively high.     

Banking and commerce: A liquidity approach

This paper looks at the advantages and disadvantages of mixing banking and commerce, using the “liquidity” approach to financial intermediation. Bringing a nonfinancial firm into a banking conglomerate may be advantageous because it makes it easier for the bank to dispose of assets seized in a loan default. The conglomerate's internal market increases the liquidity of such assets and improves the bank's ability to perform financial intermediation. More generally, owning a nonfinancial firm may act either as a substitute or a complement to commercial lending. In some cases, a bank will voluntarily refrain from making loans, choosing to become a non-bank bank in an unregulated environment.     

Analyzing the effect of derivatives on the financial soundness of commercial banks in Italy: An approach based on the CAMELS framework

Italian economy is among the biggest economies in the Europe which suffered from the repercussions of the global financial crisis during this last decade. The weakness of Italian banking system coincides with the common debate about the implication of derivatives in the distress of banks’ soundness. Thus, the aim of our research is to examine the effect of derivative instruments on the banks’ soundness in Italy. To reach our goal, the CAMELS approach is employed to define the soundness of Italian commercial banks. To overcome the endogeneity issue of variables, an appropriate econometric procedure, namely the dynamic Generalized Method of Moments (GMM system) is applied using data from 22 commercial banks in Italy over the period 2005–2015. Explanatory variables are defined by derivative instruments (forwards, swaps, options, and futures), bank‐specific variable (bank's size as non‐CAMELS variable), industry‐specific variables (CR3, CR5, and HHI as indicators of bank's sector and market concentrations), and country‐specific variables (GDP and inflation). The main results reveal that the majority of the CAMELS indicators are favorably affected by derivative instruments especially forwards and options. The most important conclusion is that using derivative instruments does not threaten the financial soundness of commercial banks in Italy. As major implication decision‐makers and experts—after the global financial crisis—should not consider derivatives in part as responsible of the fragility of the Italian banking system.     

Using a hybrid evolution approach to forecast financial failures for Taiwan-listed companies

Bankruptcy has been an important topic in finance and accounting research for a long time. Recent major bankruptcies have included seemingly robust companies such as Enron, Kmart, Global Crossing, WorldCom, and Lehman Brothers. These cases have become of serious public concern due to the huge influence these companies have on the real economy. This research proposes a hybrid evolution approach to integrate particle swarm optimization (PSO) with the support vector machine (SVM) technique for the purpose of predicting financial failures. The preparation phase collected an initial sample of 68 companies listed by the Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation (TSEC). The financial datasets were constructed based on 33 financial ratios, four non-financial ratios and one combined macroeconomic index. To select suitable indicators for the input vector, the principle component analysis (PCA) technique was applied to reduce the data and determine how groupings of indicators measure the same concept. In the swarming phase, PSO was applied to obtain suitable parameters for SVM modeling without reducing the classification accuracy rate. In the modeling phase, the SVM model was used to build a training set that was used to calculate the model's accuracy and fitness value. Finally, these optimized parameters were used in the hybrid PSO–SVM model to evaluate the model's predictive accuracy. This paper provides four critical contributions. (1) Using the PCA technique, the statistical results indicate that the financial prediction performance is mainly affected by financial ratios rather than non-financial and macroeconomic ratios. (2) Even with the input of nearly 70% fewer indicators, our approach is still able to provide highly accurate forecasts of financial bankruptcy. (3) The empirical results show that the PSO–SVM model provides better classification accuracy (i.e. normal vs. bankrupt) than the grid search (Grid–SVM) approach. (4) For six well-known UCI datasets, the PSO–SVM model also provides better prediction accuracy than the Grid–SVM, GA–SVM, SVM, SOM, and SVR–SOM approaches. Therefore, this paper proposes that the PSO–SVM approach is better suited for predicting potential financial distress.     

International financial stress spillovers to bank lending: Do internal characteristics matter?

The purpose of this paper is to unveil and assess the potential US financial spillover on Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC) bank lending and to check whether bank's internal characteristics shape such an effect or not. For this purpose, a dynamic panel model is estimated using the GMM system using data on an unbalanced panel of GCC banks over the period 2003–2018. We have found evidence of financial stress spillovers on bank lending and that their distributional impacts vary across time, banks size and capitalization. However, the role of banks liquidity in shaping the impacts of financial stress on lending is found to depend on dry-ups/abundance of market funding liquidity. The results are robust to both splitting the sample into pre- and post- crisis periods as well as to the inclusion of additional potential lending supply determinants.     

Systemic risk in an interconnected banking system with endogenous asset markets

We analyze the emergence of systemic risk in a network model of interconnected bank balance sheets. The model incorporates multiple sources of systemic risk, including size of financial institutions, direct exposure from interbank lendings, and asset fire sales. We suggest a new macroprudential risk management approach building on a system wide value at risk (SVaR). Under the SVaR metric, the contribution of individual banks to systemic risk is well defined and can be approximated by a Shapley value-type measure. We show that, in a SVaR regime, a fair systemic risk charge which is proportional to a bank's individual contribution to systemic risk diverges from the optimal macroprudential capitalization of the banks from a planner's perspective. The results have implications for the design of macroprudential capital surcharges.