How do banks respond to shocks? A dynamic model of deposit-taking institutions

This paper proposes a dynamic model of the optimal choices of a bank that benefits from market power and takes into account the impact of the deposit generation process. Interbank lending/borrowing emerges as a buffer that assists the bank in smoothing intertemporal adjustments in interdependent loan and deposit choices. The bank smooths the impact of interest-rates shocks on its customers to minimize the adjustments over time of the stocks of deposits and loans. It does not, however, provide insurance against negative shocks of real origin that increase its expected default costs. The predictions of the model help to shed light on the available empirical evidence and to analyze some recent developments of the banking industry.     

Did the financial crisis affect the market valuation of large systemic U.S. banks?

We examine the impact of the financial crisis on the stock market valuation of large and systemic U.S. bank holding companies (BHCs). Using the Bertsatos and Sakellaris (2016) model of fundamental valuation of bank equity, we provide evidence that the financial crisis has not altered investors’ attitudes towards bank characteristics. In particular, before, during, and after the crisis, investors in large and systemic U.S. BHCs seemed to penalize leverage, albeit temporarily. Both before and after the crisis, they reward size in the short run. This pattern is appearing only briefly during the crisis. We also show that bank opacity plays no role in market valuation either in the short run or in the long run. Last but not least, we find evidence that stress testing has been informative to the market and that those BHCs that failed at the post-crisis stress tests were not subsequently valued differently by the market.     

Credit risk transfer in U.S. commercial banks: What changed during the 2007–2009 crisis?

Following the debate on the role of credit risk transfer (CRT) in exacerbating the 2007–2009 crisis, this paper investigates the usage and effects of loan sales, securitization, and credit derivatives in U.S. commercial banks over the last decade, with special emphasis on the financial crisis. We find that in times of severe funding constraints, the need to raise financial resources becomes the principal incentive behind CRT. We document some beneficial effects of CRT on the economy, since the funds released through CRT are subsequently invested by banks to sustain credit supply, also in recession. However, we report higher overall riskiness in banks that engage intensively in loans sales and securitization, which translates into higher default rates during the crisis. Interestingly, the benefits and drawbacks of CRT are much stronger for loan sales and securitization than for credit derivatives.     

How did the financial crisis alter the correlations of U.S. yield spreads?

We investigate the pairwise correlations of eleven U.S. fixed income yield spreads over a sample that includes the Great Financial Crisis of 2007–09. Using cross-sectional methods and nonparametric bootstrap breakpoint tests, we characterize the crisis as a period in which pairwise correlations between yield spreads were systematically and significantly altered in the sense that spreads comoved with one another much more than in normal times. We find evidence that, for almost half of the fifty-five pairs under investigation, the crisis has left spreads much more correlated than they were previously. This evidence is particularly strong for liquidity- and default-risk-related spreads, long-term spreads, and the spreads that were most likely directly affected by policy interventions.     

How do corporate websites contribute to the information environment? Evidence from the U.S. and Taiwan

We study corporate website disclosures in the U.S. and Taiwan, two countries with different regulatory and market environments, to provide insights into the uniformity of website content and its contribution to the information environment. We observe significant variation in content both within and between the two countries. U.S. firms with higher analyst following tend to create more transparent financial information environments and provide disclosures that are complementary to analysts’ analyses through their corporate websites. They also tend to provide easier access to investor relations (IR) services if analyst coverage is light or nonexistent. However, neither effect is true in Taiwan where the securities analysis industry is less mature. Individual investors have greater ownership share in U.S. firms with more information about IR services on their websites; however, their ownership share drops as financial disclosure on the firm’s website increases, consistent with institutions diluting individual ownership in firms with more transparency in financial reporting. In Taiwan, however, institutions dilute individual ownership share in firms with less financial information and more trading information on their websites. These results are consistent with Barber et al.’s (2009) findings that institutions find Taiwan firms that attract the aggressive, speculative trading of individuals to be extremely profitable investments. Website disclosures in both countries have some effect on the stock-price response to mandatory earnings releases, but their impact is greater in the U.S. Our findings indicate that website disclosures contribute to the information environment and are related to the degree of interest in the firm by sophisticated market participants. Thus, they provide insights to regulators of both countries as they seek to improve disclosure and “level the information playing field.”     

How do global banks scramble for liquidity? Evidence from the asset-backed commercial paper freeze of 2007

We investigate how banks scrambled for liquidity following the asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP) market freeze of August 2007 and its implications for corporate borrowing. Commercial banks in the United States raised dollar deposits and took advances from Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBs), while foreign banks had limited access to such alternative dollar funding. Relative to before the ABCP freeze and relative to their non-dollar lending, foreign banks with ABCP exposure charged higher interest rates to corporations for dollar-denominated syndicated loans. The results point to a funding risk manifesting as currency shortages for banks engaged in maturity transformation in foreign countries.     

Do the prices of stock index futures in Asia overreact to U.S. market returns?

We extend the overreaction study to interaction of international markets and find that intraday price reversals exist in Asian index futures markets following extreme movement in U.S. market. Profitable opportunities exist after considering transaction cost. We show that the reversal cannot be explained by rational arguments such as risk, liquidity and bid-ask spread. We further observe that a magnitude effect exists. Overreaction is more prominent in the latter period than in the initial period. After calm-down periods, overreaction is greatly reduced. These observations support the explanation that the source of price reversals lies in behavioral biases.     

What do equity issuances signal? A study of equity issuances in the UK before and during the financial crisis

The financial crisis provides an ideal setting to study how quality signalling by firms, and information asymmetries, might explain the stock price reactions around seasoned equity offerings. The heightened information asymmetry levels during the GFC should have increased the importance of issuance quality and information asymmetries in explaining announcement returns. However, we document new and, in some cases, surprising findings, using a sample of 700 UK seasoned equity offerings between 2003 and 2012: (1) Contrary to expectations, announcement returns during the crisis were driven less by signalling and asymmetric information effects and more by macroeconomic conditions and general uncertainty. (2) In constrained capital markets, firms that were able to move more quickly to raise significant amounts of capital, made the capital-raising environment more challenging for firms that followed, such that the latter had to incur additional costs. (3) Contrary to the traditional view that the low book-to-market ratios may proxy for overvaluation and thus lower announcement returns, we found a negative relationship during the crisis period. The latter is consistent with the view that book-to-market ratios may also proxy for a distressed firm effect which may have dominated the conventional ‘market timing’ effect during the GFC. (4) Announcement returns were strongly positive for many firms at the peak of the crisis, possibly because the market was relieved to see that equity issues might potentially save firms from insolvency; an equity issuance could, in such circumstances, be a positive signal, even though equity issues are conventionally seen as negative signals. Overall, our paper documents fresh and surprising results about equity capital-raising during the GFC, and also offers insights for corporate finance that are of interest beyond the current crisis.     

How do banks price liquidity? The role of market power.

We empirically examine the effects of different measures of liquidity on interest margins of a sample of U.S. commercial banks from 2001 to 2018. Overall, the results reveal that liquidity ratios exert a positive influence on bank margins. Furthermore, the study investigates the role of market power in the relationship between liquidity and interest margins. It is documented that dominant banks incorporate the costs associated with investing in liquidity into the bank margins to a lesser extent than banks with less market power, suggesting that the cost of complying with regulatory liquidity standards is reduced when the competition in the banking sector is less intense. The study highlights that market competition might be important in the design and implementation of liquidity regulations.     

Trade credit research before and after the global financial crisis of 2008 – A bibliometric overview

This study presents an overview of the state-of-the-art in trade credit research by examining 1191 publications between 1955 and 2019. Applying bibliometrics and econometrics, the study compares the extant research across the three sub-domains of banking and finance, production and operations, and accounting. Findings suggest that the financial emergency in the global market had resulted in a watershed moment in trade credit research. About 69 % of the literature was found to have emerged after the global economic crisis of 2008. A network analysis grouped the trade credit articles into four major and four minor clusters. The banking and financing cluster exhibited the highest growth followed by the production and operation cluster while the perspectives of accounting are yet to gain traction. Conversely, reputation of the publishing hub, empirical studies, and the production and operational dimensions of the research positively and significantly influence citations. Alongside a thorough introspection, the study also provides new areas to direct the course of future research.     

The U.S. left behind? Financial globalization and the rise of IPOs outside the U.S.

From 1990 to 2011, the share of world IPO activity by non-U.S. firms increased because of financial globalization and because of a decrease in U.S. IPO activity. Financial globalization reduces the impact of national institutions on domestic IPO activity and enables more non-U.S. firms from countries with weak institutions to go public with a global IPO. U.S. IPO activity does not benefit from financial globalization. Compared to other countries, the rate of small-firm IPO activity in the U.S. is abnormally low in the 2000s. This abnormally low rate cannot be explained by the regulatory changes of the early 2000s.     

Does the source of uncertainty matter? The impact of financial,newspaper and Twitter-based measures on U.S. banks

This study examines if the source of uncertainty (newspaper, Twitter, financial market) matters in its impact on bank stock returns in the United States. By applying discrete wavelet transformation, we model directional spillovers and Granger causality between uncertainty and bank returns for different time horizons. Our results demonstrate that this distinction between time horizons is crucial. Although newspaper and Twitter-based measures are correlated, they capture a different source of investor perception. Twitter-based uncertainty adversely affects bank stocks in the short run, while newspaper-based policy uncertainty is relevant in the medium run. Financial-based uncertainty, VIX, is the most important factor. Moreover, we find that the impact of uncertainty on bank returns is stronger during the COVID-19 pandemic and for banks with a high ratio of loans to total assets and large off-balance-sheet activities.     

U.S. stock prices and the dot.com-bubble: Can dividend policy rescue the efficient market hypothesis?

This paper thoroughly integrates speculative bubbles to corporate finance literature by focusing on dividend policy issues. More specifically, we examine the importance of dividend policy when testing for speculative bubbles in the S&P 500 equity index on a data set spanning 1871 to 2014. Given the phenomenon of dividend smoothing, in particular in the U.S., we question the usefulness of observed dividend payments as fundamental factor in testing for bubbles. Circumventing dividend smoothing, we construct hypothetical dividend payouts which are based on reported corporate earnings instead. The empirical evidence presented here indeed suggests that the dividend policy of firms affects testing for speculative bubbles. While the dot.com-bubble—commonly seen as the prime example for a stock price bubble not only in the NASDAQ but also in other, broader equity indices—is detected with the observed dividend series as fundamental factor, this is not necessarily the case with our adjusted dividend time series. Some of our results argue against a speculative price bubble in the broader U.S. stock market in the late 1990s.     

Have cryptocurrencies become an inflation hedge after the reopening of the U.S. economy?

In this paper, we study how the comovement between cryptocurrencies and the U.S. inflation expectation rates has changed during the post-reopening of the U.S. economy after the Covid-19 crisis. To do so, we develop a new concept of “exceedance co-kurtosis” which allows us to quantify asymmetry in strong comovement between each cryptocurrency and the inflation expectation rate. The key findings are as follows. First, we show the change in the co-kurtosis asymmetry for major cryptocurrencies: the downside co-kurtosis was higher than the upside co-kurtosis but it decreased after the reopening of the economy. Although the unconditional correlations between cryptocurrencies and the inflation expectation rates remain very low, our results indicate that the major cryptocurrencies become a slightly better inflation hedge after the reopening. Second and more interestingly, the results do not depend on whether a cryptocurrency has a cap on maximum supply or not. Therefore, treating the major cryptocurrencies as digital commodities could be misleading from the viewpoint of portfolio optimization.     

Can fintech improve the efficiency of commercial banks? —An analysis based on big data

This paper assess the potential impact of Fintech on the banking industry. Results suggest that, for commercial banks, development of Fintech leads to increased profitability, financial innovation, and improved control of risk. Overall, by using financial technology, commercial banks can improve their traditional business model by reducing bank operating costs, improving service efficiency, strengthening risk control capabilities, and creating enhanced customer-oriented business models for customers; thereby improving comprehensive competitiveness. We also find that levels of such outcomes vary with levels of respective bank’s use of technological innovation.     

Does a change in dividend tax rates in the U.S. affect equity prices of non-U.S. stocks?

Review of Accounting Studies - I investigate the link between dividend taxes and stock prices in a global setting. Based on findings from an open-economy after-tax capital asset pricing model, I...     

How do European banks portray the effect of policy interest rates and prudential behavior on profitability?

European policy interest rates have been low and trending downwards for almost a decade now and expectations do not seem to change. Hence, in such an environment, this paper investigates whether and how banks’ prudential behavior has influenced profitability across the European banking sector from 1999 to 2015. Using a dynamic panel model, we clearly find that banks’ financial resilience, proxied by the asymmetric Z-score and two financial ratios, affects profits: more cautious banks record higher profits. This result is confirmed by the two overall measures of profitability, namely the Return on Average Assets and Equity, but not for the Net Interest Margins. Furthermore, our analysis suggests that monetary policy's main instrument adversely affects bank income. Nevertheless, when policy interest rates are particularly low, the effect on Net Interest Margin is still positive, while the effect on the overall profitability becomes negative. These results induce that European banks succeed in increasing their profitability despite a compression of their net interest income.     

How do policymakers and think tank stakeholders prioritize the risks of the nuclear fuel cycle? A semantic network analysis

In recent years, the importance of stakeholder involvement and of integrating diverse perspectives into risk management has gained increasing recognition. However, it remains a challenging task to identify all potentially relevant stakeholders and to reliably describe their deeply held beliefs regarding the risks associated with complex industrial systems. For example, the development of advanced nuclear fuel cycles presents such a case. Based on a review of policy-making literatures and a content analysis of congressional records, we identify federal agencies and nonprofit policy institutes (also known as ‘think tanks’) as key stakeholders that are representative of those actively involved in making high-level decisions on the US nuclear energy policy. Using a semantic network analysis approach, we visually delineate the thematic areas of each party’s perceptions concerning fuel cycle risks. The results show that although governmental and think tank stakeholders share common concerns in areas such as nuclear waste management, the economics of nuclear facilities, and proliferation, they tend to focus on distinct aspects of each area. Moreover, while governmental stakeholders are primarily concerned with the environmental and local impacts of nuclear fuel cycles, think tank stakeholders focus more on the relative advantages and disadvantages of nuclear energy compared to other alternative energy options. Implications for risk management and risk communication are discussed.