Reprint of: Stopping contagion with bailouts: Micro-evidence from Pennsylvania bank networks during the panic of 1884

Using a newly constructed historical dataset on the Pennsylvania state banking system, detailing the amounts of “due-froms” on a debtor bank-by-debtor bank basis, we investigate the effects of the Panic of 1884 and subsequent private sector-orchestrated bailout of systemically important banks (SIBs) on the broader banking sector. We find evidence that Pennsylvania banks with larger direct interbank exposures to New York City changed the composition of their asset holdings, shifting from loans to more liquid assets and reducing their New York City correspondent deposits in the near-term. Over the long-term though, only the lower correspondent deposits effect persisted. Our findings show that the banking turmoil in New York City impacted more exposed interior banks, but that bailouts of SIBs by the New York Clearing House likely short-circuited a full-scale banking panic.     

Characteristics of banks that are more active in the swap market

The impact of swap-related risks on the safety and soundness of the banking system has been a topic of concern. This article provides evidence that some banks may have engaged in swaps as a means to generate income when their loan activities were constrained by the fixed capital requirements. However, the results also suggest that creditworthiness plays an important role. All money center banks (too-big-to-fail) and those nonmoney center banks that are highly rated by S&P experience higher swap demand and achieve higher swap market shares. This implies some market discipline for nonmoney center banks, which may compensate for risk-measurement inadequacies in the current risk-based capital requirements. On the other hand, the results suggest that greater oversight may be required for money center banks.This article was adapted from the dissertation the author completed at the Stern School of Business, New York University. Part of the work was completed while the author was an assistant professor at the School of Management, Syracuse University.Baruch College, City University of New York     

The Impact of Internet-Banking on Brick and Mortar Branches: The Case of Turkey

The increased adoption and infiltration of the Internet has recently redefined the playground for retail banks. Retail banks are now offering their services primarily through their Internet banking branches. The repercussions of this change to “brick and mortar” banks have been studied in the context of developed market economies. In this paper, we contribute to the literature by studying the impact of Internet banking adoption on banks’ deposit collection, lending activities, and performance in an emerging market setting. By using a panel of 18 retail banks that operate in Turkey from 1990–2008, we demonstrate that Internet banking adoption has a positive impact on the level of profits, deposits and loans per branch. As operational activities are now provided via Internet branches, Internet banking facilitates banking activities in branches that require more human input. We also find that Internet banking adoption has a negative impact on bank profitability after 2 years of adoption as Internet banking increases competition and results in lower interest income. Accordingly, Internet banking complements brick and mortar branches.     

U.S. banking regulations and foreign banks' entry into the United States

This study provides a review of foreign banking activities in the U.S. over the past decade. Foreign banking entry into the United States has occurred through representative offices, branches, agencies, subsidiary banks, Edge Act offices, and investment companies. The total assets of foreign offices, branches, and subsidiaries in the U.S. increased 310 percent, while total assets of domestically owned commercial banks increased 99 percent. Foreign interests are not currently dominating U.S. banking activities. The shares of balance sheet accounts for foreign entrants are growing more rapidly than domestic institutions in six states, but not in New York and California. To eliminate any disadvantages U.S. institutions may face in competing with foreign banks, American state and federal banking laws need to be liberalized.     

Vertical integration to avoid contracting with potential competitors: Evidence from bankers' banks

We examine a vertical integration decision within the commercial banking industry. During the last quarter of the 20th century, some community banks reduced their traditional reliance on correspondent banks for upstream products and services by joining bankers' banks, a form of business cooperative. Research on vertical integration focuses primarily on firm-specific investment, market power, and government regulation. However, this case is difficult to explain in terms of these standard vertical integration motives. Our evidence suggests that bankers' banks are a response to technological change and deregulation that results in increased costs faced by community banks in dealing with correspondent banks as both suppliers and potential competitors. For instance, loan participations require sharing proprietary information about major loan customers, something a community bank would not want to provide to a potential competitor.     

Does deposit insurance improve financial intermediation? Evidence from the Russian experiment

This study examines how the introduction of deposit insurance affects depositors and banks, using the deposit-insurance scheme introduced into the Russian banking system as a natural experiment. The fundamental research question is whether the introduction of deposit insurance leads to a more effective banking system as evidenced by increased deposit-taking and decreased reliance upon State-owned banks as custodians of retail deposits. We find that banks entering the new deposit-insurance system increase both their level of retail deposits and their ratios of retail deposits to total assets relative to banks that do not enter the new deposit insurance system. These results hold up in a multivariate panel-data analysis that controls for bank- and time-random effects. The longer a bank has been entered into the deposit insurance system, the greater is its level of deposits and its ratio of deposits to assets. Moreover, this effect is stronger for regional banks and for smaller banks. We also find that implementation of the new deposit-insurance system has the effect of “leveling the playing field” between State-owned banks and privately owned banks. Finally, we find strong evidence of moral hazard following implementation of deposit insurance in the form of increased bank risk-taking. Financial risk and, to a lesser degree, operating risk increase following implementation.     

代理行业务反洗钱管理研究

代理行业务作为商业银行国际业务的重要组成,对于促进跨境金融活动、支撑国际贸易、推动包容性增长等方面具有重要意义。但由于该业务的内生特点,往往隐藏着较大的洗钱风险。近年来代理行业务洗钱案件频现,凸显了代理行业务在风险治理、尽职调查、风险评估、交易监控等方面的问题。商业银行要稳健发展好代理行业务,需要从事前、事中、事后等环节加强反洗钱管理。     

代理行业务洗钱风险与反洗钱监控机制分析

银行开展代理行业务可能面临的严重洗钱风险因汇丰洗钱案再次引起全世界瞩目。本文主要从国家风险、客户风险两方面分析了代理行业务面临的洗钱风险,从FATF风险为本方法入手,分析了银行控制代理行业务洗钱风险的反洗钱监控措施。     

How the Internet affects output and performance at community banks

Internet web sites have become an important alternative distribution channel for most banking institutions. However, we still know little about the impact of this delivery channel on bank performance. We observe 424 community banks among the first wave of US banks to adopt transactional banking web sites in the late-1990s, and compare the change in their 1999–2001 financial performance to that of 5175 branching-only community banks. Whereas today virtually all viable community banking franchises offer the Internet banking channel, studying this earlier time period allows us to make clean comparisons between subsamples of “brick-and-mortar” and “click-and-mortar” community banks. We find that Internet adoption improved community bank profitability, chiefly through increased revenues from deposit service charges. Internet adoption was also associated with movements of deposits from checking accounts to money market deposit accounts, increased use of brokered deposits, and higher average wage rates for bank employees. We find little evidence of changes in loan portfolio mix. Our findings suggest that these initial click-and-mortar banks (and their customers) used the Internet channel as a complement to, rather than a substitute for, physical branches.     

A model of the financial firm with imperfect asset and deposit elasticities

The paper develops an intertemporal model to estimate the production technology of financial firms such as banks. Price taking is testable in each separate market, for assets and liabilities, and competitive price taking is a nested special case. Such tests are applied both to outputs and inputs. Empirical results for a sample of banks in New York and New Jersey indicate that price taking applies only in markets for labor and time deposits. In markets for loans, demand deposits, cash and materials, the price taking hypothesis is not accepted.     

Depositors’ Assessment of Bank Riskiness in the Russian Federation

In the period after the crises in the late 1990s, the banking industries in most emerging markets have undergone significant restructuring consistent with the Basel II Accord. The Central Bank of Russia’s efforts since 2000 have contributed to the consolidation and improvement of the banking industry. To measure the extent of market discipline in the Russian banking industry, we study the reaction of Russian depositors to excessive risk taking by large banks between 2000:1 and 2005:1. We find that during our analysis period, well-capitalized, more liquid banks significantly increase their deposits.     

The internationalization of Australian banks

Since the 19th century, Australian banking has seen high inward and some outward flows of FDI. However, from the 1980s, Australian banks greatly expanded the scale of their FDI, their geographic scope and the range of products that they offered. This recent outward flow of FDI was the result of a complex and inter-related set of factors, including a push from a small and crowded Australian market and the pull of foreign wholesale and retail markets, that liberalization of trade and investment in financial services had made accessible. A combination of what Rugman (Inside the Multinationals: The Economics of Internal Markets, 1981, Croom Helm, London and Columbia University Press, New York) calls country-specific advantages (CFAs) and firm-specific advantages (FSAs), strongly influenced the ability of Australian banks to become successful MNBs. As the nature of international banking altered from the 1960s onwards, this overturned earlier forms of internationalization by Australian banks. Now banks had to acquire and absorb new knowledge to be able to operate effectively in new product and geographic markets.     

Deposit Insurance and Depositor Monitoring: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from the Creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

The Banking Acts of 1933 and 1935 insured deposits up to $5,000 and limited interest paid by commercial banks. This essay uses a treatment-and-control estimation strategy to determine how those reforms influenced depositors’ reactions to information about banks’ balance sheets by comparing preferred and regular depositors at New York state banks. Before deposit insurance, regular depositors reacted more to information about banks, while preferred depositors reacted less. After, this difference diminished and almost disappeared. This change indicates insurance reduced monitoring, although depositors’ continued response to some information indicates that large, uninsured depositors continued to monitor banks, as the legislation intended.     

Islamic banking: Interest-free or interest-based?

A unique feature of Islamic banking, in theory, is its profit-and-loss sharing (PLS) paradigm. In practice, however, we find that Islamic banking is not very different from conventional banking. Our study on Malaysia shows that only a negligible portion of Islamic bank financing is strictly PLS based and that Islamic deposits are not interest-free, but are closely pegged to conventional deposits. Our findings suggest that the rapid growth in Islamic banking is largely driven by the Islamic resurgence worldwide rather than by the advantages of the PLS paradigm and that Islamic banks should be subject to regulations similar to those of their western counterparts.     

What we can expect from interstate banking

Though interstate banking has been legislatively prohibited, commercial banks have circumvented these restrictions. This has led to proposals to permit interstate banking. In this paper we examine the performance of one set of banks which has been allowed to operate on an interstate basis, namely, those grandfathered by the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956. The data and statistical tests confirm that the grandfathered BHCs have experienced a statistically significant reduction in the share of state deposits and homogenization in their profitability and portfolio composition compared with their peers in the same states over the 1960–1983 period. These results suggest that the ability to operate banks interstate has provided little in the way of long-run competitive advantages for those BHCs with this privilege. It is unlikely that interstate branching will result in the large money center banks dominating local and regional banking markets.     

Banks, markets, and efficiency

A competitive financial system can help reduce banks’ monopoly power and the associated inefficiencies. However, according to Diamond (J Polit Econ 105: 928–956, 1997) and Fecht (J Eur Econ Assoc 6(2), 2004) competition with the financial sector may also constrain the amount of liquidity insurance that banks can provide to households affected by unobservable idiosyncratic liquidity shocks. To study this trade-off, we model competition between banks and between banks and financial markets. Our analysis shows that competition between banks and financial markets can constrain the risk-sharing offered by deposit contracts. This effect is the same if competition between banks mainly affects the reallocation of deposits. However, if banking competition primarily affects new deposits, then such competition only limits inefficient monopoly rents without restraining risk-sharing. We would like to thank Diemo Dietrich, Phil Dybvig, Hans Peter Grüner, Martin Hellwig, Elu von Thadden, Uwe Vollmer, Wolf Wagner as well as seminar participants at the Bundesbank, at the University of Mannheim, at the University of Tilburg, at the 3rd Workshop on Monetary and Financial Economics in Halle, at the University of Lausanne, at the First ProBanker Symposium in Maastricht, at the Global Finance Conference 2005 in Dublin, at the European Economic Association Meeting 2005 in Amsterdam, at the International Finance Conference 2005 in Copenhagen, and at the German Economic Association Meeting 2005 in Bonn. We thank Mike Demott for editorial assistance. The views expressed here are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Deutsche Bundesbank, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, or the Federal Reserve System.     

Risk management versus operational action: Basel II in a Swedish context

The New Basel Capital Accord, Basel II, promotes standards for measurement of financial and operational risk in the banking industry. Its approach to such risk measurement has been severely criticized in the literature, inevitably raising doubts concerning the effectiveness of Basel II. Using data from 25 semi-structured interviews with banking staff in four Swedish banks, the study suggests that Basel II is well established in practice, but there are significant concerns that such measurement of risk may adversely affect banks’ activities. Whilst Basel II is generally supported by banking staff who work directly with risk measurement, its usefulness is questioned by banking staff in operations. This difference between these two groups may be explained in relation to variations in their respective frames of reference. Both groups are inclined to take account of information that meshes well with their existing frames of reference and are thus more inclined to value changes that accord with their own viewpoints. One suggestion for addressing this schism within banks is to encourage a wider debate about the various approaches to implementing Basel II.     

Why do banks promise to pay par on demand?

We survey the theories on why banks promise to pay par on demand and examine evidence on the conditions under which banks have promised to pay the par value of deposits and banknotes on demand when holding only fractional reserves. The theoretical literature is divided into four strands: liquidity provision; asymmetric information; legal restrictions; and a medium of exchange. We assume that it is not zero cost to make a promise to redeem a liability at par value on demand. If so, then the conditions in the theories that result in par redemption are possible explanations why banks promise to pay par on demand. If the explanation based on customers’ demand for liquidity is correct, payment of deposits at par will be promised when banks hold assets that are illiquid in the short run. If the asymmetric-information explanation based on the difficulty of valuing assets is correct, the marketability of banks’ assets determines whether banks promise to pay par. If the legal restrictions explanation of par redemption is correct, banks will not promise to pay par if they are not required to do so. If the transaction explanation is correct, banks will promise to pay par if the deposits are used in transactions. We examine the history of banking in several countries in different eras: fourth century Athens, medieval Italy, Tokugawa Japan, and free banking and money market mutual funds in the United States. Each of the theories explains some of the observed banking arrangements and none explains all of them.     

商业银行吸收存款能力、发行理财及其经济后果研究

本文分析了商业银行吸收存款能力和发行理财产品的关系及其经济后果。本文发现商业银行吸收存款能力越弱,通过理财产品募集资金越多,理财产品收益率越高。具体来说,非四大国有银行,通过理财产品募集资金越多,理财产品收益率越高;银行的网点数量越少,通过理财产品募集资金越多,理财产品的收益率越高;银行所在地区贷存比越高,通过理财产品募集资金越多,理财产品收益率越高;银行所在地区的金融机构密度越大,通过理财募集资金越多,理财产品收益率越高。进一步研究发现,非保本理财产品加大了银行经营业绩波动,从而增大了银行经营风险。     

How credible is a too-big-to-fail policy? International evidence from market discipline

This paper analyzes in an international sample of banks from 104 countries if the sensitivity of the cost of deposits to bank risk varies across banks depending on their systemic and absolute size. We analyze a period before the 2007 financial crisis and control for endogeneity of bank size, intervention policies in past banking crises, and soundness of countries’ public finances. Our results are consistent with the predominance of the too-big-to-fail hypothesis, although this effect is stronger in countries that did not impose losses on depositors in past banking crises and in countries with sounder public finances.