Bank lending opportunities and credit standards

This article empirically tests the hypothesis that credit-screening standards can be first increasing and then decreasing in the quality of the bank's pool of potential borrowers, which in turn may vary through the business cycle or across different segments of the lending markets. A key implication is that banks with lending opportunities toward the middle of the quality spectrum can have loan portfolios that perform better than do the portfolios of banks with loan-origination opportunities that are either too weak or too strong. Using banks’ volume of secondary-market loan sales as a proxy for the richness of lending opportunities, I find an inverse U-shaped relation between the performance of banks’ loan portfolios and their activity in the loan sales market. The pattern deserves scrutiny for its policy implications, as many regulators hold the view that countercyclical variation in credit standards may have a destabilizing effect on business cycles.     

The effect of credit guarantees on credit availability and delinquency rates

We use new data to examine whether credit guarantees affect economic incentives and whether they affect the credit available to small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). We find that firms that have both guaranteed and non-guaranteed loans are 1.67% more likely to miss payments on their guaranteed loans, but are not more likely to default on these loans. These findings suggest that guarantees affect firms’ incentives to repay loans but not their long-term performance. We also find that firms selected into the guarantee programs are 1.17% more likely to default on their loans compared with similar firms that borrow without guarantees. Since we find evidence that long-term performance is not affected by guarantees, the higher default rates among firms selected into the guarantee programs must be the consequence of adverse selection. We also find that credit guarantees increase the aggregated amount of credit; in particular, one additional dollar of guarantees increases the total credit for SMEs by US$ 0.65.     

Banking deregulation and credit risk: Evidence from the EU

This paper studies the effect of banking deregulation on credit risk. Its theoretical model shows that a bank is willing to invest more resources in screening borrowers when there is an entry threat, even though loan rates are driven lower. Thus, deregulation may result in improved loan quality and lower credit risk. This result is tested using bank-level balance sheet data and macroeconomic data for the European Union. The data reveal that competition intensified after the completion of the Second Banking Directive, while loan quality improved in most markets. Evidence is found that the loan quality improvement is associated with lower interest margin.     

Investment and bank credit recovery after banking crises

In this paper, we aim to investigate (a) the dynamic adjustment of investment-to-GDP ratio and bank credit-to-GDP ratio following banking crisis episodes; (b) whether the adjustment of investment and bank credit ratios varies with several country and crisis characteristics. Based on a sample of 79 developed and emerging countries over the 1973–2010 period, our results suggest that in the aftermath of banking crises, investment ratio declines but swiftly recovers to its pre-crisis level within two to three years. Bank credit declines significantly and remains stagnated even in the medium run. In terms of country characteristics, we find that investment and bank credit ratios decline significantly more in advanced countries and countries with higher level of capital openness. In addition, investment ratio declines significantly more in countries with higher level of financial development. Finally, we split the banking crises episodes into two categories: those preceded by a domestic credit boom or a surge in net capital inflows, and those that were not preceded by such booms. We find that dynamic adjustment of investment and bank credit ratios differs substantially across the two groups. Existence of a credit boom or a surge in capital inflow in the run-up to the crisis intensifies the length and depth of the decline in investment and bank credit ratios. In fact, we find no statistically significant decline in investment following banking crises that were not preceded by a credit boom or a surge in capital inflows. These results imply that deleveraging is costly to the economy.     

Banking deregulation,macroeconomic dynamics and monetary policy

We assess the effects of increased bank competition on macroeconomic and lending dynamics and on the transmission of monetary policy. Applying panel local projections to state-level data, we, in a first step, investigate the dynamic effects of fiercer bank competition induced by deregulation allowing geographical expansion of banks across state borders in the 1980s and early-1990s. We allow for possible adjustments before the new laws became effective due to potential anticipation effects. Our findings suggest that these events were anticipated and that they temporarily increased economic activity as well as business and consumer lending. We also find a permanent increase in real estate lending and house prices. In a second step, we show that the impact of monetary policy on economic activity, house prices and lending tended to become stronger after interstate banking deregulation.     

Economic policy uncertainty and credit growth: Evidence from a global sample

This study extends the research of Bordo, Duca, and Koch (2016) and Hu and Gong (2018) by examining the influences of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) at domestic and global levels on aggregate bank credit growth. The empirical analysis is conducted through both supply and demand side factors of bank credit growth in 22 economies over the period 2001–2015. This study employs different measures of EPU and applies panel-corrected standard errors (PCSE) and feasible generalized least squares (FGLS), which are suitable for unbalanced panel data models. Three principal findings are follows. First, higher level of EPU has negative impact on bank credit growth, which is significant for domestic EPU measures. Second, the positive change in EPU appears to have favorable effects on bank credit growth. The effects in both cases are different for the credit demand and supply sides. The findings suggest the need for appropriate measures to tackle bank credit risk-taking activities in uncertain conditions. Third, the impacts of EPU in emerging economies are negative and somewhat stronger than in advanced economies.     

Asset prices and banking distress: A macroeconomic approach

This paper links banking with asset prices in a dynamic macroeconomic model, to provide a simple characterization of financial instability. In contrast with historical bank runs, recent banking crises were driven by deteriorating bank assets. Hence, in contrast with bank run models, this paper focuses on the interaction of falling asset prices, bank losses, credit contraction and bankruptcies. This interaction can explain credit crunches, financial instability, and banking crises, either as fundamental or as self-fulfilling outcomes. The model distinguishes between macroeconomic and financial stability. Its simplicity helps understand balance sheet effects and delivers closed-form solutions without resorting to linearization. For instance, the critical threshold beyond which an asset price decline triggers financial instability can be related explicitly to the structural parameters of the economy.     

Changes in bank lending standards and the macroeconomy

Identifying macroeconomic effects of credit shocks is difficult because many of the same factors that influence the supply of loans also affect the demand for credit. Using bank-level responses to the Federal Reserve's Loan Officer Opinion Survey, we construct a new credit supply indicator: changes in lending standards, adjusted for the macroeconomic and bank-specific factors that also affect loan demand. Tightening shocks to this credit supply indicator lead to a substantial decline in output and the capacity of businesses and households to borrow from banks, as well as to a widening of credit spreads and an easing of monetary policy.     

Growth options,macroeconomic conditions,and the cross section of credit risk

This paper develops a structural equilibrium model with intertemporal macroeconomic risk, incorporating the fact that firms are heterogeneous in their asset composition. Compared with firms that are mainly composed of invested assets, firms with growth options have higher costs of debt because they are more volatile and have a greater tendency to default during recession when marginal utility is high and recovery rates are low. Our model matches empirical facts regarding credit spreads, default probabilities, leverage ratios, equity premiums, and investment clustering. Importantly, it also makes predictions about the cross section of all these features.     

The impact of Basel III on financial (in)stability: an agent-based credit network approach

The Basel III accord reacts to the events of the recent financial crisis with a combination of revised micro- and new macroprudential regulatory instruments to address various dimensions of systemic risk. This approach of cumulating requirements bears the risk of individual measures negating or even conflicting with each other which might lessen their desired effects on financial stability. We provide an analysis of the impact of Basel III’s main components on financial stability in a stock-flow consistent agent-based computational economic model. We find that the positive joint impact of the microprudential instruments is considerably larger than the sum of the individual contributions to stability, i.e. the standalone impacts are non-additive. However, except for the buffers, the macroprudential overlay’s impact is either marginal or even destabilizing. Despite its simplicity, the leverage ratio performs poorly, especially when associated drawbacks are explicitly taken into account. Surcharges on SIBs seem to rather contribute to financial regulations complexity than to the resilience of the system.     

Banks' Strategic Responses to Supervisory Coverage: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

U.S. bank supervisors conduct frequent and comprehensive loan-level exams of the syndicated loan market. These exams are costly as adverse exam loan ratings may increase supervisory scrutiny and reduce bank capital. Relying on an unexpected change in supervisory coverage in 1998, we estimate that the cost of bank credit for borrowers excluded from supervision decreases by approximately 18%. We show that large lenders use the coverage change to exclude deals from supervision, especially riskier deals. Strikingly, small lenders shift their lending to increase supervisory coverage, suggesting the potential importance of supervision in reducing information asymmetries within lending syndicates.     

Leverage-induced systemic risk under Basle II and other credit risk policies

We use a simple agent based model of value investors in financial markets to test three credit regulation policies. The first is the unregulated case, which only imposes limits on maximum leverage. The second is Basle II and the third is a hypothetical alternative in which banks perfectly hedge all of their leverage-induced risk with options. When compared to the unregulated case both Basle II and the perfect hedge policy reduce the risk of default when leverage is low but increase it when leverage is high. This is because both regulation policies increase the amount of synchronized buying and selling needed to achieve deleveraging, which can destabilize the market. None of these policies are optimal for everyone: risk neutral investors prefer the unregulated case with low maximum leverage, banks prefer the perfect hedge policy, and fund managers prefer the unregulated case with high maximum leverage. No one prefers Basle II.     

票据链及其对货币信贷运行的影响:以浙江省为例

本文基于货币信贷运行分析的视角,以浙江省为例,重点讨论了由银行承兑汇票—贴现—转贴现所构成的票据链对区域货币信贷运行的影响及其作用机理。     

Release of a liquidity regulation: What do we learn for credit and house prices?

This paper studies the effects of the release of a limit on banks’ maturity transformation – akin to the Net Stable Funding Ratio – for mortgage supply and house prices. After the regulatory easing, credit supply increased only for the banks that were previously constrained by the regulation and not for the others. We also show that the expansion in mortgages triggered by the deregulation accelerated house prices. The effect was channeled through higher demand for housing and the relaxation of borrowers’ financial constraints. Even though the impact of the credit supply shock persisted, the interaction between credit and house prices was not conducive to a housing market overheating.     

PDE approach to valuation and hedging of credit derivatives

This paper presents a PDE approach in a Markovian setting to hedge defaultable derivatives. The arbitrage price and the hedging strategy for an attainable contingent claim are described in terms of solutions of a pair of coupled PDEs. For some standard examples of defaultable claims, we provide explicit formulae for prices and hedging strategies.     

Do credit unions use their tax advantage to benefit members? Evidence from a cost function

This paper examines whether the credit union income tax subsidy is passed along to members or consumed by managers. To that end, we estimate a translog cost function for credit unions and mutual thrifts that is tailored to the unique objectives of mutually owned depository institutions. We find that credit unions with residential common bonds have higher costs than mutual thrifts, but single common bond occupational and associational credit unions are more cost efficient. Thus, it appears that residential credit unions engage in expense preference behavior and hence redirect some portion of their tax benefit away from members.     

Estimating changes in supervisory standards and their economic effects

The disappointingly slow recovery in the U.S. from the depths of the financial crisis once again focused attention on the relationship between financial frictions and economic growth. Some bankers and borrowers suggested that unnecessarily tight supervisory policies were a constraint on new lending that hindered the recovery. This paper explores one aspect of supervisory policy: whether the standards used to assign commercial bank CAMELS ratings have changed materially over time (1991–2013). Models incorporating time-varying parameters or economy-wide variables suggest that standards used in the assignment of CAMELS ratings over the post-crisis period generally were in line with historical experience. Indeed, each of the models used suggests that the variation in supervisory standards has been relatively small in absolute terms over most of the sample period. However, we show that when this measure of supervisory stringency becomes elevated, it has a noticeable dampening effect on lending activity in subsequent quarters.     

A darker side to decentralized banks: Market power and credit rationing in SME lending

We use loan-level data to study how the organizational structure of banks impacts small business lending. We find that decentralized banks—where branch managers have greater autonomy over lending decisions—give larger loans to small firms and those with “soft information.” However, decentralized banks are also more responsive to their own competitive environment. They are more likely to expand credit when faced with competition but also cherry pick customers and restrict credit when they have market power. This “darker side” to decentralized banks in concentrated markets highlights that the level of local banking competition is key to determining which organizational structure provides better lending terms for small businesses.     

Government policies to enhance access to credit for infrastructure-based PPPs: an approach to classification and appraisal

Governments across the world have introduced a variety of instruments to enhance private investors’ appetites for public–private partnership (PPP) projects. The use of such instruments has become a core component of development and growth policies, for example by the EU as part of the Junker Plan. This paper provides a comprehensive categorization of these instruments, the risks they target and their effects, at both the project and system level, to support policy-makers to design the most appropriate instruments to attract private capital into infrastructure development.     

Perceived vs actual financial crisis and bank credit standards: Is there any indication of self-fulfilling prophecy?

We link senior banks loan officers’ responses regarding their decisions for bank credit standards, from successive surveys from the European Bank Lending Survey to investigate two important issues. First, we examine the relationship between bank credit standards (CS) and perceived and actual financial crisis. Second, we investigate whether the notion of the self-fulfilling prophecy is applicable in the case of the 2008 financial crisis. In particular, the second main research question that we try to answer is whether the perceived crisis (as implied by the Google search query “financial crisis”) contributed to the acceleration of the outburst of the actual crisis. We find that both perceived and actual financial crisis affect senior bank loan officers’ credit standards, with the actual crisis having the greatest impact. These results are consistent both in the short and in the long run. Finally, by putting forward a binary choice model we find sufficient evidence to support the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy notion.