Monitoring and Controlling Bank Risk: Does Risky Debt Help?

We examine whether mandating banks to issue subordinated debt would enhance market monitoring and control risk taking. To evaluate whether subordinated debt enhances risk monitoring, we extract the credit‐spread curve for each banking firm in our sample and examine whether changes in credit spreads reflect changes in bank risk variables, after controlling for changes in market and liquidity variables. We do not find strong and consistent evidence that they do. To evaluate whether subordinated debt controls risk taking, we examine whether the first issue of subordinated debt changes the risk‐taking behavior of a bank. We find that it does not.     

Explaining the ‘take‐off’ of the Catalan cotton industry1

Cotton was central to Catalan industrialization and, within cotton, progress in spinning and weaving, originating in the late eighteenth century, provided the cutting edge in the industry's modernization. This article tests the current orthodoxy concerning the timing and causes of this breakthrough. It does so by first evaluating what were external influences on the success‐government policy, the elasticity of supply of spun yarn (a potential disincentive) and of raw cotton‐and then providing an analytical narrative of the advance first in hand and then mechanical spinning. On this basis a conclusion is reached that government policy was more advantageous to the development than posited in the current orthodoxy, that elasticity in the supply of spun yarn slowed the transition and that, though growing availability of American cotton eased the transition, the key to the development is to be found within the Catalan economy, experiencing a 'Smithian'‐type growth process in the eighteenth century, within which industrialization of cotton was nearly the last achievement before Spain's severe 'old régime crisis' curtailed economic opportunity.     

CUSTOMER‐OWNED BANKING IN AUSTRALIA: FROM CREDIT UNION TO MUTUAL BANK

Since the 1990s financial sector regulation in Australia has treated credit unions and building societies the same as banks under the designated title of authorized depository institutions. This allows credit unions to choose between different organizational structures: cooperative; convert to customer‐owned banks or to demutualize. This article utilizes semi‐structured interviews to analyse the key motivations for organizational change. It examines a number of credit unions and their conversion experience to customer‐owned banks. It finds that adaptation of the credit union model was necessary to change customer perceptions, ensure future growth in the customer base and assets, and facilitate access to capital raisings with the credit rating of a bank. Despite this change customer‐owned banks retain the core principals of mutuality.