Too-Big-To-Fail: Why Megabanks Have Not Become Smaller Since the Global Financial Crisis?

ABSTRACT

More than ten years after the global financial crisis, what has happened to the ‘too-big-to-fail’ (TBTF) banks whose reckless behavior was among its preconditions, but which received public support and guarantees in the midst of that crisis? Insofar as this too-big-to-fail status helped create the crisis and then imposed costs on the rest of society, we would expect these banks to have shrunk. We investigate the evolution of 31 global-TBTF banks and find that their overall size has hardly recorded any substantial change. However, there is no sense of urgency in the flourishing post-crisis literature on TBTF banks about the need to contain their size; the prevalent view therein is that if properly regulated, the risks that arise from a financial system dominated by TBTF banks are manageable. This view rests on the same overly narrow theoretical underpinnings whose flaws were exposed in the crisis. We argue that too-big-to-fail banking is embedded in a set of self-reinforcing policies—consolidation, balance-sheet support through quantitative easing, favorable regulations, bank lobbying, and geo-economic and geo-political considerations—which explain why these banks have not shrunk and why they remain a threat to financial stability, well after the lessons of the crisis should have been learned.     

Liquidity risk and policy options

On the basis of a liquidity management model, liquidity risks, defined as the probability of payment failures in a real-time gross settlement (RTGS) payment system, may either stem from liquidity management inefficiencies or insufficient cash balances. I will show that penalties charged on the amount of payment failures minimise liquidity risks without interfering with the bank’s technology preferences. I will instead show that liquidity requirements, although as effective as penalties to contain the risk of liquidity shortage, may distort the bank’s technology preferences and cannot stem liquidity management inefficiencies. I will also show that liquidity risks within RTGS payment systems are potentially smaller because they depend more on the liquidity management efficiency than on the randomness of cash inflows and outflows.     

Connecting National Safety Nets: The Dialectics of the Basel II Contracting Process

Basel II consists of supervisory guidelines negotiated by representatives of central banks and national regulatory commissions that were members of the Basel committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS). The BCBS is itself a regulatory response to globalization, which is connecting national safety nets in market-driven ways. A country’s financial safety net is a social contract established by short-lived agents for principals in long-lived economic sectors. Restraints placed on the authority of the BCBS members to contract for their principals by domestic politics explains: why Basel II authorizes individual countries to implement the agreement in markedly different ways; why US implementation of Basel II ran into so much doubt, controversy, and delay; and how the implementation debate set small and large banks and the Federal Reserve and other federal regulators against one another.

日本福岛核泄漏事件风险评估

本文分析了日本福岛第一核电站核泄漏的情况和放射性物质可能扩散到我国的途径,并对日本福岛核泄漏事件对我国的影响进行了风险评估。最后结论为：根据目前的情况,日本福岛核泄漏事件不会危害我国公民的健康。     

证券市场监管理论——公共利益论、部门利益论的比较与评述

对经典的监管理论,尤其是对公共利益论、部门利益论与捕获论形成的背景、内涵、优缺点、适用条件进行了完整的比较分析,认为这些理论观点对监管的研究和监管实践有着重要的指导意义,但每一种理论都是对监管的某一方面进行的研究,还没有一种理论能够对证券市场监管的所有问题做出满意的解释。要提高我国证券市场监管的效果,需要从整体上运用这...     

Supply-side investments: An international analysis of the return and risk relationship in the Travel & Leisure sector

This study investigates supply-side investments in the tourism sector, analysing the return and risk relationship of investments in tourism across several countries. The performance of tourism sector companies listed on the stock exchange, for the top one dozen countries according to the World Economic Forum (WEF) tourism rankings, is investigated by region, across these countries and within each country by comparison to other sectors. Several metrics are used to compare the risk-adjusted returns, over a 15-year period ending March 2007 and sub-periods to check the persistence of performance over time. The results present a strikingly different ranking than those of the WEF. The implications for the flow of investment funds are of importance in a global capital market. Money will flow to those investments with the highest expected returns for a given risk level and this has consequential impacts for economic growth and employment in the tourism sector.     

哈尔滨市土地利用现状及存在问题

主要讨论了哈尔滨市土地利用的基本规律和特点．并针对其土地利用的现状提出了看法。     

大城市保障性住房空间布局的社会问题与治理途径

本文研究了北京、上海、南京等五大城市保障性住房空间布局特征,指出大城市保障性住房普遍存在空间选址偏僻、大规模集中建设、配套设施不完善等现实问题.在分析以上问题形成原因的基础上,认为大城市保障性住房集中建设在偏远郊区可能导致社会隔离与排斥加剧、出现城市贫民区与贫困文化、贫困的代际延续与社会风险加剧等一系列社会问题.因此建...     

宽松的环境政策能吸引更多的外商直接投资吗——基于中国工业省级面板数据的分析

利用我国1997~2009年的工业省级面板数据和动态面板GMM估计方法,考察了相对宽松的环境政策是否是吸引FDI的主要原因。研究发现,环境政策较宽松的地区能够吸引更多的外资流入,但这种影响并不大,所以,以降低环境标准、牺牲环境为代价来吸引FDI不是明智之举;与东、中部地区相比,西部在吸引FDI上处于明显劣势,这在一定程度上加剧了我国经济结构的失衡。