Scarce collateral and bank reserves

If collateral for bank loans is scarce and, if as a result, access to secured loans is restricted, the allocation of resources is inefficient. In anticipation of future borrowing constraints, individuals over-invest in collateralized types of capital, and consume and invest inefficiently low levels while they are borrowing constrained. The dual counterpart of this misallocation of resources is inefficiently low interest rates. In this situation, bank reserves play a positive welfare role by adding liquidity to the economy and by increasing not only bank lending rates, but also, paradoxically, bank deposit rates. As a result, in economies with scarce collateral the optimal reserves–requirement ratio is positive.     

Expansion and Efficiency in Banking: Evidence from Ghana

We use a translog functional form to estimate a stochastic frontier function of cost and profit efficiency (PE) of Ghanaian banks under the Battese–Coelli time‐varying decaying inefficiency parameterization for (unbalanced) panel data. We regressed efficiency estimates on a distance variable controlling for bank size, total cost, and profits. We find that Ghanaian bank PE is worsening, whereas cost efficiency is improving for the period analyzed. Our results show that PE is not related to distance, size, or cost and profitability ratios. Distance is however positively and significantly related to cost efficiency. Cost efficiency is however not influenced by size or cost and profit ratios. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

银行业在中小企业融资服务领域的经验及启示——以成都市为例

本文立足银行信贷视角,结合全球金融危机以及成都市西部金融中心建设背景,分析成都市中小企业面临的金融环境;然后总结成都市银行业在中小企业融资服务领域的经验;最后,本文从政策性银行作用的发挥、信贷风险控制、金融机构市场定位、银行业发展战略等四方面提出了启示。     

论银行业务外包

银行业务外包是指银行通过契约将原内部工作交由他人完成,是银行应对日益激烈的市场竞争的重要工具,也是银行主动调整战略、实现核心价值的有效手段。随着国际银行外包业务范围扩大化、专业化、全球化的趋势,关于中国银行业务外包的研究越来越引起国内理论界和实务界的关注。本文在对国际国内银行业务外包进行比较分析的基础上,针对我国银行外包业务刚刚起步,业务范围狭隘、外包服务商不成熟、法律监管制度不健全等问题,我们提出了相应的政策建议。     

社会融资规模作为金融宏观调控中介目标的适用性分析

本文采用2002年第1季度至2012年第2季度数据考察了三个备选的金融宏观中介目标——社会融资规模、人民币贷款和广义货币M2。图形直观分析、脉冲响应分析以及协整关系分析三种方法均表明：第一,M2不是一个理想的中介目标。第二,不论从与实体经济还是与物价指数的关系看、从中短期影响还是从长期均衡关系看,社会融资规模在三个中介目标中表现最好,建议我国以社会融资规模作为金融宏观调控的中介目标。第三,实体经济较物价指数更快受到金融宏观调控政策（中介目标变量）的影响。调控发生后,实体经济约5季后正效应达到最大,物价指数约在2至3年间响应达到最大。政策时滞对制定前瞻性的金融宏观政策具有一定指导意义。     

Does “skin in the game” reduce risk taking? Leverage,liability and the long-run consequences of new deal banking reforms

This essay examines how the Banking Acts of the 1933 and 1935 and related New Deal legislation influenced risk taking in the financial sector of the U.S. economy. The analysis focuses on contingent liability of bank owners for losses incurred by their firms and how the elimination of this liability influenced leverage and lending by commercial banks. Using a new panel data set, we find contingent liability reduced risk taking. In states with contingent liability, banks used less leverage and converted each dollar of capital into fewer loans, and thus could survive larger loan losses (as a fraction of their portfolio) than banks in limited liability states. In states with limited liability, banks took on more leverage and risk, particularly in states that required banks with limited liability to join the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. In the long run, the New Deal replaced a regime of contingent liability with deposit insurance, stricter balance sheet regulation, and increased capital requirements, shifting the onus of risk management from bankers to state and federal regulators.     

Sudden stops, banking crises and investment collapses in emerging markets

We evaluate whether financial openness leaves emerging market economies vulnerable to the adverse effects of capital reversals (“sudden stops”) on domestic investment. We investigate this claim in a broad sample of emerging markets during the period 1976–2002. If the banking sector does not experience a systemic crisis, sudden stop events fail to have a significant impact on investment. Bank crises, on the other hand, have a significant negative effect on investment even in the absence of a contemporaneous sudden stop crisis. We also find that openness to capital flows worsens the adverse impact of banking crises on investment. Our results provide statistical support for the policy view that a strong banking sector which can withstand the negative fallout of capital flight is essential for countries that open their economies to international financial flows.     

The determinants of commercial banking profitability in low-, middle-, and high-income countries

Using a broad bank-level dataset and the GMM estimator technique described by Arellano and Bover (1995), this paper analyses how bank-specific characteristics, macroeconomic variables, and industry-specific factors affect the profitability of 10,165 commercial banks across 118 countries over the period from 1998 to 2012. Grouping the countries according to three income levels, we show that the determinants of bank profitability included in our model can explain existing profitability differences among commercial banks in low-, middle-, and high-income countries. The profitability determinants vary quite widely across the different levels of income in terms of significance, sign and size of the effect. The level of income has thus an important impact on the determinants of bank profitability.     

The Improbability of Fraud in Accounting for Derivatives: A Case Study on the Boundaries of Financial Reporting Compliance

ABSTRACT

This study responds to recent calls in the literature to examine fraud using detailed case studies, extending knowledge beyond individual incentives and capital market reactions towards a more contextualized understanding of the concept. We use an institutional logics perspective to challenge existing assumptions about a universally valid meaning of compliance, fraud, and faithful representation. Presenting the case of the Swedish bank HQ, we show how the interpretation of the accounting standard for option measurement varies across different enforcement bodies because the meaning of compliance is socially negotiated across the institutional logics of markets, financial regulation, and law. The independent decision-making of the different enforcement bodies leads to a systematic variation in the interpretation of principles-based accounting standards without ultimate coordination. To define consistent boundaries of compliance across institutional logics, and thus, to distinguish between fraud and allowable managerial discretion becomes problematic. Faithful representation, in turn, cannot be understood as financial statements reflecting a correct value or as financial statements being prepared in accordance with acceptable practice, as suggested in the earlier literature. Instead, faithful representation itself becomes a contextually bound concept, which can only be defined within an institutional logic.     

The synergistic effect of insurance and banking sector activities on economic growth in Africa

It is widely understood that the insurance and banking sectors of every economy perform some functions in driving economic growth. What is not yet well documented is whether their roles are complimentary or substitutive. With the aid of the dynamic panel generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation technique, this paper evaluates the synergistic effect of both sectors on economic growth in a panel of 10 African countries that are responsible for most of the activities in the continent’s financial sector. The insurance-banking-growth nexus was also examined through bootstrap panel causality tests. The results show that the life insurance market and the banking sector, as well as the non-life insurance market and the banking sector, are complimentary. We find that, overall, the relationship between the insurance and banking sectors in Africa is a complimentary one and that their synergistic impact on economic growth is positive. The feedback hypothesis was also confirmed in the relationship between the insurance sector and economic growth and between the banking sector and economic growth.