Systemic Risk in the Chinese Shadow Banking System: A Sector-Level Perspective

We propose to measure the systemic risk in the shadow banking sector. Instead of testing how many institutions will fail due to the initial breakdown of one institution as extant network models do, we associate the systemic risk of one shadow banking sector with the total amount of unexpected losses it might generate both directly and indirectly. Our model focuses on balance sheet contagion and applies a loop algorithm to risk transfer. The result shows that trust companies were the main culprit of financial instability and commercial banks assumed the main risks over 2007–12 in the Chinese shadow banking system.     

Can European bank bailouts work?

Cross-border banking needs cross-border recapitalisation mechanisms. Each mechanism, however, suffers from the financial trilemma, which is that cross-border banking, national financial autonomy and financial stability are incompatible. In this paper, we study the efficiency of different burden-sharing agreements for the recapitalisation of the 30 largest banks in Europe. We consider bank bailouts for these banks in a simulation framework with stochastic country-specific bailout benefits. Among the burden sharing rules, we find that the majority and qualified-majority voting rules come close to the efficiency of a bailout mechanism with a supranational authority. Even a unanimous voting rule works better than home-country bailouts, which are very inefficient. If we assume additional systemic risk benefits, the efficiency of burden sharing rules comes close to the supranational solution.     

Diversification by Urbanization: Tracing the Property‐Finance Nexus in Dubai and the Gulf

This article explores the role of liberalized real estate markets in shaping financial‐sector development in the Arab Gulf region. Since 2001, record oil revenues and the inflow of repatriated wealth into the region have generated immense demand for new, productive destinations for surplus capital. Gulf Cooperation Council states have subsequently undergone rapid growth that is intimately tied to the regulatory transformation of urban real estate markets and the circulation of surplus capital from oil rents to the ‘secondary circuit’ of the built environment. With an emphasis on the city of Dubai, we employ the notion of diversification by urbanization to trace the re‐regulation of real estate markets and highlight how these strategies have subsequently shaped Gulf financial markets. Through an examination of the impacts of real estate mega‐project development on local banking credit, equities and Islamic financial markets, we reframe recent urbanization in the region as a process of financial re‐engineering, and identify the emergence of capital groups whose accumulation activities are tightly connected to both the real estate and financial circuit.     

Heterogeneous market structure and systemic risk: Evidence from dual banking systems

This paper investigates how banking system stability is affected when we combine Islamic and conventional finance under the same roof. We compare systemic resilience of three types of banks in six GCC member countries with dual banking systems: fully-fledged Islamic banks (IB), purely conventional banks (CB) and conventional banks with Islamic windows (CBw). We employ market-based systemic risk measures such as MES, SRISK and CoVaR to identify which sector is more vulnerable to a systemic event. We also compute weighted average GES to determine which sector is most synchronised with the market. Moreover, we use graphical network models to determine the most interconnected banking sector that can more easily spread a systemic shock to the whole system. Using a sample of observations on 79 publicly traded banks operating over the 2005–2014 period, we find that CBw is the least resilient sector to a systemic event, it has the highest synchronicity with the market, and it is the most interconnected banking sector during crisis times.     

Liberalisation and Financial Sector Competition: A Critical Contribution to the Empirics with an African Assessment

This paper investigates how financial, trade, institutional and political liberalisation policies have affected financial sector competition in Africa using updated data to appraise second‐generation reforms. The “freedom to trade” and “economic freedom” indices are employed. Hitherto, unexplored financial sector concepts of formalisation, semi‐formalisation, informalisation and non‐formalisation are also introduced. The following findings are established. First, relative to money supply, (i) with the exception of the economic freedom mechanism, liberalisation policies have generally decreased the growth of the formal financial sector to the benefit of other financial sectors; (ii) apart from the foreign direct investment and economic freedom channels, liberalisation policies have been fruitful for semi‐formal financial development at the cost of other financial sectors and; (iii) with the exception of economic freedom, both the informal and non‐formal sectors have developed owing to liberalisation to the detriment of the formal financial sector. Second, relative to gross domestic product, the semi‐formal, informal and/or non‐formal financial sectors have also generally improved as a result of liberalisation. Policy implications are discussed.     

Modelling the effect of the geographical environment on Islamic banking performance: A panel quantile regression analysis

While studies have focused on Islamic banking, research on the effect of the geographical environment on Islamic banks is scarce. We investigate this issue by using daily data on 12 Islamic banks in four regions (Africa, Asia, Europe, and the United States) from July 2007 to April 2016. We apply different methodological approaches (principal component analysis, panel data tests, and quantile regression). First, the principal component analysis shows that the performance of Islamic banks varies among regions. Second, the linear panel regression highlights that the geographical environment positively and significantly affects Islamic banking, suggesting the importance of externality effects. Finally, the environmental effect seems to vary with quantiles (positive effect for the lowest quantile versus negative effect for the highest quantile). This quantile specification points to nonlinearity in the environment–Islamic bank performance relationship, reflecting a time-varying discipline imposed by the Sharia board (Islamic Law). This finding helps better explain the main difference between Islamic banks in the East (Africa and Asia) and those in the West (Europe and the United States) and also enables investors to adjust their portfolio choices when considering the products of Islamic banks according to regional specificities.     

European development banks and the political cycle

This paper investigates whether the lending activity of European development banks is affected by opportunistic political behavior, by looking at the change in loans extended by these entities in election years. The empirical analysis leverages on a unique manually collected dataset that includes all the development banks headquartered in Europe, for the period 2002–2015.A comparison with the rest of the European banking system reveals that while the political view of development banks cannot be supported as a general rule, it finds empirical evidence in flawed democracies, where large development banks actually tend to increase their lending activity in election years.     

Uncertain times and early predictions of bank failure

The Great Financial Crisis shows that bank failure in the United States, while rare, is a concern during uncertain times. Interest here is in the ability to predict future failures at the start of a crisis, when the recent past has few events on which to base inferences. I show that policy makers using estimates based on the Savings and Loans crisis would identify in early 2009 that 2.0% of banks were in critical condition and 7.0% were unhealthy. This is comparable to the 1.7% of banks that failed within a year and the 3.9% of banks that would fail during the crisis.