The effects of resolution methods and industry stress on the loss on assets from bank failures

In this paper, we examine how the value of failed bank assets differs between two types of FDIC resolution methods: liquidation and private-sector reorganization. Our findings show that private-sector reorganizations do not deliver the expected cost-savings from 1986 to 1991, a period of industry distress. On a univariate basis, the net loss on assets is lower for a private-sector reorganization than for a liquidation in both a period of industry distress and of industry health. However, institutions with higher quality assets and higher franchise values are more likely to be resolved using a private-sector resolution. Once we control for this selection bias, we find that institutions that are resolved during periods of industry distress result in higher resolution costs than liquidation. During periods of industry health, private-sector resolutions are less costly than liquidations. We show that if a bank that failed during the post-crisis period instead failed during the crisis period, its net loss as a percent of assets would have been 3.232 percentage points higher. Given that the average net loss on assets ratio is 21.42 percent during our sample period from 1986 to 2007, the increase in costs is economically significant.     

Supervisor and Market Analysts: What Should Research be Seeking?

This article is primarily directed towards examining the desirability of incorporating market signals in the process of supervision of commercial banks by regulators and insurers. But the ideas developed here can also be applied to the general problem of using market information to assess the solvency and safety of any financial or non-financial institution.Market prices and yields of securities anticipate actions by regulators, central banks, and other players due to the fact that such actions may materially influence the risk and the expected return associated with investment decisions pertaining to those securities. It is well known that the yield curve of government securities such as T-bills, T-notes and T-bonds reflect the market's consensus regarding the actions that the Federal reserve may take as they pertain to the valuation of such securities. The extent to which the market has already discounted the future actions of the central bank will no doubt play a role in the way in which the central bank may think about its actions, its actual effect and how it relates to its intended effects.The extent to which market prices can provide useful guides depends on the underlying market structure and the practices in the industry.While markets may do lot of the hard work in aggregating and incorporating future actions, the task of supervision and regulation can never be put on automatic pilot. Ideally, supervisory policies should effectively combine the market signals with initiatives that serve to maintain the safety and the soundness of the underlying markets. I will begin by exploring the extent to which equity prices may be used as a signal of bank credit risk. I will then explore the advantages and disadvantages of using subordinated debt securities to derive a market signal.     

美国银行破产若干法律问题探究及启示

近些年来,我国有关部门正在加紧对银行破产进行立法的制定工作,中国人民银行已将《金融机构破产条例》正式纳入行政立法规划。美国是世界上银行业最发达的国家之一,银行业的不断发展也促使了美国银行法制的完善。它山之石,可以攻玉,本文通过对美国银行破产法律制度的介绍和分析,希望能够对我国的银行破产立法有所启示。     

Wishful thinking or effective threat? Tightening bank resolution regimes and bank risk-taking

We propose a framework for testing the effects of changes in bank resolution regimes on bank behavior. By exploiting the differential relevance of recent changes in U.S. bank resolution (i.e., the introduction of the Orderly Liquidation Authority, OLA) for different types of banks, we are able to simulate a quasi-natural experiment using a difference-in-difference framework. We find that banks that are more affected by the introduction of the OLA (1) significantly decrease their overall risk-taking and (2) shift their loan origination toward lower risk, indicating the general effectiveness of the regime change. This effect, however, does (3) not hold for the largest and most systemically important banks. Hence, the introduction of the OLA in the U.S. alone does not appear to have solved the too-big-to-fail problem and might need to be complemented with other measures to limit financial institutions’ risk-taking.     

THE ROLE OF CENTRAL BANKS IN FINANCIAL SUPERVISION AND REGULATION

This article describes thinking on the institutions of financial supervision and regulation prior to the current crisis and goes on to examine what lessons have been learnt subsequently. It concludes that the problem is not so much that central banks needed to be more closely involved in supervision at the outset but that many countries did not have satisfactory schemes in place for resolving problems in large institutions. Central banks and governments were then forced into ad hoc measures that could have unfortunate implications for moral hazard in the future unless fundamental problems are addressed.     

Understanding the Components of Bank Failure Resolution Costs

In this paper, we demonstrate how the resolution costs associated with over 1,000 bank failures from 1986 to 2007 are distributed across the method of resolution, bank size, regulatory periods, and the existence of fraud. In addition, we document the time spent in the resolution by the resolution method and legislative period. Finally, we show how various classes of claimants against the failed banks bear the costs of the failure.     

FDIC经验与我国存款保险制度建设应注意的问题

本文在对美国存款保险制度特别是FDIC的建立和完善作出概要介绍的同时,研究归纳了FDIC成功运作的主要经验,并在此基础上,就我国存款保险制度建设所面临的机构设置问题、监管职能问题、退市处置权问题以及存款保险制度推出的时机选择等重大问题,发表了看法并提出了相关建议。     

The Effects of Setting Deposit Insurance Premiums to Target Insurance Fund Reserves

A common feature of many insurance systems is that they are backed by an insurance fund and insurance premiums are adjusted to target this fund's reserves. This study analyzes the fund targeting policy of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). It examines the distortions to banks' cost of deposit financing that result from setting premiums in this manner. The study's framework is a multiperiod, multibank contingent claims model where the stochastic rates of return on individual banks' assets are assumed to be correlated and match the actual empirical distribution of a sample of U.S. banks. The model identifies factors that are likely to exacerbate distortions due to insurance mispricing. The relative merits of a targeting policy and a flat-rate insurance policy are discussed, and the real effects of insurance mispricing are estimated. A method for valuing a government subsidy under a reserve targeting policy is also presented.     

Deposit Insurance and Depositor Monitoring: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from the Creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

The Banking Acts of 1933 and 1935 insured deposits up to $5,000 and limited interest paid by commercial banks. This essay uses a treatment-and-control estimation strategy to determine how those reforms influenced depositors’ reactions to information about banks’ balance sheets by comparing preferred and regular depositors at New York state banks. Before deposit insurance, regular depositors reacted more to information about banks, while preferred depositors reacted less. After, this difference diminished and almost disappeared. This change indicates insurance reduced monitoring, although depositors’ continued response to some information indicates that large, uninsured depositors continued to monitor banks, as the legislation intended.