Knowledge that Transforms

In this paper, we study credit risk transfer (CRT) in an economy with endogenous financing (by both banks and non-bank institutions). Our analysis suggests that the incentive of banks to transfer credit risk is aligned with the regulatory objective of improving stability, and so the recent development of credit derivative instruments is to be welcomed. Moreover, we find the transfer of credit risk from banks to non-banks to be more beneficial than CRT within the banking sector. Intuitively, this is because it allows for the shedding of aggregate risk which must otherwise remain within the relatively more fragile banking sector. Therefore, regulators should act to maximize the benefits from CRT by encouraging the development of instruments favorable to the cross-sectoral transfer of aggregate credit risk (including basket credit derivatives such as collateralized debt obligations). Finally, we derive the optimal regulatory stance for banks relative to non-bank financial institutions. We show that a level playing field approach is sub-optimal. Regulatory stances should be set to actively encourage cross-sector CRT, first because of the higher fragility of the banking sector and second to induce banks to incur the costs of CRT which otherwise lead them to undertake an insufficient amount of CRT.

The focus of this article is the debt market as a powerful disciplinarian source for large and complex banking organizations around the world. We empirically study the interactions between reinforcing banks’ market discipline and preserving a level playing field in international banking. Our approach consists of conducting cross-country comparisons of the secondary market prices sensitivity to market measures of bank risk (traditional and financial strength ratings). The results are generally consistent with the market discipline paradigm. However, much progress still needs to be made (especially in Japan and certain European countries) in order to make the level playing field principle compatible with the reinforcement of market discipline on an international level.

In the U.S., as in most countries with well-developed securities markets, derivative securities enjoy special protections under insolvency resolution laws. Most creditors are “stayed” from enforcing their rights while a firm is in bankruptcy. However, many derivatives contracts are exempt from these stays. Furthermore, derivatives enjoy netting and closeout, or termination, privileges which are not always available to most other creditors. The primary argument used to motivate passage of legislation granting these extraordinary protections is that derivatives markets are a major source of systemic risk in financial markets and that netting and closeout reduce this risk. To date, these assertions have not been subjected to rigorous economic scrutiny. This paper critically re-examines this hypothesis. These relationships are more complex than often perceived. We conclude that it is not clear whether netting, collateral, and/or closeout lead to reduced systemic risk, once the impact of these protections on the size and structure of the derivatives market has been taken into account.

I consider problem bank loans as the outcome of decisions made by banks in the dual role they serve as financial intermediaries. This dual role necessarily introduces conflicts of interest that can lead to bank mismanagement and consequently problem bank loans. Because bank activities take place within the tangible and intangible structure of institutions, institutions may affect the quality of bank loans. I consider legal, political, sociological, economic, and banking institutions and explore their contribution to problem bank loans. I find support that a variety of institutions impact the share of bank assets that are non-performing.

This paper compares performance of domestic and foreign banks in Malaysia during the Asian crisis. We find that foreign banks were not a homogeneous group: while banks with a stronger regional focus suffered from the crisis as much as domestic banks, foreign banks not focused on Asia performed significantly better. The key difference appears to be exposure to sectors hurt by the bursting of the asset price bubble. Availability of support from parent banks, likelihood of being bailed out, or political connections do not seem to explain the differences. Theories of managerial herding may explain why non-regional foreign banks were not caught in the financial bubble.

This paper develops an index of financial stress for the Canadian financial system. It is a continuous variable with a spectrum of values, where extreme values are called financial crises. An internal Bank of Canada survey is used to condition the choice of variables. The authors show that alternative measures of financial crisis suggested by the literature do not accurately reflect the Canadian experience, while several measures developed in this paper are more representative and are thus likely better suited to a developed financial system. An accurate characterization of stress is a prerequisite for any researcher attempting to forecast financial crises.

The Russian bond default in August 1998 and the long-term capital management (LTCM) recapitalization announcement in the following month represent an unusual period of volatility in international bond markets with bond spreads increasing dramatically across the globe. Using a latent factor model and a new data set spanning bond markets across Asia, Europe and the Americas, we quantify the contribution of contagion to the spread of these two crises. The maximum amount of contagion experienced by any of the countries investigated is about 17% of total volatility in bond spreads, with the main effects due to the Russian crisis. The results also show that both emerging and developed markets experienced contagion during the period.

In this paper we model the derivative strategies optimally undertaken by a manager (or head of a profit center in a hedge fund) when the detailed derivative positions taken are not contractible. We show that with commonly-used incentive features in the compensation structure, managers have incentives to implement complex derivative strategies that lead to a slight reduction in default probabilities (or a slight increase in performance measures) with a high probability at the cost of allowing for the possibility of disaster states involving large losses, although with a very small probability. Such disaster states cause systemic instability (similar to the experience of Long-Term Capital Management in September 1998). We discuss possible audit strategies, governance mechanisms and incentive structures that will ameliorate the probability of systemic instability arising from such incentives in a market with a rich enough menu of derivatives. We characterize the optimal intensity of audit effort with and without the presence of such derivative strategies. The dependence of the optimal audit intensity on the legal liability regime and different rules for apportioning the auditor's liability is derived. Our results also relate the optimal audit intensity to the cost and efficiency parameters of the audit firm.

Extant work on costs of financial instability focuses on fiscal costs and declines in aggregate GDP following banking crises. We estimate effects of banking and currency crises on consumption in 19 OECD countries, showing consumption plays an important role in the adjustment following a crisis, and effects are not captured solely by the impact of crises on standard consumption determinants, income and wealth. Additional effects, attributable to factors such as time-varying confidence, uncertainty and credit rationing, are aggravated by high and rising leverage, despite financial liberalisation easing liquidity constraints. High leverage implies that banking crises taking place now could have greater incidence than in the past.