Knowledge that Transforms

A simple macroeconomic model with banking, financial frictions, and flexible exchange rates is used to study the performance of fiscal, monetary and macroprudential policy combinations in response to domestic and external shocks. After characterizing the transmission process of each instrument, a diagrammatic analysis of how these policies should be used, either individually or jointly, to promote economic and financial stability, is provided. The analysis shows that whether a policy should be assigned to internal or external balance, and whether it should be contractionary or expansionary, depends not only on the nature of the shocks impinging on the economy but also on the range of tools available to policymakers and the strength of financial frictions. In particular, in response to an external financial shock, monetary policy should be assigned to external balance, and fiscal policy or macroprudential regulation to internal balance. These two policies are substitutes when used in combination with monetary policy.

The role of bank regulation and supervision (RS) on financial stability and welfare has been subject to ongoing research, especially since the Great Recession. RS is expected to help eliminate the adverse selection and moral hazard problems that are abundant in financial transactions. In this paper, we present a general equilibrium model that is augmented by either a bank regulatory and supervisory agent who chooses the level of RS by maximizing bank profits, or by a macroprudential agent who minimizes non-performing loans (NPL). We compare the long-term outcomes of these scenarios and show that minimizing NPL is feasible for a larger and economically more viable range of parameter values than the alternatives. Moreover, for a comparable set of parameter combinations, the optimal choice of RS that minimizes NPL leads to both higher levels of steady state income and lower interest spreads as compared to RS that maximizes bank profits.

Financial institutions, especially in Europe, hold a disproportionate amount of domestic sovereign debt. We examine the extent to which this home bias leads to capital misallocation in a real business cycle model with imperfect information and fiscal stress. We assume banks can hold sovereign debt according to a zero-risk weight policy and contrast this scenario to one in which banks weight the sovereign debt according to default probabilities. Banks are assumed to miscalculate the probability of a disaster state due to moral hazard and imperfect monitoring. This distortion pushes the economy away from the first-best allocation. We show that the zero risk weight policy exacerbates these distortions while a non-zero risk-weight improves allocations. The welfare costs associated with zero-risk weight policies are large. Households are willing to give up 3.2 percent of their consumption to move to the first-best allocation, whereas in the economy with non-zero risk-weights households are willing to give up only 1.2 percent of their consumption to move to the first-best allocation.

SRISK is a measure of a firms' systemic risk contribution that is computed using its listed stock market price. SRISK measurement is extended and applied to firms that do not have listed equity. A mapping from balance sheet characteristics to SRISK for listed firms is applied to SRISK for unlisted European banks. The mapping is validated by comparing SRISK measures for unlisted banks with their losses in European bank stress-testing.

We examine the transmission of international monetary policy shocks via the bank lending channel. Exploiting a panel of regulatory data on foreign banks operating in Australia, we show that the supply of credit is vulnerable to the international pass-through of monetary policy, with banks headquartered in Asia demonstrating high elasticity. Household and non-financial corporate loans are the most susceptible channels to policy shocks, while higher-margin lending, non-lending assets, and reservable liabilities are insensitive. We demonstrate that although banks curtail lending in the face of tighter monetary policy, they increase their non-reservable borrowing, suggesting an increased reliance on capital markets. Finally, we show that unconventional monetary policies have a muted effect compared to traditional measures. • We study the transmission of monetary policy shocks via the bank lending channel. • We exploit Australian regulatory bank data to test for the presence of the BLC. • Household and corporate loans are found to be the most susceptible channels. • Asian banks demonstrate the highest degree of lending elasticity. • Unconventional policies have a muted effect compared to traditional measures.

Using Facebook’s social network data for the US counties, we examine whether social connectedness reduces the informational disadvantage in lending to small businesses at a distance. We find that for a given distance, there is a pecking order of lending. Banks first lend to more socially connected counties, and later, banks expand credit to socially less connected areas. The probability of loan charge-off decreases in social connectedness and more so for the loans originated by small banks. In the cross-section, the positive effect of social connectedness on loan performance is higher for the loans originated by out of state banks. These findings suggest that loan officers get valuable information through their social networks.

We extend Jin and Myers’s (2006) model to derive the relation between stock price crash risk and operating leverage (i.e., the fraction of fixed costs in total costs). The model predicts that (1) firms’ operating leverage decreases as stock price crash risk increases and (2) the negative effect of crash risk on operating leverage is more pronounced when firms are closer to the crash threshold or when managers face higher costs of stock price crashes. We empirically test the model predictions using a large sample of manufacturing firms in the US and find consistent results. Further analysis shows that higher levels of crash risk lead to a less sticky cost behavior. In addition, crash risk–driven operating deleveraging effectively reduces stock return volatility and enhances operating performance in subsequent years. Collectively, our findings reveal that crash-prone firms adopt a more flexible cost structure to delay stock price crashes and mitigate adverse outcomes.

This paper explores how banks’ environmental, social, and governance (ESG) activities affect their lending during financial crises. We use a sample of European listed banks with available ESG scores from 2002 to 2020 and consider the global financial crisis of 2007–2009 and the European sovereign debt crisis of 2010–2012. We estimate a two-step system GMM dynamic panel data model and also address potential endogeneity with instrumental variable (IV) and difference-in-difference (DiD) estimations. We find that lending falls to a lesser extent for banks with higher ESG scores during crisis times. Our findings are robust to using alternative ESG rating providers. An investigation of the different potential channels shows that, during crises, banks more engaged in ESG activities are less affected in terms of credit risk, asset risk, and profitability. They also face a lower reduction in market funding, allowing them to downsize to a lesser extent during crises, and their deposit rates do not increase as much as in less ESG-engaged banks. A deeper investigation reveals that our findings mainly hold for banks focused on traditional lending and deposit activities and are essentially driven by the environmental pillar component of ESG scores and the global financial crisis of 2007–2009.

While government led bank capital infusions in US and other developed markets have been usually contingent an external shock or crisis episode, India presents a unique setting where significant capital infusions happen annually to stabilize the weak balance sheets of undercapitalized government owned public sector banks. Such “repeated” capital infusions can either better engender financial stability, given the timely government interventions; or create instability arising from possible moral hazard concerns. "Do such repeated government capital infusions lower banks’ financial risks and improve financial stability?” We shed light on the question through the lens of capital infusions in the Indian market. Based on the exhaustive sample of government capital infusions into public sector banks for the period 2008–18, we find robust evidence that capital infusions are associated with economically significant higher default, capital shortfall and network risks post-infusion, signaling a moral hazard problem, where treated banks may assume more risky investments.

This study examines the spillover effect of constituency statutes along the supply chain. We posit that the enactment of constituency statutes in customer firms’ incorporation states, by removing legal obstacles for customer firms to cater to non-shareholders’ interests, builds suppliers’ trust and cooperation. Consistent with the notion that constituency statutes entice greater trust from suppliers, we find that suppliers make more relationship-specific investments in the supply chain after the enactment of constituency statutes in customers’ states, indicating a greater commitment to the customer. We also show an improvement in customers’ corporate social responsibility performance in the post-constituency-statute period, thus substantiating the claim that the constituency statutes increase customers’ stakeholder orientation. Cross-sectionally, we find the positive effect of constituency statutes on supplier relationship-specific investments is attenuated if the customer and supplier have more repeated interactions in the past, whereas the effect is more pronounced if suppliers produce durable goods. Overall, we provide novel evidence on the spillover of constituency statutes along the supply chain.