Knowledge that Transforms

While simpler than risk-based capital requirements, the leverage ratio may encourage bank risk-taking. This paper examines the activity of broker-dealers affiliated with bank holding companies (BHCs) and broker-dealers not affiliated with BHCs in the repurchase agreement (repo) market to test whether this may be occurring. Using data on the triparty repo market, the paper arrives at three findings. First, following the 2012 introduction of the supplementary leverage ratio (SLR), broker-dealer affiliates of BHCs decreased their repo borrowing but increased their use of repo backed by more price-volatile collateral. Second, the paper finds that regardless of whether a U.S. BHC-affiliated broker-dealer parent is above or below the SLR requirement, the announcement of the SLR rule has disincentivized those dealers affiliated with BHCs from borrowing in triparty repo. Finally, the paper finds an increase in the number of active nonbank-affiliated dealers in certain asset classes of triparty repo since the 2012 introduction of the supplementary leverage ratio. This illustrates how regulation can have competitive effects on the financial sector and may result in activities shifting among financial firms.

We study the impact of exogenous funding shocks to German savings banks during the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis on the labor decisions of 30,000 + private and public firms in Germany. We find that firms with credit relationships with affected banks experience a significant decline in labor demand relative to firms with credit relationships with healthy banks, manifested in a simultaneous reduction in firm-level employment and average wages. The employment effect is more pronounced in larger firms, while the wage effect is stronger in smaller firms. Both employment and wages go back to pre-shock levels three years after the shock.

We conduct an experiment to determine whether market structure affects financial intermediary behavior. The intermediaries (Agents) are perfectly informed regarding project types and can recommend that their clients (Principals) either proceed or discontinue a project. Intermediaries earn revenues only when they recommend proceeding with the transaction. Thus, our design captures some of the incentives faced by financial advisers in commercial banks, where compensation depends on sales performance, and also by money-managers, whose income depends on the size of their portfolios. We find that a monopolist intermediary protects the interest of clients better than when intermediaries compete. Our results are robust to a significant fee increase and provide additional evidence on the impact of market structure on individual incentives and equilibrium outcomes.

We study the liquidity behavior of commercial banks in response to negative capital shocks. Using pre-Basel III data, U.S. banks with assets less than $1 billion treated (unregulated) liquidity and (regulated) capital as substitutes. Following exogenous shocks to their regulatory capital ratios, these banks shifted away from loans, loan commitments, and dividend payouts, actions that both repaired their capital ratios and enhanced their liquidity positions. We find little similar behavior at larger banks. We conclude that a minimum capital constraint naturally mitigates liquidity risk at community banks, justifying the exemption of these banks from the Basel III liquidity standards.

In recent years, policymakers have generally relied on macroprudential policies to address financial stability concerns. However, our understanding of these policies and their efficacy is limited. In this paper, we construct a novel index of macroprudential policies in 57 advanced and emerging economies covering the period from 2000:Q1 to 2013:Q4, with tightenings and easings recorded separately. The effectiveness of these policies in curbing credit growth and house price appreciation is then assessed using a dynamic panel data model. The main findings of the paper are: (1) Macroprudential policies have been used far more actively after the global financial crisis in both advanced and emerging economies. (2) These policies have primarily targeted the housing sector, especially in the advanced economies. (3) Macroprudential policies are usually changed in tandem with bank reserve requirements, capital flow restrictions, and monetary policy. (4) Our analysis suggests that macroprudential tightening is associated with lower bank credit growth, housing credit growth, and house price appreciation. (5) Targeted policies – for example, those specifically intended to limit house price appreciation – seem to be more effective, especially in economies where bank finance is important.

Investment spending by US public firms is highly concentrated. The 100 largest spenders account for 60% of total capital expenditures and drive most of the variation in aggregate investment. This high concentration creates a disconnect between the average public firm and macroeconomic aggregates. For large firms, cash flow remains the primary driver of investment spending and has not declined in importance as it has for smaller public firms. The cash flowing to big spenders provides a better forecast of future investment opportunities than noisy proxies for Tobin's q even though these firms are not financially constrained. These results suggest that, at least for the largest spenders, it is unlikely that measurement error drives the significance of cash flow. Our results are also inconsistent with recent models that predict higher investment-cash flow sensitivity for small young growth firms and suggest that cash flow is still the most important determinant of macroeconomic fluctuations in investment spending.

This paper sheds new light on the role bank executives played in the financial crisis. It examines whether they foresaw the poor performance of their own bank by analyzing their insider trading patterns. Insider trading during 2006 predicts stock returns during the crisis: a portfolio strategy based on insider trading information earns a risk-adjusted return of over 40% during the crisis. Further, banks with a high exposure to the housing market and banks with a low exposure exhibit different insider trading patterns starting in mid-2006, when US housing prices first decline: insiders of high-exposure banks are 20% more likely to sell stock than insiders of low-exposure banks. This pattern is more pronounced for CEOs than other insiders. However, insider trading patterns of high- and low-exposure banks do not differ before 2006. Replacing high-exposure banks by too-big-too-fail banks yields similar results. This evidence indicates that insiders of high-exposure and too-big-too-fail banks revised their assessment of their banks’ investments following the reversal in the housing market.

We investigate why some banks are more exposed and contribute more to systemic risk in the global financial system than others. On average, European banks contribute more to global systemic risk than banks in the United States while banks on both continents have a comparable average exposure to systemic crises. In addition to being larger, European banks appear to contribute more to global systemic risk, because of the lower quality of their loan portfolios and their higher relative interconnectedness with the rest of the global financial system. Finally, more stringent capital regulations are found to decrease the average exposure of banks to systemic risk.

Retail banking is a complex industry in which depository institutions bundle various services and may have market power. We use a recent regulation as a natural experiment to provide broad evidence about competition and the importance of bundling in retail banking. That regulation, which resulted from the Durbin Amendment to the Dodd–Frank Act, capped debit card interchange fees for banks with over 10 billion in assets. Using a difference-in-differences identification strategy, we document and quantify the resulting decline in interchange income for treated banks. We further find that treated banks offset more than 90% of the lost interchange income through increases in deposit fees for account holders. We argue that the ability to adjust deposit fees indicates (i) that treated banks have market power with respect to their account holders and (ii) strong complementarity between debit card transactions and deposit accounts. These results are robust when limiting the sample to banks near the asset threshold or using control banks with low direct competition with treated banks. Treated banks neither reduced costs nor strategically avoided the 10 billion threshold.

We study how contingent capital affects banks’ risk choices. When triggered in highly levered states, going-concern conversion reduces risk-taking incentives, unlike conversion at default by traditional bail-inable debt. Interestingly, contingent capital (CoCo) may be less risky than bail-inable debt as its lower priority is compensated by a lower induced risk. The main beneficial effect on risk incentives comes from reduced leverage upon conversion, while any equity dilution has the opposite effect. This is in contrast to traditional convertible debt, since CoCo bondholders have a short option position. As a result, principal write-down CoCo debt is most desirable for risk preventive purposes, although the effect may be tempered by a higher yield. The risk reduction effect of CoCo debt depends critically on the informativeness of the trigger. As it should ensure deleveraging in all states with high risk incentives, it is always inferior to pure equity.