Knowledge that Transforms

There are numerous aspects concerning financial regulation which the current financial turmoil has high-lighted. These include: (1) the form of deposit insurance; (2) bank solvency regimes, ‘prompt corrective action’; (3) Central Banks’ money market operations; (4) commercial bank liquidity risk management; (5) procyclicality of CARs (and mark-to-market); lack of counter-cyclical instruments; (5) boundaries of regulation, conduits, SIVs and reputational risk; (6) crisis management: (a) within countries, e.g. UK Tripartite Committee; or (b) cross-border, how to allocate the burden of cross-border defaults? This paper describes how the crisis exposed regulatory failings, drawing largely on UK experience, and suggests remedies.

A large number of bank failures occurred in transition countries during the 1990s and at the beginning of the 2000s. These were related to increases in non-performing loans and deteriorated cost efficiency of banks. This paper addresses the question of the causality between non-performing loans and cost efficiency in order to examine whether either of these factors is the deep determinant of bank failures. We extend the Granger-causality model developed by [Berger, A., DeYoung, R., 1997. Problem loans and cost efficiency in commercial banks. J. Banking Finance 21, 849–870] by applying GMM dynamic panel estimators on a panel of Czech banks between 1994 and 2005. Our findings support the bad management hypothesis, according to which deteriorations in cost efficiency precede increases in non-performing loans. Banking supervisors should consequently focus on enhanced cost efficiency of banks in order to reduce the likelihood of bank failures in transition countries.

Financial deregulation, while beneficial in the long-term, seems to be linked to instability. Intense competition for deposits appears to be an ingredient in instability. We examine the aftermath of deregulation in Croatia, which included rapid growth of both deposits and deposit interest rates, followed by numerous bank failures. Using panel regression techniques, we find evidence of “market-stealing” via high deposit interest rates. We connect high deposit interest rates to bank failure using logit models. High deposit interest rates were a reliable signal of risk-taking. When supervisory capabilities and powers are weak, deposit interest rate regulation may be worth considering.

This paper investigates the use of exit consents in a sample of bond exchange offers during 1986–1997. We find that exit consents are common, approximately 56% of the exchange offers in our sample have them and 60% of the exit consents are by non-financially distressed firms. Using a probit model, we find that a set of variables that proxy for holdout problems is able to significantly explain the use of exit consents. Reducing holdouts is necessary for timely and efficient debt restructurings and achieving financial stability particularly in sovereign debt markets.

In the dynamic model of banking, a bank's option to hide its loan losses by rolling over non-performing loans is shown to worsen moral hazard. Contrary to the classic theory, moral hazard may arise even when a bank cannot seek a correlated risk for its loans. The loans seem to be performing and the bank makes a profit although it is de facto insolvent. When the bank's balance sheet includes hidden non-performing loans, the bank may optimally shrink lending or gamble for resurrection by growing aggressively. To eliminate this type of moral hazard, which is broadly consistent with evidence from emerging economies, a few regulatory implications are suggested.

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.

This study investigates the role of credit rating agencies in international financial markets. With an index of speculative market pressure it is analyzed whether sovereign ratings changes have an impact on the financial stability in emerging market economies. The event study analysis indicates that sovereign rating changes have substantial influence on the size and volatility of emerging markets lending. The empirical results are significantly stronger in the case of government's downgrades and negative imminent rating actions than in the case of agencies’ positive rating adjustments. Sovereign rating changes anticipated by market participants have a smaller impact on financial markets in emerging economies.