Knowledge that Transforms

Using data for 48 advanced and emerging market economies during 1985–2008, this paper examines the impact of measures of financial integration and globalization on several dimensions of real activity. We find that both advances in financial integration and globalization are associated with higher growth, lower growth volatility, and lower probabilities of severe declines in real activity, with the positive impact of financial integration on macroeconomic stability enhanced by improvements in corporate governance. Thus, we find no evidence of a trade-off between advances in financial integration, globalization, and growth and macroeconomic stability.

This work examines the information value of local Israeli credit rating announcements. This matter is also important to other small markets, in which a debt issuer may take advantage of a “rating shopping” process or choose to avoid a rating procedure altogether, because the agencies do not carry out unsolicited rating. We analyze the bond and equity markets response to various rating announcements at different time periods. We find that except for downgrades in 2008–2009 the rating announcements have no information value. It seems that generally the market internalizes most of the information prior to the rating announcements.

In a model where banks play an active role in monitoring borrowers, we analyze the impact of securitization on bankers’ incentives across different macroeconomic scenarios. We show that securitization can be part of the optimal financing scheme for banks, provided banks retain an equity tranche in the sold loans to maintain proper incentives. In economic downturns however securitization should be restricted. The implementation of the optimal solvency scheme is achieved by setting appropriate capital charges through a form of capital insurance, protecting the value of bank capital in downturns, while providing additional liquidity in upturns.

The paper presents a simple dynamic macroeconomic model of a bank-dominated financial system that captures some of the key credit market imperfections commonly found in middle-income countries. The model is used to analyze the interactions between monetary and macroprudential policies, involving, in the latter case, changes in reserve requirements. In addition to a qualitative analysis, a calibrated version is used to study numerically the transitional dynamics and steady-state effects of an increase in the reserve requirement ratio, under alternative parameter values. The analysis shows that understanding how these tools operate is essential because they may alter, possibly in substantial ways, the monetary transmission mechanism.

We examine investors’ reactions to announcements of large capital infusions by U.S. financial institutions (FIs) from 2000 to 2009. These infusions include private market infusions (seasoned equity offerings (SEOs)) as well as injections of government capital under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The sample period covers both business cycle expansions and contractions, and the recent financial crisis. We present evidence on the factors affecting FIs’ decisions to raise capital, the determinants of investor reactions, and post-infusion risk-taking of the recipients, as well as a sample of matching FIs. Investors reacted negatively to the news of private market SEOs by FIs, both in the immediate term (e.g., the two days surrounding the announcement) and over the subsequent year, but positively to TARP injections. Reactions differed depending on the characteristics of the FIs, and the stage of the business cycle. Smaller, more financially constrained non-bank institutions were more likely to have raised capital through private market offerings during the period prior to TARP, and firms receiving a TARP injection tended to be riskier and more levered. In the case of TARP recipients, they appeared to finance an increase in credit risk with more stable financing sources such as core deposits, which lowered their liquidity risk. However, we find no evidence that banks’ capital adequacy increased after the capital injections.

The excessive increase of leverage, i.e. the abuse of debt financing, is considered one of the primary factors in the default of financial institutions since it amplifies potential investment losses. On the other side, portfolio diversification acts to mitigate these losses. Systemic risk results from correlations between individual default probabilities that cannot be considered independent. Based on the structural framework by Merton (1974), we propose a model in which these correlations arise from overlaps in banks’ portfolios. Our main result is the finding of a critical level of diversification that separates two regimes: (i) a safe regime in which a properly chosen diversification strategy offsets the higher systemic risk engendered by increased leverage and (ii) a risky regime in which an inadequate diversification strategy and/or adverse market conditions, such as market size, market volatility and time horizon, cannot compensate the same increase in leverage. Our results are of relevance for financial regulators especially because the critical level of diversification may not coincide with the one that is individually optimal.

We analyze three databases of banking crises and investigate their consistency in the identification and timing of crises. We find that there are large and statistically significant discrepancies between the datasets. We also compare the dating of banking crises according to these databases using information on the number and size of bank failures for four crises for which the timing strongly differs across these databases. We conclude that information on these variables allows determining the timing of banking crises more precisely. Our dating of the four crises corresponds closely with that of Laeven and Valencia.

We analyze the emergence of systemic risk in a network model of interconnected bank balance sheets. The model incorporates multiple sources of systemic risk, including size of financial institutions, direct exposure from interbank lendings, and asset fire sales. We suggest a new macroprudential risk management approach building on a system wide value at risk (SVaR). Under the SVaR metric, the contribution of individual banks to systemic risk is well defined and can be approximated by a Shapley value-type measure. We show that, in a SVaR regime, a fair systemic risk charge which is proportional to a bank's individual contribution to systemic risk diverges from the optimal macroprudential capitalization of the banks from a planner's perspective. The results have implications for the design of macroprudential capital surcharges.

We critically review the state of the art in macro stress testing, assessing its strengths and weaknesses. We argue that, given current technology, macro stress tests are ill-suited as early warning devices, i.e. as tools for identifying vulnerabilities during seemingly tranquil times and for triggering remedial action. By contrast, as long as properly designed, stress tests can be quite effective as crisis management and resolution tools. We also see additional side benefits, stemming largely from the way such tests can discipline thinking about financial stability. We suggest possible ways to improve their performance.