Knowledge that Transforms

We investigate the linkages between cultural factors and financial exclusion using detailed data from the 2013 wave of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Controlling for a large number of demographic characteristics and background factors, we find that Catholics are more likely to be excluded from basic banking services. In contrast, Jewish and religiously unaffiliated individuals are more likely to participate in retirement plans and the stock market. More importantly, we obtain economically important effects of social participation on financial exclusion. In particular, we document that individuals exhibiting a pro-social religious behavior, proxied by charitable giving, are less likely to be financially excluded. This effect remains robust to the use of earlier waves of the PSID, as well as to alternative estimation techniques which account for endogeneity of charitable giving and unobserved households’ heterogeneity. Our findings highlight the need for the development of initiatives which promote social participation as a means of combating financial exclusion.

Using a sample of 625 microfinance institutions (MFI) across 40 countries from 2010 to 2015, we empirically examine the effect of buffer capital on the performance of MFIs and how this effect varies with loan portfolio quality. We find a negative relationship between buffer capital and MFIs’ performance. We further document that loan portfolio quality positively moderates the buffer capital-MFI performance relationship. We demonstrate that the buffer capital-loan portfolio quality relationship does not vary for deposit-taking, profit-making, and regulated MFIs. Our findings shed new light on the value relevance of capital in microfinance institutions. We use a novel approach to evaluate our results in light of the effects of omitted variable bias.

Despite the growth of Islamic banks (IBs), little is known about their liquidity creation performance and financial stability consequences relative to conventional banks (CBs). We address these issues using data from 24 countries over 2000–2014. We find IBs create more liquidity per unit of assets than CBs, primarily on the asset side of the balance sheet. Results are economically significant, econometrically robust, hold in high- and low-income countries, and during the Global Financial Crisis and other times. In addition, CB liquidity creation results in reduced national financial stability, particularly in high-income countries, whereas IB liquidity creation does not.

The European Central Bank's asset purchase programs, while intended to stabilize the economy, may have unintended side effects on financial stability. This paper aims at gauging the effects on financial markets, the banking sector, and lending to non-financial firms. Using a structural vector autoregression analysis, we find a positive effect on output and, after some delay, also on prices in Germany. At the same time, financial stress increases significantly, driven by stock market volatility, higher liquidity premiums and contagion risks. Bank lending in Germany and in the euro area periphery expands, even though borrowing does not become cheaper. This might indicate that more credit is extended to riskier borrowers.

We construct theory-based measures of systemic bank shocks. These measures complement banking crisis indicators employed in many empirical studies, which we show capture (lagged) policy responses to systemic bank shocks. To illustrate the importance of disentangling shocks and policy responses to these shocks, we assess the impact of deposit insurance and safety net guarantees on both the probability of a systemic bank shock and that of a policy response. We find that deposit insurance and safety net guarantees do not affect the probability of a systemic bank shock, but increase the probability of a policy response to such a shock, consistent with the results of the previous literature. The joint use of measures of systemic bank shocks and policy responses may lead to a policy-relevant re-interpretation of the findings of a large empirical literature.

This paper studies the country-level reaction of bank credit default swap (“CDS”) spreads and stock prices to bailout announcements in the US and five European countries in October 2008. Bailouts announcements are associated with bank CDS spreads narrowing, both for domestic and foreign banks, pointing to an important role for cross-border exposures. Movements in bank stock prices show mixed reactions, both domestically and cross-border, with banks receiving favorable government support outperforming foreign rivals. By January 2010, bank CDS spreads had stabilized at higher levels reflecting greater default risk, while bank stock prices remained significantly below their pre-crisis levels.

We investigate the effectiveness of bail-in mechanisms in mitigating systemic risk and welfare costs to society during resolution processes. To perform this study, we define a network model of mutually exposed banks and use it to simulate the effects of shocks to these banks using granular data of the Brazilian banking system, its interbank exposures and credit register operations. In the simulations, we compare the outcomes of these initial shocks after resolution processes with and without bail-ins. The simulations show that by avoiding the liquidation of banks and the resulting interruption in their credit provision, bail-ins would be effective in preventing the amplification of losses imposed on the real sector. Analyzing the effects that the liquidation of Brazilian Domestic Systemically Important Banks (D-SIBs) would cause to credit provision to economic sectors, we find bailing in these banks would produce a relevant decrease in credit crunches. However, in our sample, only a few banks could benefit from bail-ins due to insufficiency of bail-inable instruments.

National accounting standards have included some form of indirect measurement of financial services since 1953. In the late 1970s and 1980s Donovan, Barnett, and Hancock provided a theoretical framework for these measurements, and national accounting standards, the System of National Accounts—SNA—since 1993 have adopted a methodology called FISIM (Financial Intermediation Services Indirectly Measured) resembling these economists’ user cost approach to measuring financial services. National accountants have been struggling since 1993 with how a key component of the calculation—the reference rate of interest—should be determined. Further, over the last several years a critique of the SNA by Basu, Inklaar, Wang, and others has concluded that the standards overstate the importance of financial services in GDP because they include remuneration for risk in the returns on the financial instruments, allowing financing to affect the operating surplus and value added of banks, which are highly leveraged. However, the critics’ solution has the regrettable side effect of purging liquidity services from the SNA production account. We determine the SNA reference rate of interest as the financial entity’s cost of capital. While we agree that financing (leverage) should not have the impact it has on bank value added under the most recent SNA standards, we find that it is the narrow scope of the financial instrument and unit coverage of the calculation rather than the inclusion of risk remuneration that is the source of the problem. We shed some light on the implications of the cost of capital reference rate and broader instrument coverage using US data for 2001–2011, a period bracketing the 2008–2009 financial crisis.