Knowledge that Transforms

We conduct an international study on the effect of climate policy uncertainty on the systemic risk of banks from G20 countries. We find that climate policy uncertainty is associated with lower bank systemic risk. This relation is more pronounced in countries with high innovation capacity, climate readiness, more systemically important banks, and a more competitive banking system. Climate-related information disclosure and sustainable investments are critical economic channels through which the effect of climate policy uncertainty works. Our findings alleviate the concern that climate transition risk may contribute to financial instability and provide practical implications for regulators to design climate transition policies.

In this paper we provide a framework to study the network topology of generalized forecast error variance decomposition (GFEVD) derived from multi-country, multi-variable time series models. Our dynamic variance decomposition network is based on a Bayesian Global Vector Autoregressive (GVAR) model, a suitable macroeconometric method to consider simultaneous multi-level interdependencies across variables. We demonstrate the usefulness of our methodology to analyze the network structure of shock propagation in longitudinal time series and, in particular: (a) the shortest paths of contagion; (b) the clusters of shock transmission; (c) the role of nodes in the risk transmission channels. We illustrate our method through an empirical application to a set of 12 European countries’ Industrial Production, Retail Trade and Economic Sentiment indices over the period 01/2000–11/2021.

There is ample empirical literature centering on the effectiveness of foreign exchange intervention (FXI). Given the mix of objectives and country-heterogeneity, the general lack of consensus thus far is no surprise. We shed light on this debate by conducting the first comprehensive meta-analysis in the FXI literature, with 279 reported effects that stem from 74 distinct empirical studies. We cover estimations conducted in 19 countries across five decades. Overall, our meta-survey reports an average depreciation of domestic currency of 1% and a reduction of exchange rate volatility of 0.6%, in response to a $1 billion US dollar purchase. Results are qualitatively confirmed but smaller in size under fixed and random-effect estimations. When narrowing in on different economic factors, we find that effects are magnified for cases consistent with the monetary trilemma (greater if financial openness and monetary independence are low). Effects are also larger in emerging than advanced economies, when banking crises remain mild, and when interventions are large in size and are announced.

Sri Lanka unilaterally defaulted on its external debt in April 2022, exposing its long-standing economic and financial vulnerabilities and igniting a series of inter-related multiple economic crises—fiscal, debt, currency, inflation, and balance of payments—as well as a vast socio-political upheaval. This paper analyses the economic crisis and its various dimensions to understand the sources of the crisis and draw policy implications. The role of fiscal balances and public debt in the crisis, along with debt sustainability, international sovereign bonds, liquidity crisis, and currency collapse, are analyzed. The root cause of Sri Lanka’s economic crisis was running persistent and large fiscal deficits, which were increasingly financed by unsustainable public debt, particularly foreign commercial borrowings. A substantial reduction and reprofiling of debt through restructuring of both domestic and foreign debt to ensure debt sustainability, meaningful fiscal policy reforms anchored by revenue increases and expenditure rationalization to reduce fiscal deficits, and deep growth-enhancing structural reforms are necessary for medium-term rescue and recovery and long-term growth and stability of Sri Lanka. The findings provide important policy lessons for other emerging markets and middle-income economies.

Banks in emerging market economies rely on cross-border interbank lending to financing firms in the real sector. By matching cross-border bank-to-bank loan level data with domestic bank-to-firm loan level data, and firm-level data, this paper shows that the sudden yield reversal observed during the 2013 Fed taper tantrum resulted in a substantial contraction of cross-border credit to banks in emerging markets that significantly reduced the supply of domestic corporate credit and increased loan rates. Results show that firms with an ex-ante high concentration of credit granted by exposed banks in the cross-border interbank lending market exhibited low bank credit and substantial real effects, including a decline in imports and exports. The results indicate that cross-border intra-group lending and domestic unsecured interbank funding contribute to smoothing the effects of sudden yield reversals on the financial intermediation. Overall, the results are consistent with the notion that the level of banks’ exposition in international credit markets contributes to global financial conditions’ transmission to the economy.

We present a quantitative model of deposit insurance to characterize the optimal levels of coverage for depositors and premiums raised from banks. Premiums contribute to a deposit insurance fund that lowers taxpayers’ resolution cost of bank failures. The key model tension is the policymaker’s dynamic tradeoff between building a fund to discourage moral hazard and insulate taxpayers from large fiscal shortfalls, and allowing banks to productively invest their deposits. We find that risk-adjusted premiums reduce moral hazard, enabling the policymaker to increase the share of covered deposits to total deposits by 12.5 percentage points and decrease the share of expected annual bank failures from 0.74% to 0.60%. The model predicts a fund-to-covered-deposits ratio that matches the data and declines in taxpayers’ income due to taxpayers’ risk aversion.

We study the effects of both tighter and looser bank capital requirements on bank risk-taking. We exploit credit register data matched with firm and bank level data in conjunction with changes in capital requirements stemming from Basel III, including the introduction of a SME supporting bank capital factor in the European Union. We find that tighter capital requirements reduce the supply of bank credit to firms, while looser capital requirements mitigate the credit supply effects of increasing capital. Importantly, at the loan level (credit supply), banks more affected by capital requirements change less the supply of credit to riskier than to safer firms, and these asymmetric effects occur for both the tightening and the loosening of bank capital requirements. Finally, these effects are also important at the firm-level for total credit availability and for firm survival. Interestingly, our results suggest that those banks most impacted by the tighter Basel III capital requirements prioritize credit among ex-ante riskier firms to avoid their closure, consistent with loan evergreening.

We investigate whether banks’ initial responses during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in supporting their customers, communities, and governments were perceived as value-enhancing by investors. Using a unique responsible banking measure for a sample of the largest US and European commercial banks, we find a negative relationship between responsible bank behavior and stock market performance, particularly in the first wave of the pandemic. We also find that riskier banks were affected more negatively if they behaved responsibly. Overall, our findings show that banks’ responsible behavior during a crisis reduces, or at best is not relevant to, shareholder value.

We examine how the repo market operates during liquidity stress by applying network analysis to novel transaction-level data of the overnight gilt repo market including the COVID-19 crisis. We find that during this crisis the repo network becomes more connected, with most institutions relying on previously used counterparties. There are however important changes in the repo volumes and spreads during the stress relative to normal times. There is a significant increase in volumes traded with the central counterparties (CCPs) sector. At the same time non-banks, except hedge funds, decrease borrowing and face higher spreads in the bilateral segment. Overall, this evidence reflects a preference for dealers and banks to transact in the centrally cleared rather than the bilateral segment. Our results can inform the policy debate around the behaviour of banks and non-banks in recent liquidity stress and on widening participation in CCPs by non-banks.

Relying on theories in which bank create private money by making loans that create deposits—a process we call “funding liquidity creation”—we measure how much funding liquidity the U.S. banking system creates. Private money creation by banks enables lending to not be constrained by the supply of cash deposits. During the 2001–2020 period, 92 percent of bank deposits were due to funding liquidity creation, and during 2011–2020 funding liquidity creation averaged $10.7 trillion per year, or 57 percent of GDP. Using natural disasters data, we provide causal evidence that better-capitalized banks create more funding liquidity and lend more even during times when cash deposit balances are falling or unchanged. Large banks as well as the top banks in Federal Reserve districts create more liquidity.