Financial innovation and greater information availability have increased the tradability of bank assets and have reduced banks’ dependence on individual bank managers. We show that this can have two opposing consequences for banking stability. First, the hold-up problem between bank managers and shareholders becomes less severe. Consequently, banks’ capital structure needs to be less concerned with disciplining the management. Deposits – the most effective disciplining device – can be reduced, increasing banks’ resilience to adverse return shocks. However, limiting the hold-up problem also diminishes bank managers’ rents, reducing their incentives to properly monitor and screen borrowers, with adverse implications for asset quality. Thus, the default risk of banks does not necessarily decline. We argue that this delivers a novel explanation for the origin of the recent subprime crisis.

In this study, we examine the trading book of a major dealer in the European unsecured money market, focusing on the impact of a dealer’s own funding liquidity risk on the pricing of his interbank trades pre- and post- the 2007/08 financial crisis. Our analysis reveals two key insights: First, utilizing a panel model, we observe that heightened funding liquidity risks for the dealer generally affect his quoted prices for interbank liquidity. Second, while in tranquil periods this effect is statistically significant but economically less pronounced, the collapse of Lehman Brothers led to a strong liquidity pricing effect: a one standard deviation increase in the funding liquidity risk of the dealer translated to a 11 basis points higher mid-price for overnight liquidity. We thus find evidence that funding liquidity risks exacerbated the overall contraction of money market liquidity during this period.