Journal of Financial Stability Vol. 26 2016
How the euro-area sovereign-debt crisis led to a collapse in bank equity prices
Abstract
We quantify the linkages among banks’ equity performance and indicators of sovereign stress by using panel GMM to estimate a three-equation system that examines the impact of sovereign stress, as reflected in both sovereign spreads and sovereign ratings, on bank share prices. We use data for a panel of five euro-area stressed countries. Our findings indicate that a recursive relationship between sovereigns and banks operated during the euro-area crisis. Specifically, for the five crisis countries considered shocks to sovereign spreads fed-through to sovereign ratings, which affected commercial banks’ equity-prices. Our results also point to the importance of using levels of equity prices – rather than rates of return – in measuring banks’ performance. The use of levels allows us to derive the determinants of long-run equity prices.
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.jfs.2016.07.010
- Volume
- 26
- Pages
- 266-275
- Language
- en
- Sources
- bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref