From climate change to cyber-attacks: incipient financial-stability risks for the euro area. Bruegel Policy Contribution Issue n˚2 | February 2020

The European Central Bank’s November 2019 Financial Stability Review highlighted the risks to growth in an environment of global uncertainty. It also discusses sovereign-debt concerns in case interest rates increase, and risks arising from household and corporate debt. It assesses the risks from a possible overvaluation of asset prices, and evaluates risks within the banking and non-banking system, and climate risks. On the whole, the ECB report is comprehensive and covers the main risks to euro-area financial stability. However, some issues deserve more attention. • First, the assessment of risks in the housing market should be more nuanced. Current housing markets relative to those pre-crisis seem to be far less driven by mortgage credit, and the size of the construction sector has not increased. This is possibly good news for financial stability because a house price correction would transmit less into mortgage defaults and corrections to economic activity. • Second, there should be greater emphasis on changes in market expectations of interest rates, which can have substantial effects on asset prices. This could be particularly relevant if interest rate changes are not driven by real-economy developments. • Third, the financial system relies on a safe asset as a reference. We show that the supply of safe sovereign assets in the euro area has fallen dramatically, driven by deteriorating sovereign credit ratings and reduced supplies of bonds from the safest countries. More safe assets would support financial stability. • Fourth, though climate risks to financial stability must be taken seriously, risk weights on green assets should not be reduced since they still contain normal financial stability risks. Instead, risk weights for brown assets should be increased. • Fifth, the ECB does not consider cybersecurity and hybrid threats in its assessment. These threats are significant risks for financial institutions and at the more systemic level. • Policies to address financial-stability concerns include macroprudential measures. In this respect, we discover discrepancies between EU countries: countries with the same levels of house-price overvaluation have adopted very different macroprudential measures. Some countries might thus have done too much, while others have done too little. • When it comes to preventing the next recession or reducing its impact, we argue that EU policymakers need to be better prepared to use discretionary fiscal policy earlier and more forcefully, in particular because the ability of monetary authorities to react to the next cyclical downturn is very limited

Commercial property prices and bank performance

We seek to assess the effect of changes in commercial property prices on bank behaviour and performance in a range of industrialised economies, extending the existing micro literature on bank performance. The results suggest that, consistent with macro-level studies, commercial property prices have a marked impact on the behaviour and performance of individual banks. The signs found are consistent with a view that commercial property provides important forms of collateral that are perceived by banks to reduce risk and encourage lending. Such an impact exists even when conventional independent variables determining bank performance are included. Moreover, there is evidence that the magnitude of this impact is related to the size of the bank, the direction of commercial property price movements, and regional factors. The results have implications for risk managers, regulators and monetary policy makers. Notably, they underline the crucial relevance of commercial property prices as a macroprudential variable that warrants close scrutiny by the authorities. They also highlight the need to develop indicators of individual bank exposure to the property market that could help to calibrate the potential impact of changes in prices in stress tests

The Trade Deficit and Banking Sector Results in Romania and Bulgaria

We tested for the significance of macroeconomic variables that condition non-performing loan ratios. Our estimates for Bulgaria and Romania support the hypothesis that the growth of available finance might harm banking performance and deteriorate NPL dynamics, most probably due to the overheating of economies. Since we confirmed that the dynamics of net exports of these economies deteriorated the NPL ratio, the weakening of growth in export-oriented industries could lead to economic contraction with a direct impact on the sustainability of banking-sector results in these countries. Large current account deficits are typical for emerging markets and do not pose a problem as long as they are caused by the importing of capital goods, and, if future export growth is strong enough to reimburse foreign debt. Structural dependence on external financing - which is in part a by-product of the effect of low levels of internal saving - have led to large current account deficits and financial instability.cyclicality, non-performing loans, systemic risk, asset quality, economic growth

Portfolio regulation of life insurance companies and pension funds

This paper examines the rationale, nature and financial consequences of two alternative approaches to portfolio regulations for the long-term institutional investor sectors life insurance and pension funds. These approaches are, respectively, prudent person rules and quantitative portfolio restrictions. The argument draws on the financial-economics of investment, the differing characteristics of institutions’ liabilities, and the overall case for regulation of financial institutions. Among the conclusions are: · regulation of life insurance and pensions need not be identical; · prudent person rules are superior to quantitative restrictions for pension funds except in certain specific circumstances (which may arise notably in emerging market economies), and; · although in general restrictions may be less damaging for life insurance than for pension funds, prudent person rules may nevertheless be desirable in certain cases also for this sector, particularly in competitive life sectors in advanced countries, and for pension contracts offered by life insurance companies. These results have implications inter alia for an appropriate strategy of liberalisation. 1 The author is Professor of Economics and Finance, Brunel University, Uxbridge, Middlesex UB3 4PH, United Kingdom (e-mail ‘[email protected]’, website: ‘www.geocities.com/e_philip_davis’). He is also a Visiting Fellow at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, an Associate Member of the Financial Markets Group at LSE, Associate Fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs and Research Fellow of the Pensions Institute at Birkbeck College, London. Work on this topic was commissioned by the OECD. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the XI ASSAL Conference on Insurance Regulation and Supervision in Latin America, Oaxaca, Mexico, 4-8 September 2000, and at the OECD Insurance Committee on 30 November 2000. The author thanks participants at the conference and A Laboul for helpful comments. Views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the institutions to which he is affiliated, nor those of the OECD. This paper draws on Davis and Steil (2000)

Local sources of financing for infrastructure in Africa : a cross-country analysis

With the exception of South Africa, local financial markets in sub-Saharan Africa remain underdeveloped and small, with a particular dearth of financing with maturity terms commensurate with the medium- to long-term horizons of infrastructure projects. But as financial market reforms gather momentum, there is growing awareness of the need to tap local and regional sources. Drawing on a comprehensive new database constructed for the purpose of this research, the paper assesses the actual and potential role of local financial systems for 24 African countries in financing infrastructure. The paper concludes that further development and more appropriate regulation of local institutional investors would help them realize their potential as financing sources, for which they are better suited than local banks because their liabilities would better match the longer terms of infrastructure projects. There are clear signs of positive change: private pension providers are emerging in Africa, there is a shift from defined benefit toward defined contribution plans, and African institutional investors have begun taking a more diversified portfolio approach in asset allocation. Although capital markets remain underdeveloped, new issuers in infrastructure sectors-particularly of corporate bonds-are coming to market in several countries, in some cases constituting the debut issue. More than half of the corporate bonds listed at end-2006 on these countries'markets were by companies in infrastructure sectors. More cross-border listings and investment within the region-in both corporate bonds and equity issues-including by local institutional investors, could help overcome local capital markets'impediments and may hold significant promise for financing cross-country infrastructure projects.Debt Markets,,Banks&Banking Reform,Access to Finance,Emerging Markets

Measuring Excessive Risk-Taking in Banking

In this paper we propose a new approach to the assessment of excessive risk-taking by a banking sector. We use the portfolio approach to assess the optimal risk-return combination of a bank’s portfolio, based on data for 32 categories of loans. It provides a benchmark for the optimality of the bank’s portfolio. We apply this method on an exhaustive sample of Czech banks for the period January 2005–-February 2008. We observe an average excess of risk-taking of 33% of the optimal risk (excessive risk-taking thus measures the percentage reduction in the risk of the portfolio that the banking sector could have exhibited had the portfolio been efficient) and a reduction of this excess risk over the analysed period.Bank, financial stability, risk-taking, transition countries.

Pension schemes versus real estate

The demographic, economic and social changes that have characterized the last decades, and the dramatic financial crisis that has taken place since 2008, have led to a demand for structural changes in the pension sector and a growing interest in individual pension products. Hence the need, for most elderly people, to liquidate their fixed assets, which are usually the homes in which they live. This highlights products such as reverse mortgages and domestic reversibility plans. Within this context, we propose a contractual scheme where an immediate life annuity is obtained by paying a single-premium in the form of real estate rights (RERs), for example by transferring to an insurer the property title of a house or a similar realty, while keeping its usufruct or a restricted bundle of rights. The level of the installments depends on the fair value of the transferred RER at the contract’s issue, the life expectancy of the insured and the expected growth rate of the real estate market value. The contract design is developed by considering the control of the financial risk inherent in the contract itself, because of the prospective changes in the value of the RERs, and the level of the insurer’s leverage. Finally, we provide some numerical evidence of the proposed contractual structure, in order to compare the level of the installments according to the house return forecasts in different European countries

Productivity growth, capital accumulation, and the banking sector - some lessons from Malaysia

How did the East Asian miracle turn into one of the worst financial crisis of the century? The authors address the question using Malaysia as a case study. Many discussions of the East Asian crisis address proximate and short-run causes of the crisis, such as the current account deficit, exchange rate misalignment, and disproportionate short-run external debt relative to foreign exchange reserves. These indicators of vulnerability are themselves endogenous outcomes of deeper institutional features. The authors argue that some long-term features of the development strategy that helped sustain high growth in the first place also contributed to the economy's increasing vulnerability. High output growth was driven by rapid growth in capital stock, for example. The banking sector played a critical role in transforming (and accelerating the transformation of) large savings into capital accumulation. But the banking sector may not have been allocating capital efficiency. The authors find that the rapid growth in bank lending in Malaysia is negatively associated with total factor productivity growth. On the other hand, the economy's other structural strengths, such as openness to foreign direct investment and technology, helped improve productivity growth. Malaysia's exceptional growth record over the past quarter century was driven largely by the growth in physical capital stock. Total factor productivity growth may have slowed in the late 1990s, and sustaining high output growth will require greater emphasis on productivity improvements. Policies that encouraged the flow of foreign direct investment and better access to imported capital goods contributed to productivity growth. But rapid growth in bank lending relative to GDP may have slowed it. How policymakers can best slow the growth of credit is a question that remains unanswered.Banks&Banking Reform,Capital Markets and Capital Flows,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Labor Policies,Economic Growth,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Achieving Shared Growth,Environmental Economics&Policies

U.S. banking in the last fifty years : growth and adaptation

banking