Bank equity Involvement in Industrial Firms and Bank Risk

The regulatory framework in Europe does not prevent banks from taking large or controlling equity stakes in non-financial firms, potentially contributing to higher levels of bank risk and financial instability. Using a panel of European commercial banks for the period 2004-2008, we find that higher levels of equity positions in industrial firms and higher proportions of industrial firms where the bank is the majority shareholder lead to higher bank activity and insolvency risk. At low levels of shareholder protection, these risk measures are reduced when equity investments are held for longer, an effect attenuated at higher levels of shareholder protection

Monetary, Financial and Fiscal Stability in the East African Community: Ready for a Monetary Union?

We examine prospects for a monetary union in the East African Community (EAC) by developing a stylized model of policymakers' decision problem that allows for uncertain benefits derived from monetary,financial and fiscal stability, and then calibrating the model for the EAC for the period 2003-2010. When policymakers properly allow for uncertainty, none of the countries wants to pursue a monetary union based on either monetary or financial stability grounds, and only Rwanda might favor it on fiscal stability grounds; we argue that robust institutional arrangements assuring substantial improvements in monetary, financial and fiscal stability are needed to compensate

Does uncertainty matter for loan charge-offs?

International audienceUsing a stylized real options model, we show that discretion over the timing of charging off a non-performing loan could be economically justified when collateral values are uncertain and there is a chance of loan recovery. The implied hypothesis of an “uncertainty dependence” aspect in loan charge-offs is empirically tested and validated using a panel of European banks. A welfare-maximizing regulator might want to let banks pursue such discretionary loan charge-off behavior, with the problem of distinguishing it from alternative capital management and income smoothing objectives, while transparency-seeking accounting standards setters would presumably not

Bank income smoothing, ownership concentration and the regulatory environment

We empirically examine whether the way a bank might use loan loss provisions to smooth its income is influenced by its ownership concentration and the regulatory environment. Using a panel of European commercial banks, we .find evidence that banks with more concentrated ownership use discretionary loan loss provisions to smooth their income. This behavior is less pronounced in countries with stronger supervisory regimes or higher external audit quality. Banks with low levels of ownership concentration do not display such discretionary in- come smoothing behavior. This suggests the need to improve existing or implement new corporate governance mechanisms

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Bank Insolvency Risk and Z-Score Measures: A Refinement

International audienc

Bank insolvency risk and time-varying Z-score measures

International audienceWe compare the di¤erent existing approaches to the construction of time-varying Z-score measures, plus an additional alternative one, using a panel of banks for the G20 group of countries covering the period 1992–2009. We examine which ways of estimating the moments used in these di¤erent ap-proaches best …t the data, using a simple root mean squared error criterion. Our results are supportive of our alternative time-varying Z-score measure: it uses mean and standard deviation estimates of the return on assets cal-culated over full samples combined with current values of the capital-asset ratio, and is thus straightforward to implement