Timing of Banks' Loan Loss Provisioning During the Crisis

We estimate a panel error correction model for loan loss provisions, using unique supervisory data on flow of funds into and out of the allowance for loan losses of 25 Dutch banks in the post-2008 crisis period. We find that these banks aim for an allowance of 49% of impaired loans. In the short run, however, the adjustment of the allowance is only 29% of the change in impaired loans. The deviation from the target is made up by (a) larger additions to allowances in subsequent quarters and (b) smaller reversals of allowances when loan losses do not materialize. After one quarter, the adjustment toward the target level is 34% and after four quarters is 81%. For individual banks, there are substantial differences in timing of provisioning for bad loan losses. We present two model-based metrics that inform supervisors on the extent to which banks' short-term provisioning behaviour is out of sync with their target levels

On the Value of Virtual Currencies

This paper develops an economic framework to analyze the exchange rate of virtual currency. Three components are important: first, the current use of virtual currency to make payments; second, the decision of forward-looking investors to buy virtual currency (thereby effectively regulating its supply); and third, the elements that jointly drive future consumer adoption and merchant acceptance of virtual currency. The model predicts that, as virtual currency becomes more established, the exchange rate will become less sensitive to the impact of shocks to speculators' beliefs. This undermines the notion that excessive exchange rate volatility will prohibit widespread use of virtual currency

Estimating Systematic Risk under Extremely Adverse Market Conditions

This paper considers the problem of estimating a linear model between two heavy-tailed variables if the explanatory variable has an extremely low (or high) value. We propose an estimator for the model coefficient by exploiting the tail dependence between the two variables and prove its asymptotic properties. Simulations show that our estimation method yields a lower mean-squared error than regressions conditional on tail observations. In an empirical application, we illustrate the better performance of our approach relative to the conditional regression approach in projecting the losses of industry-specific stock portfolios in the event of a market crash

The simple econometrics of tail dependence

The aim of this paper is to show that measures on tail dependence can be estimated in a convenient way by regression analysis. This yields the same estimates as the non-parametric method within the multivariate Extreme Value Theory framework. The advantage of the regression approach is contained by its straightforward extension to the estimation of higher dimensional tail dependence. We provide an example on international stock markets. The regression approach to tail dependence can be applied to estimate several measures of systemic importance of financial institutions in the literature.Tail dependence; Regression analysis; Extreme Value Theory; Systemic risk

The Demand for Programmable Payments: Extended Abstract (Extended Abstract)

In [Kahn and Van Oordt, 2022], we examine the desirability of programmable payments, arrangements in which transfers are automatically executed conditional upon preset objective criteria. We study optimal payment arrangements in a continuous-time framework where a buyer and a seller of a service interact. We stack the cards in favor of programmable payments by considering an environment where neither agent has any legal recourse if the other fails to deliver upon their promises. We identify scenarios where programmable payments could improve economic outcomes and scenarios where they cannot. Direct payments increase the surplus by avoiding the liquidity cost of locking-up funds in a programmable payment arrangement until the moment where the conditions are satisfied to release those funds to the payee. Programmable payments will be desirable, and may in fact be the only viable payment arrangement, in situations where economic relationships are of a short duration. Nonetheless, there is a limit to the length of the arrangement a single programmable payment can support, because eventually the additional liquidity cost of locking up more funds for a longer period starts to exceed the additional surplus generated from extending the length of the arrangement. For longer periods multiple payments are necessary. Sufficiently long optimal chain-of-payments arrangements always start with direct payments because of the lower liquidity costs. Only towards the end of a relationship do the parties switch to the use of programmable payments. Moreover, the optimum for infinitely long payment arrangements consists of direct payments only. These results suggest that programmable payments are unlikely to become the new "standard" for all payment arrangements. Many have argued that technological developments in the payments space will lead to an explosion of so-called micro-payments. Our results suggest a more complex relationship between transactions cost and the number of payments. Lower transaction costs increase the number of payments for the extensive margin in the sense of increasing the set of potential buyer-seller pairs where transaction costs are no longer prohibitively expensive. For the intensive margin, that is, within buyer-seller pairs, we find the opposite effect: lower transaction costs are associated with fewer payments, as trust becomes easier to achieve

Best Before? Expiring Central Bank Digital Currency and Loss Recovery (Extended Abstract)

An important feature of physical cash payments is resilience, due to their independence of power outages or network coverage. Many central banks are exploring issuing digital cash substitutes with similar offline payment functionality. Such substitutes could incorporate novel features making them more desirable than physical cash. This paper considers introducing an expiry date for offline digital currency balances to automate personal loss recovery. We show this functionality could increase consumer demand for digital cash, with the time to expiration playing a key role. The optimal time to expiration should have short wait time to get lost money reimbursed but leave enough time for agents to deposit received offline balances. Setting the time to expiration a bit too long has minor impact on welfare but setting it too short dramatically reduce welfare. If the offline device provides information about past transactions to the central bank, the accuracy of loss recovery can be improved but welfare can decrease

On agricultural commodities’ extreme price risk

We show how fat tails in agricultural commodity returns arise endogenously from productivity shocks in a standard macroeconomic model. Using nearly ninety years of data, we show that the eight agricultural commodities in our sample exhibit fat-tailed return distributions. Statistical tests confirm the heavy-tailedness of price spikes for agricultural commodities. We apply extreme value theory to estimate the size and likelihood of price spikes in agricultural commodities. Back-testing verifies the validity of our risk assessment methodology.</p