A Test of Competition in Brazilian Banking

This paper implements an empirical test of market power for Brazilian banking based on Bresnahan (1982) and Lau (1982). A dynamic version of the test is applied. The results show that the banking industry in Brazil is highly competitive, although the perfect competition hypothesis is rejected. The hypothesis that Brazilian banks behave like a cartel arrangement is also rejected.

Bank Privatization and Productivity: Evidence for Brazil

Over the last decade, the Brazilian banking industry has undergone major and deep transformations with several privatizations of state-owned banks, mergers and acquisitions, closing down of troubled banks, entry by foreign banks, etc. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impacts of these changes in banking total factor productivity. We first obtain measures of bank level productivity by employing the techniques due to Levinsohn and Petrin (2003). We then relate such measures to a set of bank characteristics. Our main results indicate that state-owned banks are less productive than their private peers, and that privatization has increased productivity.

Credit Channel without the LM Curve

This paper extends Bernanke and Blinder (1988)'s macroeconomic model of credit channel to an environment where the monetary authority has control over a short-term interest rate. The comparative statics regarding changes in the market interest rate, in the required reserve ratio over bank deposits, and in the risk of public bonds are highlighted.

Real Balances in the Utility Function: Evidence for Brazil

The aim of this paper is to examine the relevance of a money-in-the-utility-function model for the Brazilian economy. In addition to consumption, the household is supposed to derive utility from leisure and from the holdings of real balances. The system, formed by the first-order conditions of the household intertemporal problem (Euler equations), is estimated by generalized method of moments (GMM). The results show strong support for the presence of money in the utility function for Brazil.

Bank Competition, Agency Costs and the Performance of the Monetary Policy

This paper extends the general equilibrium literature on bank competition in order to evaluate its role on the performance of the monetary policy. A new formulation of a financial contract taking into consideration both market power by banks as well as costly state verification is proposed here. Numerical simulations with the model economy parameterized to the Brazilian case are performed. Two cases are examined: One in which the banking sector is perfectly competitive and the other one when banks have market power. The main conclusions of the paper are the following: (1) Greater competition in the loan market enhances the response of the real economy to an interest rate shock; (2) Increased competition and/or a more efficient verification technology reduce the reaction of both the default rate and of the bank interest spread to an interest rate shock; and (3) The influence of the verification technology in the economy's dynamic response is greater when banks operate under perfect competition.

O IMPACTO DE REQUERIMENTOS DE CAPITAL NA OFERTA DE CRÉDITO BANCÁRIO NO BRASIL

Over the last ten years, Brazilian banking system has been resilient to shocks, and its credit concession has been low in volume and expensive. This situation motivated the analysis of the relation between a banking regulation instrument that targets systemic stability - capital requirement - and the credit supply of Brazilian banks. A model was elaborated, with its central hypothesis being the incidence, in credit operations, of "regulation costs", negatively related to the capital level of a bank. Under this hypothesis, one expects to find, ceteris paribus, a positive relation between a bank credit supply and its Basel index. Besides, this relation should be exacerbated in banks whose Basel index stands below the minimum required. The hypothesis was tested through the estimation of the model using the generalized method of moments in nonaggregate Brazilian banking data. The results evidence the importance of capital regulation in banking decision of credit supply, in accordance with the model prediction.

The Determinants of Bank Interest Spread in Brazil

The behavior of bank interest spreads in Brazil reveal two stylized facts. First, a remarkable fall in the average rates since early 1999. Second, a strong and persistent dispersion of rates across banks. Such stylized facts suggest that both the time series and the cross section dimensions are important elements to understand the trend of the bank interest spread in the country. This paper makes use of panel data techniques to uncover the main determinants of the bank interest spreads in Brazil. A question that the paper aims to address is whether macro or microeconomic factors are the most relevant ones affecting the behavior of such rates. A two-step approach due to Ho and Saunders (1981) is employed to measure the relative relevance of the micro and the macro elements. The roles played by the inflation rate; risk premium, economic activity, required reserves (all macroeconomic factors) and CAMEL-type indicators (microeconomic factors) are highlighted. The results suggest that macroeconomic variables are the most relevant factors to explain the behavior of bank interest spread in Brazil.

Os Efeitos da CPMF sobre a Intermediação Financeira

The purpose of this article is to empirically evaluate the impact of the Provisional Contribution on Financial Turnover (CPMF) in the financial intermediation. More specifically, it analyzes the consequences of the introduction of the CPMF on: a) the number of checks issued; b) the CPMF base; c) the volume of M1; d) the allocation of resources between time deposits and investment funds and e) the bank interest spread. The main conclusions are: i) the CPMF erodes its own tax base; ii) the CPMF reduced the number of checks used in the economy; iii) the effect of the CPMF on the M1 is positive, although not very significant; iv) considering portfolio allocation, the CPMF fostered a transference of time deposits to investment funds; v) the CPMF increases the gross banking spread and reduces the net spread, thus leading to lower returns to all the agents involved in the financial intermediation process namely, the loan undertakers, savers and the financial intermediaries.