Macroprudential policy and bank systemic risk

This paper investigates the effectiveness of macroprudential policy to contain the systemicrisk of European banks between 2000 and 2017. We use a new database (MaPPED) collected by experts at the ECB and national central banks with narrative informationon a broad range of instruments which are tracked over their life cycle. Using a dynamicpanel framework at a monthly frequency we assess the impact of macroprudential tools and their design on the banks’ systemic risk both in the short and the long run. We furthermore decompose the systemic risk measure in an individual bank risk component and a systemic linkage component. This is of particular interest because microprudential policy focuses on the tail risk of an individual bank while macroprudential policy targets systemic risk by addressing the interlinkages and common exposures across banks. In general, the announcements of macroprudential policy actions have a downward effect on bank systemic risk. On average, all banks benefit from macroprudential tools in terms oftheir individual risk. We find that credit growth tools and exposure limits exhibit the most pronounced downward effect on the individual risk component. However, we find evidence for a risk-shifting effect which is more pronounced for retail-oriented banks. The effects are heterogeneous across banks with respect to the systemic linkage component. Liquidity tools and measures aimed at increasing the resilience of banks decrease the systemic linkage of banks. Moreover, these tools appear to be most effective for distressed banks.Our results have implications for the optimal design of macroprudential instruments

Bank Market Structure and Firm Capital Structure

We explore the impact of concentration in the banking markets on the capital structure of publicly quoted non-financial firms in the EU15 over the period 1997- 2005, an era marked by intensive merger activity in the banking sector. Our main finding is a negative and significant relationship between the degree of concentration of European bank markets and the market leverage of firms, indicating the persistence of credit constraints. This finding is robust when we use behavioral measures of bank conduct. This support for the market power hypothesis indicates that further measures are needed to make bank lending more competitive.Bank concentration, Capital structure

Bank Ownership, Firm Value and Firm Capital Structure in Europe

We investigate whether or not banks play a positive role in the ownership structure of European listed firms. We distinguish between banks and other institutional investors as shareholders and examine empirically the relationship between financial institution ownership and the performance of the firms in which they hold equity. Our main finding is that after controlling for the capital structure decision of the firms and the ownership decision of financial institutions in a simultaneous equations model, we find that there is a negative relationship between financial institution ownership and the market value of firms, measured as the Tobin's Q. This is in contradiction with the monitoring hypothesis.Financial institution ownership, Firm value, Capital structure

Bank Market Structure and Firm Capital Structure

We explore the impact of concentration in the banking markets on the capital structure of publicly quoted non-financial firms in the EU15 over the period 1997- 2005, an era marked by intensive merger activity in the banking sector. Our main finding is a negative and significant relationship between the degree of concentration of European bank markets and the market leverage of firms, indicating the persistence of credit constraints. This finding is robust when we use behavioral measures of bank conduct. This support for the market power hypothesis indicates that further measures are needed to make bank lending more competitive

Bank Ownership, Firm Value and Firm Capital Structure in Europe

We investigate whether or not banks play a positive role in the ownership structure of European listed firms. We distinguish between banks and other institutional investors as shareholders and examine empirically the relationship between financial institution ownership and the performance of the firms in which they hold equity. Our main finding is that after controlling for the capital structure decision of the firms and the ownership decision of financial institutions in a simultaneous equations model, we find that there is a negative relationship between financial institution ownership and the market value of firms, measured as the Tobin's Q. This is in contradiction with the monitoring hypothesis

The Determinants of Pass-Through of Market Conditions to Bank Retail Interest Rates in Belgium

We analyse the pass-through of money market rates to retail interest rates at the disaggregate level in the Belgian banking market. First, we measure the extent of pass-through for a total of fourteen products. We find that the response varies over loans and deposits and depends positively on the maturity of the product. Second, the launch of EMU has generally not resulted in more competitive pricing by banks. Third, we assess the importance of several biases and find that heterogeneity in price-setting behaviour should be accounted for in analysing the pass-through. Fourth, we analyse bank-specific determinants of heterogeneous interest rate pass-through. We find a role for capital, liquidity and market share and we relate these results to the various channels in monetary policy transmission and to the structure-conduct-performance hypothesis in banking.pass-through, Heterogeneous panel, aggregation bias, panel cointegration, retailbanking, bank-level interest rates, bank-level determinants

The trade-off between monetary policy and bank stability. National Bank of Belgium Working Paper No. 308, October 2016

This paper investigates how monetary policy interventions by the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve affect the stock market perception of bank systemic risk. In a first step, we identify monetary policy shocks using a structural VAR approach by exploiting the changes of the volatility of these shocks on days on which there are monetary policy announcements. The second step consists of a panel regression analysis, in which we relate monetary policy shocks to market-based measures of bank systemic risk. Our sample includes information on both Euro Area and U.S. listed banks, covering a sample period from October 2008 to December 2015. We condition the impact of the monetary policy shocks on a set of bank-specific variables, thereby allowing for a heterogeneous transmission of monetary policy. We furthermore use the differences between Euro Area core and periphery countries and the additional granularity of U.S. accounting data to assess which channels determine the transmission of monetary policy. Our results indicate that by supporting weaker banks and allowing banks to delay recognizing bad loans, accommodative monetary policy may contribute to the buildup of vulnerabilities in the banking sector and may make an eventual policy tightening more difficult. On the other hand, a continuation of expansionary monetary policy may increase risk-taking incentives by further compressing banks’ net interest margins