Should Japanese Banks Be Recapitalized?

When a bank is a relationship lender, its financial health affects the access to credit of its borrowers. If bank regulators or uninsured private depositors might force a bank to close, it will take any action necessary to remain open. This can lead to inefficient and excessive foreclosure of the bank's relationship-based loans to viable borrowers, or alternatively to the inability to collect existing loans due to its fear of recognizing an accounting loss if a loan is called. The level of bank capital then has real effects on its borrower's access to credit. A subsidized recapitalization of banks with relationship-based loans can be a good policy. The size of the recapitalization is critical, because providing too small an amount of subsidized capital can be worse than providing no capital. Providing subsidized capital to banks without relationship-based loans is never a good policy.

Financial intermediation as delegated monitoring: a simple example

Financial institutions

Banks and liquidity creation : a simple exposition of the Diamond-Dybvig model

Banks and banking

Liquidity, banks, and markets : effects of financial development on banks and the maturity of financial claims

Financial markets and financial institutions compete to provide investors with liquidity. The author examines the roles of banks and markets when both are active, characterizing how development of the financial markets affects the structure and market share of banks. Banks create liquidity by offering claims with a higher short-term return than exist without a banking system. The amount of liquidity that banks offer depends on the degree of direct participation in financial markets - that is, on the liquidity of financial markets. Conversely, banks influence the amount of liquidity offered by financial markets. As more investors participate in financial markets, allowing markets to provide liquidity, banks shrink and makefewer long-term loans. Moreover, the banking sector's ability to subsidize those with immediate liquidity needs is reduced. More liquid markets also lead to physical investment with longer maturity, a smaller gap between the maturity of financial assets and that of phycial investments. Financial assets have a shorter maturity than physical investments, but this gap approaches zero as the market approaches full liquidity. The author provides an analytical basis for developing short-term markets as a way to stimulate the supply of long-term finance, and he supports the practitioner's view that short-term financial markets are a prerequisite for the development of viable long-term finance.Economic Theory&Research,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Financial Intermediation,Banking Law,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Financial Intermediation,Economic Theory&Research,Banking Law,Banks&Banking Reform,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism

Liquidity Shortages and Banking Crises

We show in this paper that bank failures can be contagious. Unlike earlier work where contagion stems from depositor panics or ex ante contractual links between banks, we argue bank failures can shrink the common pool of liquidity, creating or exacerbating aggregate liquidity shortages. This could lead to a contagion of failures and a possible total meltdown of the system. Given the costs of a meltdown, there is a possible role for government intervention. Unfortunately, liquidity problems and solvency problems interact and can cause each other, making it hard to determine the root cause of a crisis from observable factors. We propose a robust sequence of intervention.

Bank runs, deposit insurance, and liquidity

This article develops a model which shows that bank deposit contracts can provide allocations superior to those of exchange markets, offering an explanation of how banks subject to runs can attract deposits. Investors face privately observed risks which lead to a demand for liquidity. Traditional demand deposit contracts which provide liquidity have multiple equilibria, one of which is a bank run. Bank runs in the model cause real economic damage, rather than simply reflecting other problems. Contracts which can prevent runs are studied, and the analysis shows that there are circumstances when government provision of deposit insurance can produce superior contracts.Deposit insurance ; Liquidity (Economics)

Money in a Theory of Banking

We explore the connection between money, banks, and aggregate credit. We start with a simple real' model without money, where banks make loans repayable in goods and depositors hold claims on the bank payable on demand in goods. Aggregate production may be delayed in the economy. If so, we show that the level of ongoing bank lending, and hence of aggregate future output, can decrease with increases in the real repayment due on deposits: ceteris paribus, the higher the amount due, the more likely there will be insufficient goods, given the delay, to pay depositors, and the more new lending has to be curtailed to make up the shortfall. Thus a temporary delay in production can be exacerbated by banks into a more permanent reduction of total output. A number of inefficiencies including bank failures can result if deposits turn out to be too high. We then introduce money in this model. We show that if demand deposits are repayable in money rather than in goods, banks can be hedged against production delays: under certain circumstances, the price level will rise with delays in production, reducing the real value of the deposits banks have to pay out. But demand deposits payable in money can expose the banks to new risks: the value of money can fluctuate for reasons other than delays in aggregate production. Because deposits are convertible into money on demand, a temporary rise in money demand immediately boosts the interest rate banks have to pay depositors, which in turn boosts the real amounts banks have to repay them. This increase in the real deposit burden can again lead to the curtailment of bank lending and even bank failures. The way to combat these contractionary effects is to infuse more money into the banking system. Our analysis thus makes transparent how changes in the supply of money can work through banks to affect real economic activity, without invoking sticky prices, reserve requirements, or deposit insurance. It also suggests how bank failures could lead to a fall in prices and a contagion of bank failures, as described by Friedman and Schwartz (1963).

Banks, Short Term Debt and Financial Crises: Theory, Policy Implications and Applications

Short-term borrowing has often been blamed for precipitating financial crises. We argue that while the empirical association between a financial institution's, or country's, short-term borrowing and susceptibility to crises may, in fact, exist, the direction of causality is often precisely the opposite to the one traditionally suggested by commentators. Institutions like banks that want to enhance their ability to provide liquidity and credit to difficult borrowers have to borrow short-term. Similarly countries that have poor disclosure rules and inadequate investor protections, have limited long-term debt capacity, and will find their borrowing becoming increasingly short-term as they finance illiquid investment. Thus it is the increasing illiquidity of the investment being financed (or the deteriorating credit quality of borrowers) that necessitates short-term financing, and causes the susceptibility to crises. In fact, once illiquid investments have been financed, rather than making the system more stable, a ban on short-term financing may precipitate a more severe crisis. Even a priori, a ban is not without adverse consequences policy makers have to trade off the costs of decreased credit creation and investment against the benefits of greater stability. A ban on short-term debt often deals with symptoms rather than underlying causes.

Liquidity Shortages and Banking Crises

Banks can fail either because they are insolvent or because an aggregate shortage of liquidity can render them insolvent. We show that bank failures can themselves cause liquidity shortages. The failure of some banks can then lead to a cascade of failures and a possible total meltdown of the system. Contagion here is not caused by contractual or informational links between banks but because bank failure could lead to a contraction in the common pool of liquidity. There is a possible role for government intervention. Unfortunately, liquidity problems and solvency problems interact, and can each cause the other. It is therefore hard to determine the root cause of a crisis from observable factors. The practical difficulty of determining the most appropriate intervention, as well as the costs of the wrong kind of intervention (such as infusing capital when the need is for liquidity) have to be traded off against the costs of a meltdown, which can be substantial. We propose a robust sequence of intervention.