Completing the European Banking Union: Capital Cost Consequences for Credit Providers and Corporate Borrowers
Michael Koetter, Thomas Krause, Eleonora Sfrappini, Lena Tonzer
Abstract
The bank recovery and resolution directive (BRRD) regulates the bail-in hierarchy to resolve distressed banks without burdening tax payers. We exploit the staggered implementation of the BRRD across 15 European Union (EU) member states to identify banks’ capital cost and capital structure responses. In a first stage, we show that average capital costs of banks increased. WACC hikes are lowest in the core countries of the European Monetary Union (EMU) compared to formerly stressed EMU and non-EMU countries. This pattern is driven by changes in the relative WACC weight of equity in response to the BRRD, which indicates enhanced financial system resilience. In a second stage, we document asymmetric transmission patterns of banks’ capital cost changes on to corporates’ borrowing terms. Only EMU banks located in core countries that exhibit higher WACC are those that also increase firms’ borrowing cost and contract credit supply. Hence, the BRRD had unintended consequences for selected segments of the real economy.
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To Rent or not to Rent: A Household Finance Perspective on Berlin's Short-term Rental Regulation
Antonios Mavropoulos
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 1,
2021
Abstract
With the increasing concerns that accompany the rising trends of house sharing economies, regulators impose new laws to counteract housing supply scarcity. In this paper, I investigate whether the ban on short-term entire house listings activated in Berlin in May 2016 had any adverse effects from a household finance perspective. More specifically, I derive short-term rental income and counter-factually compare it with long-term rental income to find that the ban, by decreasing the supply of short-term housing, accelerated short-term rental income but did not have any direct effect on long-term rental income. Commercial home-owners therefore would find renting on the short-term market to be financially advantageous.
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A Note of Caution on Quantifying Banks' Recapitalization Effects
Felix Noth, Kirsten Schmidt, Lena Tonzer
Abstract
Unconventional monetary policy measures like asset purchase programs aim to reduce certain securities' yield and alter financial institutions' investment behavior. These measures increase the institutions' market value of securities and add to their equity positions. We show that the extent of this recapitalization effect crucially depends on the securities' accounting and valuation methods, country-level regulation, and maturity structure. We argue that future research needs to consider these factors when quantifying banks' recapitalization effects and consequent changes in banks' lending decisions to the real sector.
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Benign Neglect of Covenant Violations: Blissful Banking or Ignorant Monitoring
Stefano Colonnello, Michael Koetter, Moritz Stieglitz
Economic Inquiry,
No. 1,
2021
Abstract
Theoretically, bank's loan monitoring activity hinges critically on its capitalization. To proxy for monitoring intensity, we use changes in borrowers' investment following loan covenant violations, when creditors can intervene in the governance of the firm. Exploiting granular bank‐firm relationships observed in the syndicated loan market, we document substantial heterogeneity in monitoring across banks and through time. Better capitalized banks are more lenient monitors that intervene less with covenant violators. Importantly, this hands‐off approach is associated with improved borrowers' performance. Beyond enhancing financial resilience, regulation that requires banks to hold more capital may thus also mitigate the tightening of credit terms when firms experience shocks.
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Bank Accounting Regulations, Enforcement Mechanisms, and Financial Statement Informativeness: Cross-country Evidence
Augustine Duru, Iftekhar Hasan, Liang Song, Yijiang Zhao
Accounting and Business Research,
No. 3,
2020
Abstract
We construct measures of accounting regulations and enforcement mechanisms that are specific to a country's banking industry. Using a sample of major banks in 37 economies, we find that the informativeness of banks’ financial statements, measured by the value relevance of earnings and common equity, is higher in countries with stricter bank accounting regulations and countries with stronger enforcement. These findings suggest that superior bank accounting and enforcement mechanisms enhance the informativeness of banks’ financial statements. In addition, we find that the effects of bank accounting regulations are more pronounced in countries with stronger enforcement in the banking industry, suggesting that enforcement is complementary to bank accounting regulations in achieving higher value relevance of financial statements. Our study has important policy implications for bank regulators.
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Foreign Ownership, Bank Information Environments, and the International Mobility of Corporate Governance
Yiwei Fang, Iftekhar Hasan, Woon Sau Leung, Qingwei Wang
Journal of International Business Studies,
No. 9,
2019
Abstract
This paper investigates how foreign ownership shapes bank information environments. Using a sample of listed banks from 60 countries over 1997–2012, we show that foreign ownership is significantly associated with greater (lower) informativeness (synchronicity) in bank stock prices. We also find that stock returns of foreign-owned banks reflect more information about future earnings. In addition, the positive association between price informativeness and foreign ownership is stronger for foreign-owned banks in countries with stronger governance, stronger banking supervision, and lower monitoring costs. Overall, our evidence suggests that foreign ownership reduces bank opacity by exporting governance, yielding important implications for regulators and governments.
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Firm-level Employment, Labour Market Reforms, and Bank Distress
Moritz Stieglitz, Ralph Setzer
Abstract
We explore the interaction between labour market reforms and financial frictions. Our study combines a new cross-country reform database on labour market reforms with matched firm-bank data for nine euro area countries over the period 1999 to 2013. While we find that labour market reforms are overall effective in increasing employment, restricted access to bank credit can undo up to half of long-term employment gains at the firm-level. Entrepreneurs without sufficient access to credit cannot reap the full benefits of more flexible employment regulation.
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Firm-level Employment, Labour Market Reforms, and Bank Distress
Ralph Setzer, Moritz Stieglitz
Abstract
We explore the interaction between labour market reforms and financial frictions. Our study combines a new cross-country reform database on labour market reforms with matched firm-bank data for nine euro area countries over the period 1999 to 2013. While we find that labour market reforms are overall effective in increasing employment, restricted access to bank credit can undo up to half of long-term employment gains at the firm-level. Entrepreneurs without sufficient access to credit cannot reap the full benefits of more flexible employment regulation.
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On the Empirics of Reserve Requirements and Economic Growth
Jesús Crespo Cuaresma, Gregor von Schweinitz, Katharina Wendt
Journal of Macroeconomics,
June
2019
Abstract
Reserve requirements, as a tool of macroprudential policy, have been increasingly employed since the outbreak of the great financial crisis. We conduct an analysis of the effect of reserve requirements in tranquil and crisis times on long-run growth rates of GDP per capita and credit (%GDP) making use of Bayesian model averaging methods. Regulation has on average a negative effect on GDP in tranquil times, which is only partly offset by a positive (but not robust effect) in crisis times. Credit over GDP is positively affected by higher requirements in the longer run.
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Delay Determinants of European Banking Union Implementation
Michael Koetter, Thomas Krause, Lena Tonzer
European Journal of Political Economy,
2019
Abstract
Most countries in the European Union (EU) delay the transposition of European Commission (EC) directives, which aim at reforming banking supervision, resolution, and deposit insurance. We compile a systematic overview of these delays to investigate if they result from strategic considerations of governments conditional on the state of their financial, regulatory, and political systems. Transposition delays pertaining to the three Banking Union directives differ considerably across the 28 EU members. Bivariate regression analyses suggest that existing national bank regulation and supervision drive delays the most. Political factors are less relevant. These results are qualitatively insensitive to alternative estimation methods and lag structures. Multivariate analyses highlight that well-stocked deposit insurance schemes speed-up the implementation of capital requirements, banking systems with many banks are slower in implementing new bank rescue and resolution rules, and countries with a more intensive sovereign-bank nexus delay the harmonization of EU deposit insurance more.
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