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The paper aims to investigate whether the value of banks is affected by their financing policies. Higher capital requirements have been invoked by exploiting a renewed edition of the Modigliani–Miller (M&M) theorem. This paper shows the limits of this claim by highlighting that the general statement that “bank equity is not expensive” can be misleading. The authors argue that market prices should play an important role in bank supervision. Expectations of future profits in prices supply timely information on the viability of a bank.

The authors use the Merton model to show the inapplicability of M&M theorem to banks. The long-run viability of a bank is analyzed with a dividend discount model which allows to compare a bank’s long-term profitability with its overall cost of capital implicit in market prices.

The authors show that the M&M framework cannot be applied to banks neither ex-ante nor ex-post. Ex-ante the authors focus on government guarantees, ex-post they emphasize the risk-shifting phenomena that may increase the overall risk of the bank. The authors show that a bank’s stability cannot be achieved if the market expectations of its future profits stay below the cost of funding.

The authors use simple analytical models. In a future study, some key peculiarities of banks, such as the monetary nature of deposits, should be analytically modelled.

The paper contributes to the debate on capital regulation on the level of capital requirements and the instruments to assess the viability/stability of banks.

This paper uses simple models to assess analytically the key issues in the debate on banks’ capital regulation.

Using a two bank, two-period game-theoretic model, this chapter shows that contingent purchase and assumption policy under which the choice of acquirer for a failed bank is contingent on the surviving banks’ risk-taking behavior is generally most effective in reducing moral hazard problems, particularly for countries with low levels of competition and high regulatory barriers. Moreover, we find that to minimize the probability of future bank failures, the choice of acquiring bank should be based not only on the short-term goal of resolving the insolvencies of financial institutions, but also on the long-term effects of ex ante risk-taking incentives.

The purpose of this study is to explore and evaluate potential nonmonotonicity in the determinants of profit efficiency, specifically IT and R&D investments in the Indian commercial banking sector.

The study employs an alternative stochastic profit efficiency framework and introduces nonmonotonic effects by parameterizing the location and scale parameters of the inefficiency component on an unbalanced panel data set of 72 commercial banks in the 2008–2019 period. Marginal effects across quartiles are calculated using a bias-corrected and accelerated bootstrap procedure of 500 simulations. The study disaggregates across ownership and size for gauging the impact of structure on the associations between determinants of profit efficiency.

The study partially rejects the productivity paradox as it discovers a negative association of IT and R&D with profit inefficiency. However, the observed nonmonotonicity of IT is of significance for bank managers, as the study concludes that overinvestment in IT is detrimental to a bank’s profit-maximizing interests. Further, bank size, loan default and credit risk depict a nonmonotonic relationship across the sample with large banks, high NPAs and high credit risk associated with reducing profit efficiency. In addition, higher margins and greater diversification are related positively to efficiency, and banks with cost-heavy structures or having high liquidity risk associated negatively with efficiency.

To the best knowledge of the authors, the study is perhaps the first to acknowledge and incorporate nonmonotonic associations of IT investments amidst other exogenous determinants under a stochastic profit efficiency framework.

We analyze the impact of monetary policy instruments on interbank lending rates and retail bank lending in China using an extended version of the model developed by Porter and Xu (2009). Unlike the central banks of advanced economies, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) uses changes in the required reserve ratios and open market operations to influence liquidity in money markets and adjusts the regulated deposit and lending rates and loan targets to intervene in the retail deposit and lending market. These interventions prevent the interbank lending rate from signaling monetary policy stance and transmitting the effect of policy to the growth of bank loans. Since the global financial crisis, the PBoC’s monetary policy has gone through a full cycle. The combining effects of using different policy instruments simultaneously within a short period of time were quite effective in bringing the credit and money growth in line with its desired level. Most recently steps have been taken to speed up the interest rate liberalization. Effective July 2013, the PBoC removed the floors of the benchmark lending rates.

Motivated by recent financial liberalization policies in emerging markets, this study investigates whether bank competition and regulatory capital affect bank risk taking in an international banking context.

Bank competition is regressed, using GLS regression, on various measures of bank risk, to reflect regulatory, accounting and market-based risk-taking. The authors use a sample of publicly traded banks operating in Africa during 2004–2019.

Results show that higher level of bank competition increases bank risk taking and results in greater financial fragility in the absence of banking capital regulations. Furthermore, larger capital adequacy ratios control the risk-taking incentives of managers and guard banks against the risk of default. Further tests confirm the significance of market-based risk measures over accounting and regulatory measures.

Findings are relevant to bank managers and regulators in their sustained effort of finding an optimal balance between bank competition and financial stability. Increased competition should be balanced with capital regulations to curtail bank excessive risky behavior and derive the social benefits of greater competition in the market while sustaining overall economic growth.

This study provides novel evidence in an international context. First, it uses regulatory, accounting and market-based measures of bank risk taking to reflect regulators', management and market participants' emphasis. Another original contribution is the investigation of bank competition across African economies characterized by financial liberalization, stringent banking system and interesting socio-economic challenges.

In the transitional process of promoting market-oriented interest rate, China is confronted with an important theoretical and practical issue: how to avoid bank runs and realize the smooth operation of the financial system. The purpose of this paper is to construct a bank-run dynamic model by taking into account a market environment with the transmission of multiple rounds of noise information, a comprehensive consideration of depositors’ expectation of return on assets (or earning rate/yields of assets), the efficiency of information processing and dissemination, and the different motives for premature withdrawal.

The authors discussed the dynamic process of bank runs, furnished the ratio and number of each round of bank run, and characterized the corresponding dynamic equilibrium as well. Furthermore, the authors expanded the benchmark model by incorporating the deposit insurance system (DIS) to discuss the action mechanism of DIS overruns.

The results show that DIS implementation has two opposite effects: stabilized expectation and moral hazard, by virtue of its influence over the two types of premature withdrawal motives of depositors; the implementation effect of DIS rests with the dual-effect comparison, which is endogenous to the institutional environment.

The policy implications are as follows: while implementing DIS, it is necessary to establish and improve the corresponding institutional construction and supporting measures, to consolidate market discipline and improve the supervisory role of the bank’s internal governance mechanism, so as to reduce the potential moral hazards. The financial system reform shall be furthered and the processing and dissemination efficiency of information be elevated to prompt depositors to form stable withdrawal expectations, thereby enhancing the stabilizing effect of DIS.

Amidst the backdrop of a wide array of structural developments that have revolutionized the competitive landscape of Indian commercial banking, this paper aims to empirically examine the role of two external monitoring mechanisms – competition and concentration on financial stability and further highlights the significance of bank-level heterogeneity in the nexus.

The study uses the Lerner index, defined through a translog specification, as a measure of market power. A system generalized method of moments technique accounts for the dynamic associations among the competition-concentration-stability nexus. The study further examines the moderating effect of ownership, size and capitalization on the nexus. The study also uses the Boone indicator and comments on the competition-bank stability relationship after controlling for bank governance.

The findings indicate that banks are less stable in a more competitive and higher concentrated environment. Exploring bank-level heterogeneity, first, the authors report that as competition increases, state-owned banks have greater incentives to undertake risky activities than private and foreign banks, which point to implicit sovereign guarantees that characterize the former. Second, the authors document an adverse influence of competition on the soundness of larger banks consistent with the “too-big-to-fail” assertion. Third, results corroborate the disciplinary role of regulatory capital and lend support to stricter capital norms under Basel III in a more competitive environment.

This paper is perhaps the first to capture competition and concentration in a single model; to reconcile conflicting evidence on competition-risk nexus; to shed light on the joint effect of competition and Basel accords for Indian banks.

With the macroprudential approach, systemic risk is explained by a general equilibrium (GE) model. However, since on-balance-sheet and off-balance-sheet (OBS) risks are structurally segmented, for example annually or periodically on financial statements, the GE model might need further integration with OBS risks including ecological shocks.

This study develops a theoretical two-period model with consumption, investment and loans, which further includes carbon emissions to distinguish between loans for “green” or “brown” firms to enhance the perspective of ecological sustainability.

The paper shows how the environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors might be of relevance in the standard bank capital regulatory structure. In dealing with ecological sustainability, a new methodological framework with the green K-index introduces penalties to be paid in the capital structure related to ESG factors. The model is enhanced for screening green or brown firms related to impact investing. The integrated view of financial stability and ecological sustainability further illuminates how a wide cross-sectoral resilience of a green K-index measure for the economy might be achievable.

A stock-flow consistent model with balance-sheet methods raises the question whether all necessary variables and parameters can be computed in practice. Compared to the agent-based model (ABM), this model additionally lacks inputs from agents' behaviour, thus non-rational decisions, which may be relevant in practice. More generally, by adopting a balance-sheet structure, the model shows a coherent framework with relevant variables. The methodology of the GE model with OBS has not been scholarly explored and thus is presented for discussion rather than generalisation. The GE model with OBS provides a new interpretation of systemic risk and interbank relations with a consideration of ecological aspects. Its economic implication contributes to contemporary banking theory as well as to the sustainability discussions in the larger financial sector.

Banks and investors can more carefully measure the ecological risks in their loan portfolios and make better informed decisions leading to a better sustainability of the financial markets.

This study develops a theoretical GE model with off-balance-sheet risks. The model adds green regulation enhancing the capital regulation framework relevant to sustainability. This, in turn, enhances the role of banks in a coherent economic framework for loan decisions towards a much greener finance.

This paper aims to reconsider the role of asset-market participation in Diamond-Dybvig economies, to reconcile the existence of asset markets as a channel for financial integration with the distortions that they might impose on the banking system.

The paper is a two-sector Diamond-Dybvig model of financial intermediation, with comparative advantages in the investment technologies, and introduces the possibility for the depositors to participate in an economy-wide asset market, when they can trade a bond without being observed by their banks.

The two-sector competitive banking equilibrium with hidden trades is not equivalent to autarky, is the unique Nash equilibrium of a “participation game” and is a constrained efficient.

This paper is the first to characterize the equilibrium of a two-sector Diamond-Dybvig economy with hidden trading in the asset market, and produces novel results, in contrast to the existing literature, with respect to the rationale for the existence of a financial system, its coexistence with asset markets and its efficiency. These conclusions also have important implications in terms of policy, in particular, regarding the case for the introduction of financial regulation.