The regulation that caps executives’ variable compensation, as part of the Capital Requirements Directive IV of 2013, likely affected executive turnover, compensation design, and risk-taking in EU banking. The current study identifies significantly higher average turnover rates but also finds that they are driven by CEOs at poorly performing banks. Banks indemnified their executives by off-setting the bonus cap with higher fixed compensation. Although our evidence is only suggestive, we do not find any reduction in risk-taking at the bank level, one purported aim of the regulation.

Die „kleine“ Bankenkrise in den USA scheint vorbeizusein, und auch die Credit-Suisse-Krise ist beigelegt. Es stellt sich die Frage, was wir aus der Pleite der Silicon Valley Bank lernen können, um eine ähnliche Situation in Deutschland oder Europa zu vermeiden.

Die wirtschaftliche Aktivität und das Ausfallrisiko staatlicher Schulden beeinflussen sich gegenseitig. Sinkt die wirtschaftliche Aktivität einer Volkswirtschaft, steigt wegen fallender Steuereinnahmen das Risiko, dass der Staat Zinszahlungen und Tilgungen auf Staatsanleihen nicht zurückzahlen kann. Umgekehrt kann das staatliche Ausfallrisiko seinerseits die wirtschaftliche Aktivität beeinflussen. Steigt das Ausfallrisiko, geraten Banken unter Druck, die Staatsanleihen in ihren Bilanzen führen, und reduzieren die Kreditvergabe an Unternehmen. In der Konsequenz sinkt die wirtschaftliche Aktivität. Dieser Beitrag nutzt hochfrequente News-Ticker-Daten zur Ableitung politischer Ereignisse und davon ausgelöster Fluktuationen im Staatsschuldenrisiko. Diese allein politisch bedingten Fluktuationen ermöglichen es, den Effekt des Staatsschuldenrisikos auf die wirtschaftliche Aktivität zu messen, ohne dass die Schätzung von der gegenläufigen Beziehung der Variablen beeinträchtigt wird. Das Vorgehen wird am Beispiel Italiens erläutert.

We make a comparison of microfinance banks (MBs) and commercial banks (CBs) in terms of efficiency, business orientation, stability, and asset quality by analyzing a large sample of banks from 60 countries around the world. Our findings indicate that microfinance banks have higher intermediation, non-interest income, wholesale funding and liquidity, but lower efficiency and asset quality. These significant variations are influenced by smaller microfinance banks and are driven mostly to African and Latin American microfinance banks.

Banks play a crucial role in the transition to a low-carbon economy, but they also expose themselves to climate transition risk. This column shows that banks use corporate loan securitisation to shift climate transition risk to less-regulated shadow banking entities. This behaviour affects carbon premia in loan contracts. When banks can use securitisation to manage transition risk, their climate policies that target only activities reflected in their books may not be as effective as bank regulators hope for.

The focus of this paper is whether the Securities and Exchange Commission's Regulation SHO strengthens or weakens the effect of short-selling threats on banks’ risk-taking. The evidence shows that pilot banks with looser constraints on short-selling increased their risk-taking during the financial crisis of 2007–2009. The reason is that short-selling threats improved the information environment and mitigated the agency problems of banks during the pilot program that led to greater risk-taking by pilot banks. Additionally, this effect is mainly driven by pilot banks with poor corporate governance, or high information asymmetry. Overall, our paper provides novel evidence that the disciplinary role of short-sellers had a positive effect on bank risk-taking during the financial crisis.

We show that weather-related natural disasters in the United States significantly weaken the financial stability of banks with business activities in affected regions. This is reflected in higher probabilities of default, lower z-scores, higher non-performing assets ratios, higher foreclosure ratios, lower returns on assets and lower equity ratios of affected banks in the years following a natural disaster. The effects are economically relevant and highlight the financial vulnerability of banks and their borrowers despite insurances and public aid programs.

Nach dem Zusammenbruch der zahlungsunfähigen US-amerikanischen Silicon Valley Bank zieht Reint Gropp, Präsident des Leibniz-Instituts für Wirtschaftsforschung Halle (IWH), drei Lehren für die europäische Bankenaufsicht.

In this study, we investigate whether the cultural values of a parent bank’s board members affect lending by the bank’s foreign subsidiaries and how this influence is moderated by the board members’ personal traits. Using a new dataset on foreign-owned banks and their parent companies, we find that average individualism, uncertainty avoidance, and indulgence within parent bank boards significantly impact lending by foreign subsidiaries. We establish that different sensitivities of female and male directors modify the relevance of individual cultural dimensions in lending by foreign bank subsidiaries. Moreover, we show that parent bank directors’ cultural values have a stronger impact on lending by the bank’s foreign subsidiaries when those directors have enough time to fulfill their duties and possess higher ownership stakes in the parent companies.