Does size matter Pay gaps, non-CEO executives, and bank stability

Does size matter Pay gaps, non-CEO executives, and bank stability

Bank executives’ substantial compensation is seen as one of the factors that contributed to the risk-taking that led to the 2008–2009 financial crisis. We test whether and how pay disparities between CEO and non-CEO executives—the so-called CEO pay gap—influences risk-taking at publicly traded commercial banks in the U.S. We find strong evidence that larger CEO pay gaps are associated with lower risk levels, improved financial performance, and greater information transparency. Our findings are unique to banks and are consistent with the CEO power proposition. We corroborate this proposition by linking larger pay gaps to increased CEO power and low CEO turnover-performance sensitivity. Our results imply that placing absolute limits on bank CEO pay would likely result in increased bank risk-taking.

Economic policy uncertainty and bank stability: Size, capital, and liquidity matter

The large compensation received by bank executives is among the many factors blamed for the risk-taking that led to the 2008-2009 financial crisis. We test whether and how pay disparities between CEO and non-CEO executives—the so-called CEO pay gap—influenced risk taking at publicly traded commercial banks in the U.S. between 1992 and 2014. Perhaps surprisingly, we find strong evidence that larger CEO pay gaps are associated with lower risk levels, improved financial performance, and greater information transparency. Our results imply that placing absolute limits on bank CEO pay would likely result in increased bank risk-taking.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, bank stability became a priority for the Indonesian Financial Services Authority and the government. Economic activity is expected to be restored by muffling the shocks caused by the COVID-19 outbreak. This paper investigates the influence of COVID-19 on banking stability by differentiating bank core capital size and ownership. Using data from 108 commercial banks in Indonesia for the period March 2020 and March 2021, the paper analyzes data using fixed effects regression. The results show that COVID-19 has a detrimental and significant effect on bank stability in Indonesia. Regardless of the size and ownership of a bank’s core capital, it was found that no bank is immune for a year to the severe implications of COVID-19. This condition was experienced by both state banks and private banks, large and small. To assist in the absorption of COVID-19 shocks, this paper proposes policies for regulators that include stimulus packages and countercyclical roles in the banking system via government-owned banks.

This article aims to investigate the impact of a business model on bank performance and stability, with a focus on net interest margins. Using a large sample of 300 commercial banks covering 46 African countries, we define the business model by the income structure. Overall, we find that the shift toward non-interest income is associated with a decrease in net interest margins and overall performance. Besides, we observe limited, if any, impact on stability on average. Thus, our results suggest that African banks do not clearly benefit from diversification. However, the results show that ownership and size matter. JEL Codes: G21, G32, N27

The relationship between banking market competition and risk-taking: Do size and capitalization matter?

Motivated by the introduction of the UK Gender Pay Gap Reporting legislation to large firms, defined as over 250 employees, we use linked employee–employer panel data from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings to explore pre‐legislation variation in the gender pay gap by firm size. In doing so, we contribute to the evidence on the relationship between two prominent empirical regularities in the labour economics literature, namely the gender pay gap and the firm‐size wage premium. We find that both the raw and adjusted gender pay gaps increase with firm size in the UK private sector, even after controlling for unobserved worker heterogeneity, consistent with the legislation being targeted effectively. However, this conclusion changes after accounting for unobserved firm‐level heterogeneity. Large firms have smaller within‐firm raw gender pay gaps and similar adjusted gender pay gaps when compared to smaller firms. Our findings are not specific to the current definition of large firms but hold more generally, including at alternative proposed size thresholds.