Bank Default Risk Research Articles

Optimize the Banker’s Multi-Stage Decision-Making and the Mechanism of Pay Contract Influencing on Bank Default Risk in the Long-Term Model

In recent years, researchers have been devoted to illustrating the correlation between bankers’ pay contracts and a bank’s risk-taking behavior where corporate governance is concerned, especially throughout the past four decades and by using empirical analysis. Despite being a widespread concern, the causality of this relationship is not thoroughly understood. We initiate this research by modeling bankers’ multi-stage decisions of option investment and bond investment from the perspective of theoretical analysis, and by analyzing the function image results using data from Wells Fargo & Co. from the ExecuComp, BvD Orbis, and CRSP-COMPUSTAT databases. We aim to deeply explore the mechanism of how compensation influencing on risk. We are the first to find that it has a “risk cap”, which is the optimal risk level to maximize the return of decision-making. We are also the first to discover the optimal decision coefficient level to maximize the decision return, during which the internal causes and mechanisms of the impact of bankers’ compensation on a bank’s default risk are revealed. We also illustrate the influence of the number of periods. We expect our findings to provide advice for establishing policies when designing pay contracts.

Cash Salary, Inside Equity, or Inside Debt?—The Determinants and Optimal Value of Compensation Structure in a Long-term Incentive Model of Banks

The design and optimization of executive compensation structure to reduce the risk-taking of banks is one of the core topics of corporate governance theory. Especially after the 2008 global financial crisis, due to the characteristics of banks, such as systemic risk, this issue has become more important. However, though widely concerned, the determinants and design principles of compensation are not thoroughly understood. Based on our previous work, the setup of a banker’s long-term total compensation model, we continue our research by setting up a theoretical model between total compensation, bank default risk, and the structure coefficient by simulating the result using data from Wells Fargo and Co. to draw the function image. We are the first to find out the determinants of structure, that is, the working time, current age, and tenure. What is more important is that we find that increasing the weight inside debt in the total compensation is not only helpful for the reduction of the bank’s default risk, but also an increase of the banker’s total compensation. We also illustrate the influence of a number of periods. We expect our findings to offer help regarding the formulation of policies for pay contracts.

Capital regulation, deposit insurance and bank risk: International evidence from normal and crisis periods

In this paper, we examine the impact of capital regulation on bank risk and the moderating role of deposit insurance on the relationship between capital regulation and bank risk during both normal and crisis periods. Using an international sample of banks from 111 countries, our results show that stringent capital regulation reduces bank default risk, in general, during normal growth period, and this effect is not conditioned by the existence of explicit deposit insurance. Further, stringent capital regulation in place during the pre-crisis period reduces bank default risk during the crisis period, and this effect is stronger for countries with explicit deposit insurance during the pre-crisis period. These results have important policy implications to design the optimal bank regulations.

Economic Uncertainty and Bank Stability: Conventional vs. Islamic Banking

In this paper, we explore whether economic uncertainty differently affects the default risk of Islamic and conventional banks. Using a sample of 568 banks from 20 countries between 2009 and 2018, we use the World Uncertainty Index (WUI) by Ahir et al. (2018) to conduct a study based on a comparable measure across countries. Our findings indicate that economic uncertainty increases the default risk of conventional banks but does not affect Islamic banks’ default risk. To understand why, we explore the influence of religiosity, institutional factors, and bank-level heterogeneity. We observe that Islamic banks’ default risk is not significantly affected by uncertainty in all types of countries, but such a difference with conventional banks mainly holds for banks with high income diversification, larger size, and that are publicly traded. Moreover, our findings show that conventional banks suffer more from uncertainty in terms of stability in countries with higher religiosity and with a higher share of profit-loss sharing (PLS) contracts. Our results are robust to alternative estimation techniques to deal with endogeneity and to alternative variable measurements.

Bank Systemic Risk around COVID-19: A Cross-Country Analysis

Using 1,584 listed banks from 65 countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, we conduct the first broad-based international study examining the effect of the pandemic on bank systemic risk. We find the pandemic increases systemic risk across countries. The effect operates through government policy and bank default risk channels. Additional analysis suggests that the adverse effect of the pandemic on systemic stability is more pronounced for large, highly leveraged, riskier, high loan-to-asset, undercapitalized, and low network centrality banks. However, this effect is moderated by formal bank regulation (e.g., deposit insurance) and ownership structure (e.g., foreign and government ownership), and informal institutions (e.g., culture and trust).

Twin Defaults and Bank Capital Requirements

We examine optimal capital requirements in a quantitative general equilibrium model with banks exposed to non-diversifiable borrower default risk. Contrary to standard models of bank default risk, our framework captures the limited upside but significant downside risk of loan portfolio returns (Nagel and Purnanandam, 2020). This helps to reproduce the frequency and severity of twin defaults: simultaneously high firm and bank failures. Hence, the optimal bank capital requirement, which trades off a lower frequency of twin defaults against restricting credit provision, is 5pp higher than under standard default risk models which underestimate the impact of borrower default on bank solvency. JEL Classification: G01, G28, E44

Pay Me Later is Not Always Positively Associated with Bank Risk Reduction—From the Perspective of Long-Term Compensation and Black Box Effect

The relationship between executive compensation and bank risk-taking is one of the core topics of corporate governance theory. Especially after the 2008 global financial crisis, due to the characteristics of banks, such as systemic risk, this relationship has become more important. However, though usually calculated on the basis of cash salary and inside equity, which can promote risk incentives, inside debt was considered a tool for risk reduction in prior empirical analyses. Based on actual bank situations, we had doubts about this relationship and wanted to verify the specific relationship between inside debt and risk. We initiated this research by setting up a theoretical model between inside debt and bank default risk and by simulating the result using data from Wells Fargo & Co. to draw the function image. We are the first to define the three kinds of compensation in three dimensions. Then, considering bankruptcy, we found the black box effect exists. Therefore, different from prior views, pay me later not only reduces but also increases risk. We expect our findings to offer help to the formulation of policies for pay contracts.

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A Structural Model of Interbank Network Formation and Contagion

The interbank network, in which banks compete with each other to supply and demand differentiated financial products, fulfils an important function but may also result in risk propagation. We examine this trade-off by setting out a model in which banks form interbank network links endogenously, taking into account the effect of links on default risk. We estimate this model based on novel, granular data on aggregate exposures between banks. We find that the decentralised interbank market is not efficient: a social planner would be able to increase surplus on the interbank market by 13% without increasing mean bank default risk or decrease mean bank default risk by 4% without decreasing interbank surplus. We then propose two novel regulatory interventions (caps on aggregate exposures and pairwise capital requirements) that result in efficiency gains.

Twin Default Crises

We examine optimal capital requirements in a quantitative general equilibrium model with banks exposed to non-diverfisiable borrower default risk. Contrary to standard models of bank default risk, our framework captures the limited upside but significant downside risk of loan portfolio returns (Nagel and Purnanandam, 2020). This helps to reproduce the frequency and severity of twin defaults: simultaneously high firm and bank failures. Hence, the optimal bank capital requirement, which trades off a lower frequency of twin defaults against restricting credit provision, is 5pp higher than under standard default risk models which underestimate the impact of borrower default on bank solvency.

Are CoCo Bonds a Good Substitute for Equity? Evidence from European Banks

Following the 2008-9 financial crisis, large banks increasingly issued contingent convertible bonds (CoCo bonds) to increase their capital buffers – a policy supported by national bank regulators. This paper examines whether the issuance of CoCo bonds provides the same reduction in bank default risk as the corresponding issuance of common equity by analyzing the premium reduction in (single name) credit default swaps (CDS) around the corresponding issuance announcement events. We find that the default risk reduction associated with issuance crucially depends on the CoCo bond’s design features: Only CoCo bond designs with permanent write-down features provide a default risk reduction similar to equity. CoCo bonds with equity conversion features come with a lower subsequent volatility of the bank asset value, but are inferior to equity in terms of their default risk reduction.

Sovereign - Bank Default Risk Linkages During the Greek Financial Crisis and the Role of the Italian Debt

The Greek crisis has brought to light the strong nexus between the credit risks of European banks and their sovereign. We study this phenomenon in Germany, France, Italy and Spain by estimating the conditional correlations between sovereign and bank CDS bond spreads over the period 2006-2015. Trivariate time-varying regime switching correlation analyses, such as the STCC-GARCH and DSTCC-GARCH, are implemented to associate causally the state shifts to the dynamics of the so-called “transition variables”. We find evidence of significant changes in the correlation structures due to the evolution of both the Greek and Italian crises.

Exports and bank shocks: Evidence from matched firm-bank data

A growing literature aims to understand the structural change and cyclical factors that contributed to the Great Trade Collapse. This paper adds to the conversation by investigating the impact of bank distress on firms’ exports using matched firm-bank data for the UK. We use two novel measures of bank distress: the Basel III net stable funding ratio, as well as the market-based bank credit default swap spreads, which best capture bank default risk, especially during crises. Our detailed database provides the crucial firm-bank relationship information that allows us to directly test for the banking channel effect on the real economy, and to carefully account for various endogeneities and biases in estimation. We also test for the possible contagion of the Sovereign Debt Crisis from the GIIPS economies to the UK. We find that the severe bank distress generated by the recent crises immediately, negatively and significantly affects UK firms’ exports, independent of demand shocks. Not all firms were impacted equally: private firms and firms in industries more dependent on external finance were impacted the most, while publicly owned firms were less affected by their bank’s distress.

Contingent convertible bonds with the default risk premium

Contingent convertible bonds (CoCos) are hybrid instruments characterized by both debt and equity. CoCos are automatically converted into equity or written down when a predefined trigger event occurs. The present study quantifies the issuing bank's default risk that only manifests in the post-conversion period for pricing CoCos depending on a loss-absorbing method. This work aims to reflect the distinct features of equity-conversion CoCos - in contrast to a write-down CoCos - in a valuation framework. Accordingly, we propose a model to compute the ratio of common equity Tier 1 (CET1), which is composed of core capital and risky assets, by employing a geometric Brownian motion and a random variable. Then, we formulate the post-conversion risk premium by measuring the probability with which the bank's CET1 ratio breaches a regulatory default threshold after conversion. Finally, we empirically examine a positive value of the post-conversion risk premium embedded in the market prices of equity-conversion CoCos.

End of the sovereign-bank doom loop in the European Union? The Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive

In this paper we examine the relationship between the default risk of banks and sovereigns, i.e. the ‘doom-loop’. Specifically, we try to assess the effectiveness of the implementation of the new recovery and resolution framework in the European Union. We use a panel with daily data on European banks and sovereigns ranging from 2012 to 2016 in order to test the effects of the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive on the two-way feedback process. We find that there was a pronounced feedback loop between banks and sovereigns from 2012 to 2014. However, after the implementation of the European Banking Union, in 2015/2016, the magnitude of the doom-loop decreased and the spillovers became not statistically significant. Furthermore, our results suggest that the implementation of the new resolution framework is a suitable candidate to explain this finding. Overall, the results are robust across several specifications.

Financing as a supply chain: The capital structure of banks and borrowers

We develop a model of the joint capital structure decisions of banks and their borrowers. Bank leverage of 85% or higher emerges because bank seniority both dramatically reduces bank asset volatility and incentivizes risk-taking by producing a skewed return distribution. Nonfinancial firms choose low leverage to protect their banks, presenting a partial resolution to the low-leverage puzzle. Our setup naturally extends to include government actions as we model bank assets using a modified Basel framework. Deposit insurance and bailout expectations lead banks and borrowers to take on more risk. Capital regulation lowers bank leverage but can increase bank risk due to a compensating increase in borrower leverage. Despite this, doubling current capital requirements reduces bank default risk by up to 90%, with only a small increase in loan interest rates.

How Does Distress Acquisition Incentivized by Government Purchases of Distressed Loans Affect Bank Default Risk?

The topic of bank default risk in connection with government bailouts has recently attracted a great deal of attention. In this paper, the question of how a bank’s default risk is affected by a distress acquisition is investigated. Specifically, the government provides a bailout program of distressed loan purchases for a strong bank to acquire a bank in distress. The acquirer bank may likely refuse the acquisition with a bailout when the amount of distressed loan purchases is large or the knock-out value of the acquired bank is high. When the acquirer bank realizes acquisition gains, the default risk in the consolidated bank’s equity return is negatively related to loan purchases, but positively to the knock-out value of the acquired bank. The government bailout, as such, in large part contributes to banking stability.

Divergent monetary policies and international dollar credit: Evidence from bank‐level data

AbstractThis paper uses a comprehensive and detailed bank‐level data set to study how the divergence of central bank balance sheet policy in the US vis‐à‐vis the euro area and Japan would affect the supply of international US dollar loans by global banks. Our empirical findings support the view that the contractionary effect of US monetary normalization on global dollar liquidity would be offset by an expansionary effect from continued supply of US dollar loans by euro area and Japanese banks. The net effect, however, is crucially dependent on the stability of global foreign exchange markets and investor perceptions of the default risks of global banks. Our findings show that there could be a significant contraction of the supply of international US dollar loans if and when the US monetary normalization coincides with a dislocation of the FX swap market and a rise of bank default risks. Our results are robust to alternative model specifications and different data sets.

An international forensic perspective of the determinants of bank CDS spreads

Against the backdrop of the Great Recession, investigating the differences in institutional frameworks became important to explain the heterogeneity in the market perception about the credit quality and default risk of banks in different countries. Using data for 118 banks of 30 countries over the period 2004–2011, we find that an improvement of the quality of economic and legal institutions can help in reducing banks' CDS spreads, as banks operating in countries where the regulatory quality is stronger tend to be less affected by spikes in financial stress of 2008–2009. Considering a series of indicators of the financial structure of the banking system, our results reveal that more concentration of the banking sector, a stronger presence of foreign banks, a deterioration of the banking sector health or the lack of alternative means of finance is associated with higher CDS spreads of banks. We also show that the dynamics of bank CDS spreads accrue to: (i) the quality of banks’ balance sheet; (ii) (il)liquidity of banks’ assets; (iii) how profitable banks’ operations are; and (iv) the banks’ leverage ratios. Finally, higher CDS spreads of banks tend to be associated with periods of high inflation and low GDP growth.

English

There seem to be inconclusive results regarding the interactions between bank efficiency, default risk and bank capital. This study tries to assess the dynamic interactions between efficiency estimates, default risk and bank capital in the Ghanaian banking industry, using bank specific panel data for 20 Ghanaian banks from 2007 to 2015. We employ panel vector autoregressive models (VAR) models which are estimated using generalized method of moments (GMM) to examine the interactions. The results give an indication that bank default risk has negative and statistically significant impact on cost efficiency but exerts only a mild influence on profit efficiency. However, there exist weaker evidence on the impact of both efficiencies on bank default risk. Bank capital on the other hand has significant positive impact on cost and profit efficiencies but both efficiencies have insignificant impact on bank default risk. Key words: Efficiency, bank capital, Stochastic Frontier Approach (SFA), default risk.