Central Bank Liquidity Research Articles

The (Unintended?) Consequences of the Largest Liquidity Injection Ever

We study the design of lender of last resort interventions and show that the provision of long-term liquidity incentivizes purchases of high-yield short-term securities by banks. Using a unique security-level data set, we find that the European Central Bank’s three-year Long-Term Refinancing Operation incentivized Portuguese banks to purchase short-term domestic government bonds that could be pledged to obtain central bank liquidity. This "collateral trade" effect is large, as banks purchased short-term bonds equivalent to 8.4% of amount outstanding. The resumption of public debt issuance is consistent with a strategic reaction of the debt agency to the observed yield curve steepening.

Unconventional Monetary Policy and Bank Lending Relationships

How do banks transmit long-term central bank liquidity injections to borrowers? We exploit unique variation in how the ECB’s 2011-12 Long-Term Refinancing Operations (LTROs) affected lending to firms discontinuously across credit ratings (within banks) to make four contributions. (i) We show the LTROs induced increased bank lending to firms in France, including to SMEs, an elusive policy objective. (ii) We uncover important heterogeneity: banks pass through LTRO liquidity very differently to multi- bank firms than they do to firms with only one bank. (iii) Differences in liquidity transmission map to archetypal lending types: single-bank firms receive relationship lending, and these firms invest and grow in response, while multi-bank firms receive transactions-style lending and do not increase their investment. (iv) While the majority of the effect flows to firms whose loans are policy-eligible, we identify a spillover (onto multi-bank firms only) that appears to be driven by bank competition for borrowers.

Unconventional Monetary Policy and Bank Lending Relationships

We explore how banks transmit central bank liquidity injections using unique variation in the ECB’s 2011-12 Very Long-Term Refinancing Operations (VLTROs) which affected lending to firms discontinuously across credit ratings (i.e., within banks). We show that banks transmit liquidity differently to multi-bank firms than to firms with only one bank. Single-bank firms receive longer-term relationship lending and increase investment, while multi-bank firms receive short-term transactions-style lending only. Policy effects are attributable to increasing the maturity of bank borrowing from the ECB in combination with allowing banks to use loans to firms as collateral for such borrowing.

Identifying central bank liquidity super-spreaders in interbank funds networks

We model the allocation of central bank liquidity among the participants of the interbank market by using network analysis’ metrics. Our analytical framework considers that a super-spreader simultaneously excels at borrowing and lending central bank's liquidity for the whole network, as measured by financial institutions’ hub centrality and authority centrality, respectively. Evidence suggests that the Colombian interbank funds market exhibits an inhomogeneous and hierarchical network structure, akin to a core-periphery organization, in which a few financial institutions fulfill the role of central bank's liquidity super-spreaders. Our results concur with evidence from other interbank markets and other financial networks regarding the flaws of traditional direct financial contagion models based on homogeneous and non-hierarchical networks. Also, concurrent with literature on lending relationships in interbank markets, we confirm that the probability of being a super-spreader is mainly determined by financial institutions’ size, but leverage and lending concentration as well. We provide additional elements for the implementation of monetary policy and for safeguarding financial stability.

The Impact of the Eurozone Crisis on European Banks Stocks Contagion or Interdependence?

JEL Classification: E6; F3; G2 1. Introduction The 2007-2009 crisis began by intense tensions in the financial systems of advanced economies and unraveled into a dramatic contraction in global growth. To prevent a larger collapse in economic activity, governments and central banks intervened massively in order to support aggregate demand--via automatic stabilizers and discretionary expenditures--and to bailout financial institutions. As a result, public finance experienced a marked degradation, leading to the emergence of the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis as a new phase of the global crisis. (1) According to the IMF Fiscal Monitor, the fiscal deficit in advanced countries (2) moves from 1.3% of the GDP in 2006 to 8.9% in 2009 while the public debt in percentage of the GDP climbed from 75.8 to 93.7 over the same period. The degradation in public finance has been more dramatic in the euro area, and more specifically in its peripheral countries. Thus, the average fiscal deficit in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain (GUPS-group) increased from 1.6% of the GDP in 2006 to 11.2% in 2009, while their public debt surged from 68.4% to 89.6% (with a projected peak at 130.5 percent of the GDP). Any drop in the market value of European sovereign debt has a negative impact on the balance sheets of European banks. Banks hold large amounts of government bonds to satisfy multiple purposes. First, investing in government bonds allows financial institutions to diversify their portfolio into low risk assets. The European prudential regulation has encouraged banks to hold such safe and liquid securities that may help to cushion losses on riskier assets. Second, holding government bonds is crucial for banks to access the central bank liquidity, insofar as the refinancing operations of the central bank are based on highly rated securities. Besides, interbank loans and repos rely heavily on the use of public bonds as collaterals. Therefore, when the value of sovereign bonds plummets it reduces both the market value of these assets in banks' balance sheets and banks' access to funding. These large holdings of Eurozone government bonds by European banks have led to a growing concern about possible spillovers from the sovereigns to the banks and a second round of spillovers from banks to sovereigns. Caruana and Avdjiev (2012) identify various channels of transmission from sovereign risks to the financial sector. First, they stress the impact of direct portfolio exposures. The Committee on the Global Finance System estimates that, for a sample of 21 advanced economies (3) at the end-2010, the banks' exposures to the domestic sovereign, measured as a percentage of banks' equities, have been above 30 percent in all countries except Austria, Ireland, and the United Kingdom (CGFS, 2011). On average, 85 percent of this exposure is held in the banking book. It is important to stress that the holding of government bonds is characterized by a strong home bias. Second, as sovereign bonds are used by banks as collaterals, a decrease in the quality of government debt may lead to a significant deterioration of funding conditions for financial institutions. (4). A third channel of transmission from sovereigns to banks resides in the fact that a marked increase in sovereign credit risk may trigger doubts on the ability of the governments to offer a credible guarantee to banks and / or financial supports in case of distress. In other terms a sovereign domestic debt crisis decreases the value of the explicit and implicit government guarantees that benefit banks that are considered too big or too interconnected (TBTF) to be allowed to fail. As these guarantees amount to very significant government subsidies (Schich and Lindh, 2012) their impairment may have a large negative impact on TBTF banks' balance sheets. This paper contributes to the growing literature on the European sovereign debt crisis by focusing on the impact of the successive crises on banks' equity returns over the period 2007-2013. …

Country-Specific Variations in SME CLOs Trap Excess Spread Differently

Since the first securitization of small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) loans in Europe in 1998, more than EUR 560 billion (estimated) has been securitized and transferred into the capital markets. Although the SME collateralized loan obligation (CLO) sector has weathered the financial crisis that started in 2008, the purpose of SME CLO issuance has shifted from funding and serving as a risk transfer instrument for banks to providing useful liquid assets that can be retained and used for European Central Bank liquidity operations. Despite existing for close to 20 years, SME CLO structures still are not standardized across Europe. Understanding their key structural differences and their effectiveness in different default scenarios is important to investors. The article explains some of the key structural mechanisms and compares their effectiveness under different assumptions. <b>TOPICS:</b>CLOs, CDOs, and other structured credit, developed

Securities trading by banks and credit supply: Micro-evidence from the crisis

We analyze securities trading by banks during the crisis and the associated spillovers to the supply of credit. We use a proprietary data set that has the investments of banks at the security level for 2005–2012 in conjunction with the credit register from Germany. We find that—during the crisis—banks with higher trading expertise (trading banks) increase their investments in securities, especially in those that had a larger price drop, with the strongest impact in low-rated and long-term securities. Moreover, trading banks reduce their credit supply, and the credit crunch is binding at the firm level. All of the effects are more pronounced for trading banks with higher capital levels. Finally, banks use central bank liquidity and government subsidies like public recapitalization and implicit guarantees mainly to support trading of securities. Overall, our results suggest an externality arising from fire sales in securities markets on credit supply via the trading behavior of banks.

Lenders on the Storm of Wholesale Funding Shocks: Saved by the Central Bank?

We provide empirical evidence on banks’ responses to shocks in wholesale funding, using data of 181 euro area banks over the period August 2007 to June 2013. Banks’ adjustments of loan volumes and lending rates in response to funding liquidity shocks are analysed in a panel VAR framework. The results show that shocks in the securities and interbank markets have significant effects on loan rates and credit supply, particularly of banks in stressed countries. The results also suggest that central bank liquidity has mitigated this effect most clearly on lending volumes. Lending to non-financial corporations is more sensitive to wholesale funding shocks than lending to households. Moreover, bank characteristics matter for monetary transmission: loan growth of large banks that are typically more dependent on wholesale funding and of banks with large exposure to government bonds shows relatively stronger responses to wholesale funding shocks.

Stitching Together the Global Financial Safety Net

Financial globalisation brings a number of benefits but can also increase the risk of financial crisis. In recent years, to reduce these risks to stability, countries have reformed financial regulation, enhanced frameworks for central bank liquidity provision and developed new elements, and increased the resources of the global financial safety net (GFSN). The traditional GFSN consisted of countries’ own foreign exchange reserves with the IMF acting as a backstop. But since the global financial crisis there have been a number of new arrangements added to the GFSN, in particular the expansion of swap lines between central banks and regional financing arrangements (RFAs). The new look GFSN is more fragmented than in the past, with multiple types of liquidity insurance and individual countries and regions having access to different size and types of financial safety nets. This paper finds that the components of the GFSN are not fully substitutable. We argue that while swap lines and RFAs can play an important role in the GFSN they are not a substitute for having a strong, well resourced, IMF at the centre of it. By running a series of stress scenarios we find that for all but the most severe crisis scenarios, the current resources of the GFSN are likely to be sufficient. However, this finding relies upon the IMF’s overall level of resources (including both permanent and temporary) being maintained at their current leveland masks some vulnerabilities at the country level.

Lending-of-Last-Resort is as Lending-of-Last-Resort Does: Central Bank Liquidity Provision and Interbank Market Functioning in the Euro Area

This paper investigates the impact of ample liquidity provision by the European Central Bank on the functioning of the overnight unsecured interbank market from 2008 to 2014. We use novel data on interbank transactions derived from TARGET2, the main euro area payment system. To identify exogenous shocks to central bank liquidity, we exploit the timing of ECB liquidity operations and use a simple structural vector auto-regression framework. We argue that the ECB acted as a de-facto lender-of-last-resort to the euro area banking system and identify two main effects of central bank liquidity provision on interbank markets. First, central bank liquidity replaces the demand for liquidity in the interbank market, especially during the financial crisis (2008-2010). Second, it increases the supply of liquidity in the interbank market in stressed countries (Greece, Italy and Spain) during the sovereign debt crisis (2011-2013). JEL Classification: E58, F36, G01, G21

The Re-Pricing of Sovereign Risks Following the Global Financial Crisis

How strong has been the effect of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) on systemic risk in sovereign bond markets? Was the increase in credit spreads relative to triple-A benchmarks which followed the GFC the result of higher sovereign default risk or the result of a re-pricing that reflected changes in broader market conditions and risk aversion? In this paper we examine the variations of the systemic components of sovereign spreads before and after the GFC by specifying a sovereign credit yield curve which relates sovereign yield spreads to credit ratings and global factors which affected sovereign spreads regardless of their rating. We use daily data of ten-year bond yields and ratings for 64 developed economies and emerging markets, covering the period from 1/1/2000 to 1/1/2015. Our estimates suggest that sovereign risk premia increased significantly after the GFC with most of the increase due to a re-pricing of broader market risks rather than an increase in the quantity or price of sovereign risk per se. Global risk in the sovereign bond market is driven by variables that relate to investor confidence, volatility risk, central bank liquidity and the position and the slope of the yield curve in the US.

Lenders on the Storm of Wholesale Funding Shocks: Saved by the Central Bank?

We provide empirical evidence on banks' responses to shocks in wholesale funding, using data of 181 euro area banks over the period August 2007 to June 2013. Banks' adjustments of loan volumes and lending rates in response to funding liquidity shocks are analysed in a panel VAR framework. The results show that shocks in the securities and interbank markets have significant effects on loan rates and credit supply, particularly of banks in stressed countries. Central bank liquidity has mitigated this effect. Lending to non-financial corporations is more sensitive to wholesale funding shocks than lending to households. Moreover, bank characteristics matter for monetary transmission: loan growth of large banks that are typically more dependent on wholesale funding and of banks with large exposure to government bonds shows relatively stronger responses to wholesale funding shocks.

Securities Trading by Banks and Credit Supply: Micro-Evidence from the Crisis

We analyze securities trading by banks during the crisis and the associated spillovers to the supply of credit. We use a proprietary dataset that has the investments of banks at the security level for 2005-2012 in conjunction with the credit register from Germany. We find that – during the crisis – banks with higher trading expertise (trading banks) increase their investments in securities, especially in those that had a larger price drop, with the strongest impact in low-rated and long-term securities. Moreover, trading banks reduce their credit supply, and the credit crunch is binding at the firm level. All of the effects are more pronounced for trading banks with higher capital levels. Finally, banks use central bank liquidity and government subsidies like public recapitalization and implicit guarantees mainly to support trading of securities. Overall, our results suggest an externality arising from fire sales in securities markets on credit supply via the trading behavior of banks. JEL Classification: G01, G21, G28

The (Unintended?) Consequences of the Largest Liquidity Injection Ever

We study the design of lender of last resort interventions and show that the provision of long-term liquidity incentivizes purchases of high-yield short-term securities by banks. Using a unique security-level data set, we find that the European Central Bank’s three-year Long-Term Refinancing Operation incentivized Portuguese banks to purchase short-term domestic government bonds that could be pledged to obtain central bank liquidity. This “collateral trade” effect is large, as banks purchased short-term bonds equivalent to 8.4% of amount outstanding. The resumption of public debt issuance is consistent with a strategic reaction of the debt agency to the observed yield curve steepening. JEL Classification: E58, G21, G28, H63

The Invisible Hand of the Government: 'Moral Suasion' During the European Sovereign Debt Crisis

Using proprietary data on banks' monthly securities holdings, we find that during the European sovereign debt crisis, domestic banks in fiscally stressed countries were considerably more likely than foreign banks to increase their holdings of domestic sovereign bonds in months with relatively high domestic sovereign bond issuance. This effect is stronger for state-owned banks and for banks with low initial holdings of domestic sovereign bonds, and it is not fuelled by Central Bank liquidity provision. Our results point to a moral suasion mechanism, and they are not driven by concurrent risk-shifting, carry-trading, regulatory compliance, or shocks to investment opportunities.

International Banking and Liquidity Risk Transmission: Evidence from Ireland

The increased international expansion of Irish banks, combined with entry into the domestic market by a number of foreign competitors makes Ireland a pertinent country for studying the international transmission of liquidity risk. Using bank-level panel data and novel data on access to central bank liquidity and Exceptional Liquidity Assistance, regression analysis confirms a risk-absorbing effect, whereby official liquidity helped mitigate the effect of liquidity risk on domestic lending by larger Irish banks. Regression analysis also confirms that a larger net borrowing position vis-a-vis foreign affiliates insulates the effect of liquidity risk on domestic lending, suggesting that banks’ internal capital markets can provide a counterweight to systemic risks.

Realized Bank Risk during the Great Recession

In the years preceding the 2007-2009 financial crisis, forward-looking indicators of bank risk concentrated and suggested unusually low expectations of bank default. We assess whether the ex-ante (i.e. prior to the crisis) cross-sectional variability in bank characteristics is related to the ex-post (i.e. during the crisis) materialization of bank risk. Our tailor-made dataset crucially accounts for the different dimensions of realized bank risk including access to central bank liquidity during the crisis. We consistently find that less reliance on deposit funding, more aggressive credit growth, larger size and leverage were associated with larger levels of realized risk. The impact of these characteristics is particularly relevant for capturing the systemic dimensions of bank risk and tends to become stronger for the tail of the riskier banks. The majority of these characteristics also predicted bank risk as materialized before the financial crisis.

TARGET2 Imbalances and the ECB as Lender of Last Resort

This paper analyses the issue of the dynamics of the TARGET2 system balances during the sovereign debt crisis, when some countries registered a decisive inflow of the central bank liquidity and others showed an outflow. The dynamics in the TARGET2 are here explained as being due to a fall in the level of confidence in the capacity of the Economic and Monetary Union to survive, rather than to disparities in the level of competitiveness among countries of the Eurozone. This crisis of confidence has to be considered as the consequence of the implicit refusal of the European institutions to create a mechanism working as lender of last resort for the euro area member States; indeed, only when the ECB took this responsibility by launching the Outright Monetary Transactions clear signs of improvement were observed in the sovereign debt crisis.

The Determinants of Long-Term Debt Issuance by European Banks: Evidence of Two Crises

This paper is one of the first to investigate the determinants of bond issuance by European banks. We use a unique database of around 50,000 bonds issued by 63 banks from 14 European countries, allowing us to differentiate between different types of long-term debt securities. By investigating at the individual bank level, we are able to test explicitly a broad set of hypotheses from both the corporate finance and banking literature on the drivers of bond issuance. We use both country and bank-specific financial characteristics as explanatory variables. With respect to the country determinants, our findings suggest that "market timing" (low interest rates) drove issuance before but not during the crisis, when access to funding became more important than its cost. Moreover, during the crisis years, country-risk characteristics became drivers of bond issuance, while for banks from the euro area periphery central bank liquidity substituted for unsecured long-term debt. We also show that heightened financial market tensions were detrimental to bond issuance, and more strongly so during crisis episodes. Our results yield strongly significant coefficients for the bank-specific variables, with signs as expected. We find evidence of "leverage targeting" by issuing long-term debt during the crisis years. The positive and significant coefficient for the capital ratio supports the "risk absorption" hypothesis, suggesting that larger capital buffers enhanced the risk-bearing capacity of banks and allowed them to issue more debt. Moreover, banks with deposit supply constraints and relatively large loan portfolios issued more bonds, both before and since the crisis years. We also find that higher rated banks were more likely to issue bonds, also during the crisis period. Stronger banks issued especially unsecured debt, while weaker banks resorted more to issuance of covered bonds. Overall, our results suggest that stronger banks - including those from peripheral countries - maintained better access to longer-term funding markets, even during crisis periods. Our results pass several robustness tests. We present an additional aggregated country analysis in a separate appendix.

Ekonomické a regulatorní podmínky řízení likvidity v bankovním sektoru České republiky v kontextu aplikace poměru likvidního krytí

The paper deals with an impact of new Basel III liquidity regulation on bank's liquidity and solvency conditions. It analyzes a change from qualitative to quantitative based regulation and compares bank's liquidity approaches within an application of LCR regulatory measures. Strict defi nition of LCR causes a change in bank's liquidity allocation and funding which is less effective, more costly and restrictive for providing credits comparing with pure economic determinants. Empirical part shows a simulation of an impact of aggregate liquidity shock and credit risk shock on annual rate of capital return consistent with bank's solvency. It proves huge liquidity buffer of the Czech banking sector due to systematic liquidity surplus, its rising capital endowment and high capital profi tability. VAR estimation shows that links among bank's liquidity characteristics, sources of liquidity shocks, market illiquidity and central bank's liquidity facilities withdrawal are quite weak with non-persistent features