Macroprudential Risk Research Articles

Climate Stress Testing

We explore the design of climate stress tests to assess and manage macroprudential risks from climate change in the financial sector. We review the climate stress scenarios currently employed by regulators, highlighting the need to ( a) consider many transition risks as dynamic policy choices, ( b) better understand and incorporate feedback loops between climate change and the economy, and ( c) further explore compound risk scenarios in which climate risks co-occur with other risks. We discuss how the process of mapping climate stress scenarios into financial firm outcomes can incorporate existing evidence on the effects of various climate-related risks on credit and market outcomes. We argue that more research is required to ( a) identify channels through which plausible scenarios can lead to meaningful short-run impact on credit risks given typical bank loan maturities, ( b) incorporate bank-lending responses to climate risks, ( c) assess the adequacy of climate risk pricing in financial markets, and ( d) better understand how market participants form climate risk expectations and how that affects financial stability. Finally, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using market-based climate stress tests that can be conducted with publicly available data to complement existing stress-testing frameworks.

The accountability of the ECB as a macroprudential supervisor

As an institution competent both for central banking and banking supervision, the ECB is ideally equipped to monitor macroprudential risks. However, despite an overhaul of the European framework following the Great Financial Crisis, the ECB has remained assigned to a secondary or subsidiary role, largely dependent on the actions or lack thereof from the national competent authorities. After having presented the various tools at the ECB’s disposal to deal with macroprudential risks, this article critically assesses how and to what extent the Frankfurt-based institution should be held accountable in that field.

Coordination and non-coordination risks of monetary and macroprudential authorities: A robust welfare analysis

This study compares a central bank’s leaning against the wind approach with a mix of monetary and macroprudential policies under parameter uncertainty in an estimated DSGE model with two financial frictions. We show that uncertainty of the economic environment is an essential constituent in properly designing macroprudential policy. Although coordination between monetary and macroprudential policies minimizes the policymakers’ Bayesian risk, coordination and non-coordination risks threaten the goals of both authorities. The former describes the situation where the authorities partly resign from implementing the monetary policy objectives to stabilize macroprudential risk. The latter is when conducting a non-coordinated macroprudential policy induces higher total Bayesian risk than when only the central bank minimizes the expected total welfare loss. The robust Bayesian macroeconomic rules show that when financial shocks shrink the banks’ or entrepreneurial net worth, a contractionary macroprudential policy should be combined with an expansionary monetary policy. However, if capital adequacy ratio or risk shocks strike the economy, such a conflict in macroeconomics policy instruments disappears, thus synchronizing both policies.

Estimation of Bank Profitability Using Vector Error Correction Model and Support Vector Regression

The research problem defined in this article is the identification and the metrification of the macro-economic drivers of bank profitability of the Bulgarian banks. The aim is to establish the relationship between the macroeconomic factors and the indicators measuring bank profitability using an iterative testing methodology of the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) and the Support Vector Regression (SVR). The relationships between key indicators of bank profitability - ROE and ROA, are analytically modeled as factor-dependent on nine key macroeconomic indicators. The sample size includes quarterly and monthly data for the recovery period of the banking system after its restructuring in 2014. The empirical results of the VECM form two similar models, which are distinguished based on dependent variable ROA and dependent variable ROE. They show the significance of the established results at high degrees of determination and minimal degrees of standard errors of the cointegration vectors. The analysis of bank profitability has been refined using the SVR methodology, but the optimization of the hyperparameters does not confirm high significance. It is concluded that with increasing regulatory requirements for the formation of buffers against macroprudential risks, banks report a relatively neutral dependence in ROA and ROE on the impact of macroeconomic factors, which is logically offset by effective management decisions and innovations in interbank competition.

Global Systemic Financial Risk Spillovers and Their External Shocks

The shock of the global financial crisis sparked widespread concern across the world about systemic financial risk and led to the reexamination of regulatory mechanisms. The traditional principle of “too big to fail” underwent a transformation into the new idea of “too interconnected to fail.” We used Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) technology and network topology analysis to examine the dynamic evolution of global systemic financial risk and the risk trends in global financial markets from the perspective of network connectivity. Our findings show that financial markets in the Chinese Mainland are net receivers of risk spillovers and that systemic financial risk has a clear cross-market contagion effect due to a global volatility spillover scale of 64 percent. To maintain the stability and security of China’s financial markets, consideration should be given to the regulatory precept of “too interconnected to fail” in establishing macro-prudential risk prevention mechanisms.

Networks and systemic risk in the financial system

AbstractThe complex web of exposures and interlinkages across the financial system highlights the relevance of network analysis in understanding systemic risk and guiding the design of financial regulation. This paper discusses how network models—and those based on epidemiological approaches in particular—offer a compelling description of the structure of real-world financial systems and shed light on different contagion mechanisms seen during the global financial crisis. We also review how these insights may inform macroprudential risk assessment and policy in the areas of stress-testing the financial system and the regulation of systemically important institutions. The role of non-bank financial intermediation and social networks in shaping financial system risk is also briefly considered.

The Illusion of Inflation Targeting: Have Central Banks Figured Out What They Are Actually Doing Since the Global Financial Crisis? An Alternative to the Mainstream Perspective

Current discussions over the behavior of central banks show that more and more political leaders are demanding that the monetary authorities abandon a single-goal mandate of solely combating inflation. Many are considering a multi-goal commitment that would include not only concern with inflation, as had been the case before the global financial crisis. Central banks should also give due consideration to the problem of unemployment, income distribution and macro-prudential risks in their interest-rate setting. By looking at the experience of fourteen inflation-targeting countries since the global financial crisis, empirical evidence suggests that central banks have shifted significantly their behavior and have shown a high degree of pragmatism in dealing with the aftermath of the financial crisis, by loosening their focus on inflation. Using an alternative post-Keynesian analytical framework, the article then proceeds with an analysis of how central banks can effectively achieve a multi-goal commitment that would include full employment and a more equitable distribution of income in their pursuit of monetary policy.

Portfolio Cleaning of Problem Project Loans in Hungary – Experiences Related to the Systemic Risk Buffer, as a Targeted Macroprudential Instrument

After the crisis, more than 50 per cent of project exposures related to real estate financing became problem exposures at the largest Hungarian banking groups. With a view to managing macroprudential risks, the Magyar Nemzeti Bank introduced a systemic risk buffer, the rate of which has been calibrated in proportion to the individual contribution to systemic risk. In this paper, based on the data available in the project exposure database at contractual granularity, we analyse certain characteristics of these transactions in the third quarter of 2015, immediately prior the announcement of the capital buffer requirement, as well as the adjustment by the institutions until the end of the first quarter of 2017, i.e. the start date of the mandatory recognition of the capital buffer. We found that banks typically cleaned the larger problem exposures, and there is no indication that institutions gave preference in the cleaning process to problem exposures that defaulted more recently. In fact, when examining the institutions preliminarily affected by the announcement about the intended capital buffer quite the opposite was seen. The analysis also revealed that cleaning was stronger at those institutions which, based on the 2015 Q3 data, would have been preliminarily affected by the systemic risk buffer.

Interest Rate Risk of Life Insurers: Evidence from Accounting Data

Life insurers are exposed to interest rate risk, and their liability side is typically more sensitive to interest rate changes than their asset side. This paper develops an accounting-based measure of interest rate sensitivity. My approach uses the coexistence of historical cost and market value accounting, which permits the observation of valuations for different discount rates. Using microdata, I show that German life insurers have a significant exposure to interest rate risk. However, there is a wide dispersion across the sector. I find that insurers' size, growth and solvency are negatively correlated with interest rate risk. The heterogeneity suggests that insurers would behave differently during times of stress, which has important implications for understanding the macroprudential risks to which the sector is exposed.

Macroprudential Risk Management Problems in Brexit

Brexit is not only a historical chapter of the British — EU relationship, but it also carries immense challenges for fi nancial market stability in the short and medium run for the 28 member states of the European Union. The scale of these challenges depends heavily on the outcome of EU-UK negotiations. The European Systemic Risk Board plays a critical role in macroprudential supervision, a crucial policy challenge for the EU. However, there are doubts as to whether it will fulfill its mandate. The EU27 faces major problems in terms of prudential supervision after Brexit since a very large part of their wholesale banking markets are in the UK and thus will not be regulated by the EU after 29 March 2019. Indications point to a considerable risk of a new transatlantic banking crisis in the future.

Interest Rate Risk of Life Insurers: Evidence from Accounting Data

Life insurers are exposed to interest rate risk, and their liability side is typically more sensitive to interest rate changes than their asset side. This paper develops an accounting-based measure of interest rate sensitivity. My approach uses the coexistence of historical cost and market value accounting, which permits the observation of valuations for different discount rates. Using microdata, I show that German life insurers have a significant exposure to interest rate risk. However, there is a wide dispersion across the sector. I find that insurers' size, growth and solvency are negatively correlated with interest rate risk. The heterogeneity suggests that insurers would behave differently during times of stress, which has important implications for understanding the macroprudential risks to which the sector is exposed.

Empirically Evaluating Systemic Risks in CCPs: The Case of Two CDS CCPs

Using a unique data set of weekly CDS positions of major CDS clearing dealers, we empirically evaluate the systemic stability of two CCPs that clear CDS contracts. Our methodology considers both micro- and macroprudential risks to the central clearing system. We show that individual clearing members may pose considerable risk to a CCP as losses of individual dealers in a stress scenario may be large. We show that the combined stress losses of a clearing member across multiple CCPs may be substantially larger than its losses to a single CCP due to a high and positive correlation in the economic exposures of the clearing member across CCPs. Last, we show that there is a potential for several clearing members to experience large losses simultaneously to a given CCP highlighting crowded trades concerns. The methodology explored in this paper documents the feasibility of performing integrated and coordinated stress testing of CCPs on an ongoing basis. These results suggest that the accumulation of systemic risk in the central clearing system may be non-trivial and that the proposed stress tests may be a useful tool for measuring and managing such risk.

An Integrated Macroprudential Stress Test of Bank Liquidity and Solvency

We develop a macroprudential stress test to assess the resilience of banking systems. The proposed approach integrates liquidity risk and solvency risk and provides a convenient method to estimate the change in both of them based on the evolution of financial distress within the banking system. We estimate this evolution of financial distress using a new measure of systemic distress that incorporates microprudential as well as macroprudential risks in the banking system network. The proposed stress test provides output metrics that capture idiosyncratic as well as systemic economic risks at the level of an individual bank and the banking system as a whole. The empirical application of the stress test framework to the U.S. banking system shows how it can be effectively used to identify the systemic vulnerability of individual banks and the resilience of the system as a whole to economic risks. It also shows how the proposed approach can be effective for monitoring and assessing systemic interdependencies among banks.

Taming the Basel Leverage Cycle

Effective risk control must make a tradeoff between the microprudential risk of exogenous shocks to individual institutions and the macroprudential risks caused by their systemic interactions. We investigate a simple dynamical model for understanding this tradeoff, consisting of a bank with a leverage target and an unleveraged fundamental investor subject to exogenous noise with clustered volatility. The parameter space has three regions: (i) a stable region, where the system always reaches a fixed point equilibrium; (ii) a locally unstable region, characterized by cycles and chaotic behavior; and (iii) a globally unstable region. A crude calibration of parameters to data puts the model in region (ii). In this region there is a slowly building price bubble, resembling a Great Moderation, followed by a crash, with a period of approximately 10-15 years, which we dub the leverage cycle. We propose a criterion for rating macroprudential policies based on their ability to minimize risk for a given average leverage. We construct a one parameter family of leverage policies that allows us to vary from the procyclical policies of Basel II or III, in which leverage decreases when volatility increases, to countercyclical policies in which leverage increases when volatility increases. We find the best policy depends critically on three parameters: The average leverage used by the bank; the relative size of the bank and the fundamentalist, and the amplitude of the exogenous noise. Basel II is optimal when the exogenous noise is high, the bank is small and leverage is low; in the opposite limit where the bank is large or leverage is high the optimal policy is closer to constant leverage. We also find that systemic risk can be dramatically decreased by lowering the leverage target adjustment speed of the banks.

Measuring Macroprudential Risk Through Financial Fragility: A Minskyan Approach

This paper presents a method to capture the growth of financial fragility within a country and across countries. This is done by focusing on housing finance in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. Following the theoretical framework developed by Hyman P. Minsky, the paper focuses on the risk of amplification of shock via a debt deflation instead of the risk of a shock per se. Thus, instead of focusing on credit risk, for example, financial fragility is defined in relation to the means used to service debts, given credit risk and all other sources of shocks. The greater the expected reliance on capital gains and debt refinancing to meet debt commitments, the greater the financial fragility, and so the higher the risk of debt deflation induced by a shock if no government intervention occurs. In the context of housing finance, this implies that the growth of subprime lending was not by itself a source of financial fragility; instead, it was the change in the underwriting methods in all sectors of the mortgage markets that created a financial situation favorable to the emergence of a debt deflation. Stated alternatively, when nonprime and prime mortgage lending moved to asset-based lending instead of income-based lending, the financial fragility of the economy grew rapidly.

Institutional Design and the New Systemic Risk in Banking Crises

We argue that the concept of “systemic risk,” which traditionally focused on the relative stability of financial institutions and the consequences of their failure, has evolved to include macroprudential risk and the possibility that an entire economy will be affected by a triggering event or exogenous shock. As a result of this evolution, regulators have an important role to play in monitoring and managing systemic risk. We explore key policy instruments and the complement of domestic and international institutions that most effectively enable financial market regulators to discharge their role in monitoring and managing this new conception of systemic risk, which we refer to as the “new systemic risk” (NSR). We argue for more integration and co-ordination among institutions charged with systemic risk oversight and regulation, both domestically and internationally, recognizing that the existing set of institutions developed at a time when a more restricted conception of systemic risk prevailed. Specifically, we favour an approach to regulation under which financial markets are regulated according to certain regulatory objectives that are specified in the applicable legislation. Indeed, this approach identifies three basic regulatory objectives that the regulatory architecture must address: macro-economic stability typically associated with central banks in terms of implementing monetary policy and acting as lender of last resort in maintaining liquidity in the financial system; micro-prudential regulation which focuses on the financial stability of individual financial institutions; and conduct of business regulation designed to protect consumers of financial services and investors in financial institutions. We argue that this model benefits from coordination and cost advantages, while differentiating among objectives that are widely seen to require distinct regulatory strategies.

Systemic risk in an interconnected banking system with endogenous asset markets

We analyze the emergence of systemic risk in a network model of interconnected bank balance sheets. The model incorporates multiple sources of systemic risk, including size of financial institutions, direct exposure from interbank lendings, and asset fire sales. We suggest a new macroprudential risk management approach building on a system wide value at risk (SVaR). Under the SVaR metric, the contribution of individual banks to systemic risk is well defined and can be approximated by a Shapley value-type measure. We show that, in a SVaR regime, a fair systemic risk charge which is proportional to a bank's individual contribution to systemic risk diverges from the optimal macroprudential capitalization of the banks from a planner's perspective. The results have implications for the design of macroprudential capital surcharges.

Systemic Risk in an Interconnected Banking System with Endogenous Asset Markets

We analyze the emergence of systemic risk in a network model of interconnected bank balance sheets. The model incorporates multiple sources of systemic risk, including size of financial institutions, direct exposure from interbank lendings, and asset fire sales. We suggest a new macroprudential risk management approach building on a system wide value at risk (SVaR). Under the SVaR metric, the contribution of individual banks to systemic risk is well defined and can be approximated by a Shapley value-type measure. We show that, in a SVaR regime, a fair systemic risk charge which is proportional to a bank's individual contribution to systemic risk diverges from the optimal macroprudential capitalization of the banks from a planner's perspective. The results have implications for the design of macroprudential capital surcharges.

Quantifying the Effects of New Derivative Introduction on Exchange Volatility, Efficiency and Liquidity

Quantifying the Effects of New Derivative Introduction on Exchange Volatility, Efficiency and Liquidity

Measuring Macroprudential Risk: Financial Fragility Indexes

With the Great Recession and the regulatory reform that followed, the search for reliable means to capture systemic risk and to detect macrofinancial problems has become a central concern. In the United States, this concern has been institutionalized through the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which has been put in charge of detecting threats to the financial stability of the nation. Based on Hyman Minsky’s financial instability hypothesis, the paper develops macroeconomic indexes for three major economic sectors. The index provides a means to detect the speed with which financial fragility accrues, and its duration; and serves as a complement to the microprudential policies of regulators and supervisors. The paper notably shows, notably, that periods of economic stability during which default rates are low, profitability is high, and net worth is accumulating are fertile grounds for the growth of financial fragility.