Reduce Credit Supply Research Articles

Caution: Do Not Cross! Distance to Regulatory Capital Buffers and Corporate Lending in a Downturn

AbstractWhile banks are expected to draw down regulatory capital buffers in case of need during a crisis, we find that banks kept at a safe distance from regulatory buffers during the pandemic by procyclically reducing corporate lending. By exploiting granular credit register data, we show that banks with little capital headroom above their buffers reduced credit supply and that this behavior was amplified for banks that entered the crisis with larger undrawn credit lines. Affected firms were unable to fully rebalance their borrowing needs with other banks, although public guarantees mitigated banks' procyclical behavior and its real effect at the firm level. These findings raise concerns that the capital buffers introduced by Basel III may not be as countercyclical as intended.

Is competition good or bad for the price, quantity, and quality of bank lending?

This paper extends the existing literature by examining an important channel through which bank competition could drive the real economy by comprehensively influencing bank lending in three components-price, volume, and quality. For the measurement of bank competition, we build a series of different structural (concentration indicators) and non-structural (Lerner, Boone, and Panzar-Rose H-statistic indexes) measures, given that the reliance on solely one individual measure could lead to a misleading conclusion. Through a sample of commercial banks during 2007-2021 in a single Vietnamese banking market, we find a decline in bank loan growth and a rise in credit risk under the pressure of high competition. With respect to the association between bank competition and the price of credit, our empirical evidence is mixed based on different measures to analyze the banking market structure. Our findings support the view that greater competition results in a less proliferated banking sector with riskier assets. We also confirm that these findings are robust to additional tests, including employing alternative measures of bank lending dimensions and market structure, removing the periods of the financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, and changing the empirical estimation technique. In addition, our deeper analysis reveals that the adverse impact of bank competition on lending, shown by reduced credit supply and increased credit risk, is less pronounced for banks with a higher degree of income diversification. This result suggests that bank diversification may protect the quantity and quality of bank lending from the detrimental competition effect.

Monetary policy spillover to small open economies: Is the transmission different under low interest rates?

We explore the impact of low and negative monetary policy rates in core world economies on bank lending in four small open economies – Canada, Chile, the Czech Republic and Norway – using confidential bank-level data. We show that the impact on lending in these small open economies depends on the interest rate level in the core. During normal times, monetary policy cuts in the core can reduce credit supply in small open economies. In contrast, when interest rates in the core are low, further expansionary monetary policy increases lending in small open economies, consistent with an international bank lending channel. These results have important policy implications, suggesting that central banks in small open economies should watch for the impact of potential regime switches in core economies’ monetary policy when rates shift to and from the very low end of the distribution.

Bank Supervision

We provide a critical review of the empirical and theoretical literature on bank supervision. This review focuses on microprudential supervision: the supervision of individual banking institutions aimed at assessing the financial and operational health of those firms. Theory suggests that supervision is required not only to ensure compliance with regulation but also to allow for the use of soft information in mitigating externalities of bank failure. Empirically, more intensive supervision results in reduced risk-taking, but less consensus has been found on whether the risk-reducing impact of supervision comes at the cost of reduced credit supply. Theoretical costs and benefits of supervisory disclosure have been outlined, and this disclosure is informative to investors; however, it is difficult to identify the impact of disclosure distinct from supervisory and regulatory changes.

Regulatory Interventions in Consumer Financial Markets: The Case of Credit Cards

Abstract We build a framework to understand the effects of regulatory interventions in credit markets, such as caps on interest rates. We focus on the credit card market, in which we observe US consumers borrowing at high and very dispersed interest rates despite receiving many credit card offers. Our framework includes two main features to account for these patterns: the endogenous effort of examining offers and product differentiation. Our calibration suggests that most borrowers examine few of the offers they receive, and thereby forego cards with low interest rates and high non-price benefits. The calibrated model implies that interest-rate caps reduce credit supply and significantly curb lenders’ market power, thereby increasing consumer surplus. Moderate caps may yield larger gains in consumer surplus than tighter ones.

The Costs and Benefits of Liquidity Regulations: Lessons from an Idle Monetary Policy Tool

Abstract We investigate how liquidity regulations affect banks by examining a dormant monetary policy tool that functions as a liquidity regulation. For causal inference, we use a regression kink design that relies on the variation in a marginal high-quality liquid asset requirement around an exogenous threshold. We show that mandated increases in liquidity cause banks to reduce credit supply. Liquidity requirements also depress banks’ profitability, though some of the regulatory costs are passed on to liability holders. We document a prudential benefit of liquidity requirements by showing that banks subject to a higher requirement just before the financial crisis had lower odds of failure.

Bank Intermediation in times of digitalized corporate customers and competitors? — Relationship Lending as safe haven

Within a two-dimensional framework, this article provides an literature-based discussion of how banks' corporate lending business is affected by digitization. On the one hand, technological advances induced by digitization are changing internal processes and business models among the banks' corporate customers. This creates a change in customer requirements and demand for financing of digitization projects. On the other hand, alternative providers of corporate loans are emerging in the form of online marketplace lenders. We first note that there is a funding gap for digitization projects that could hamper progress in technological development. Investments in digital technologies differ from “traditional” investments in their lack of tangible assets and a high degree of uncertainty about the project outcome which could be the main drivers of this funding gap. As digital marketplace lenders experience high growth rates especially in past periods of reduced credit supply by banks, we argue that marketplace lenders could fill this gap. Under this assumption, we discuss whether, marketplace lenders can fulfil essential intermediation functions and conclude that traditional competitive advantages of banks over marketplace lenders are diminishing. We therefore extend our discussion and examine the extent to which the concept of relationship lending provides banks with competitive advantages over marketplace lending. We conclude banks need to focus on the personal approach. Of particular importance is the expertise of the loan officer in evaluating innovation projects, whereas interpersonal trust, customer orientation and service quality form the basis for the continuity of customer loyalty in competition with fintech lenders.

Financial Regulation and Bank Supervision during a Pandemic

Pandemics lead to a sudden decline in the level of economic activities. Lending institutions reduce credit supply to businesses due to fears of rising bad debts during a pandemic. This paper highlights some approach to financial regulation and bank supervision during a pandemic such as the SARS and COVID-19 pandemic. I show that financial regulation during a pandemic can be enhanced by diversifying the financial system, maintaining adequate liquidity in the financial system, stimulating financial institutions to provide more credit, delaying the recognition of significant increase in credit risk, lowering the reference interest rate to encourage more lending, and providing stimulus packages to affected financial institutions in the economy. I also suggest measures to improve bank supervision during a pandemic which include adopting a flexible supervisory framework, modifying bank supervisory examinations, using ad-hoc stress tests, releasing the countercyclical capital buffer to banks, and increase the use of regulatory forbearance. The implication of these approaches to coping with a pandemic is that these measures can help to ensure the survival of small and large businesses and financial institutions who rely on credit from financial institutions. It can also help to preserve jobs and help to reduce the long term damage to the economy caused by the pandemic.

On the distributional effects of bank bailouts

This paper studies distributional consequences of equity injections that are funded with financial-sector levies. In the model economy, financial intermediation supports both productive investment and individual consumption smoothing, subject to an equity requirement. When intermediary equity is low, then an equity injection involves a trade-off between increasing credit supply immediately and distortive levies that reduce credit supply in the future. I find that equity injections redistribute from poor to wealthy households, even though average welfare increases. While wealthy savers benefit greatly from an increased return on savings, poor households suffer from lower future wages.

Sustainable profitability in volatile cyclical markets

Market conditions are prone to change rapidly, limiting the ability of lenders to mitigate losses. Furthermore, lenders’ behaviour can often contribute to market volatility as lending initially drives up market leverage, and this is followed by greatly reduced credit supply following a market correction as capital constraints and heightened risk sensitivities constrict banks’ willingness to lend. This paper analyses how banks can successfully ensure it is being rewarded for the risk presented by a cyclical and volatile market. It also discusses how a bank can avoid presenting its shareholders with loss of their capital without missing profitable lending opportunities? In short, how should a bank seek commercial sustainability in volatile cyclical markets?

The Impact of Alternative Forms of Bank Consolidation on Credit Supply and Financial Stability

Between 2009 and 2011, the Spanish banking system underwent a restructuring process based on consolidation of savings banks. The program’s design allows us to study how alternative forms of consolidation affect credit supply and financial stability. Compared to bank business groups, we find that bank mergers’ market power produces a contraction in credit supply, higher interest rates, but also a reduction in non-performing loans. We then estimate a structural model of credit demand and supply. We show that short-run welfare gains from improved financial stability outweigh losses from reduced credit supply, while small long-run cost efficiencies generate large welfare increases.

GSIB Status and Corporate Lending: An International Analysis

After the global financial crisis, the Financial Stability Board (FSB) began designating some financial institutions as “Global Systemically Important Banks (GSIBs)”. Because GSIB status implies additional regulatory scrutiny and higher capital requirements we examine the impact of a bank’s GSIB designation on its lending behavior and implications for the real economy. We find the announcement of a bank’s GSIB status to reduce credit supply in the syndicated loan market and the lending cut to primarily affect risky corporate borrowers. These borrowers subsequently experience lower asset-, investment- and sales growth, compared to similar firms borrowing from non-GSIB banks, suggesting that they are unable to substitute to other external finance providers.

Uncertainty, Credit and Investment: Evidence from Firm-Bank Matched Data

This paper studies how high uncertainty affects corporate bank loans, addressing the important identification issue. In times of high uncertainty, firms reduce their credit demand due to delayed investments or a deterioration in their credit worthiness, while at the same time banks are more exposed to negative shocks to their balance sheet and thereby reduce credit supply. To isolate the uncertainty effect from the credit supply effect, we employ matched bank-firm loan data covering all loans extended by all financial intermediaries to the universe of listed firms in Korea, a bank-centered economy. Our empirical results reveal that a failure to control for credit supply leads to overestimation of the negative effect of uncertainty on bank loans. In addition, we find that the negative effect is stronger for relatively larger firms or financially unconstrained firms with low leverage or financial slack, once credit supply is controlled for. We confirm the same results in the analysis of firm investment, suggesting that high uncertainty may transmit to investment and bank loans mainly through the real options effects.

Bank capital in the short and in the long run

How far should capital requirements be raised to ensure a resilient banking system without imposing undue costs on the real economy? Capital requirement increases make banks safer and are beneficial in the long run but entail transition costs because they reduce credit supply and aggregate demand on impact. In the baseline scenario of a quantitative macro-banking model, 25% of the long-run welfare gains are lost due to transitional costs. The strength of monetary policy accommodation and bank riskiness are key determinants of the trade-off between the short-run costs and long-run benefits from capital requirement changes.

Regulatory Interventions in Consumer Financial Markets: The Case of Credit Cards

We build a framework to understand the effects of regulatory interventions in credit markets, such as caps on interest rates and higher compliance costs for lenders. We focus on the credit card market, in which we observe U.S. consumers borrowing at high and very dispersed interest rates, despite receiving many credit card offers. Our framework includes two main features that account for these patterns: endogenous effort of examining offers and product differentiation. Our calibration suggests that most borrowers examine few of the offers that they receive, thereby foregoing cards with low interest rates and high non-price benefits. The calibrated model implies that interest rate caps reduce credit supply modestly and curb lenders' market power significantly, leading to large gains in consumer surplus, whereas higher compliance costs unambiguously decrease consumer surplus.

The costs and benefits of liquidity regulations: Lessons from an idle monetary policy tool

We investigate how liquidity regulations affect banks by examining a dormant monetary policy tool that functions as a liquidity regulation. Our identification strategy uses a regression kink design that relies on the variation in a marginal high-quality liquid asset (HQLA) requirement around an exogenous threshold. We show that mandated increases in HQLA cause banks to reduce credit supply. Liquidity requirements also depress banks' profitability, though some of the regulatory costs are passed on to liability holders. We document a prudential benefit of liquidity requirements by showing that banks subject to a higher requirement before the financial crisis had lower odds of failure.

The Costs and Benefits of Liquidity Regulations: Lessons from An Idle Monetary Policy Tool

Abstract We investigate how liquidity regulations affect banks by examining a dormant monetary policy tool that functions as a liquidity regulation. For causal inference, we use a regression kink design that relies on the variation in a marginal high-quality liquid asset requirement around an exogenous threshold. We show that mandated increases in liquidity cause banks to reduce credit supply. Liquidity requirements also depress banks’ profitability, though some of the regulatory costs are passed on to liability holders. We document a prudential benefit of liquidity requirements by showing that banks subject to a higher requirement just before the financial crisis had lower odds of failure.

Lending implications of U.S. bank stress tests: Costs or benefits?

Abstract The U.S. bank stress tests aim to improve financial system stability. However, they may also affect bank credit supply. We formulate and test opposing hypotheses about these effects. Our findings are consistent with the Risk Management Hypothesis, under which stress-tested banks reduce credit supply−particularly to relatively risky borrowers−to decrease their credit risk. The findings do not support the Moral Hazard Hypothesis, in which these banks expand credit supply−particularly to relatively risky borrowers that pay high spreads−increasing their risk. Results are generally stronger for safer banks, banks that passed the stress tests, and the earlier stress tests.

Firms’ financial and real responses to credit supply shocks: Evidence from firm-bank relationships in Germany

We investigate the importance of firm-bank relationships for the international transmission of bank distress to the real economy. Using a large panel of matched financial statements of firms of all sizes and their relationship banks in Germany, we find that banks with losses from proprietary trading activities during the 2007/8 financial crisis decreased their lending, and that their firm customers responded by reducing real investment and employment. We document how different types of firms partially offset reduced credit supply by resorting to alternative financing sources.

Stress Tests and Small Business Lending

Post-crisis stress tests have altered banks’ credit supply to small business. Banks affected by stress tests reduce credit supply and raise interest rates on small business loans. Banks price the implied increase in capital requirements from stress tests where they have local knowledge, and exit markets where they do not, as quantities fall most in markets where stress-tested banks do not own branches near borrowers, and prices rise mainly where they do. These reductions in supply are concentrated among risky borrowers. Stress tests do not, however, reduce aggregate credit. Small banks increase their share in geographies formerly reliant on stress-tested lenders.