scholarly journals Why Did Public Banks Lend More During the Global Financial Crisis?

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (84) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Bosshardt ◽  
Eugenio Cerutti

During the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), state-owned or public banks lent relatively more than domestic private banks in many countries. However, data limitations have hindered a thorough assessment of what led public banks to better maintain lending during the GFC. Using a novel bank-level dataset covering 25 emerging market economies, we show that public banks lent relatively more during the GFC because they pursued an objective of helping to stabilize the economy, rather than because they had superior fundamentals or access to public or depositors’ funding. Nonetheless, their countercyclical behavior seems unique to the GFC rather than a regular characteristic of public banks before and after the GFC.

Author(s):  
Masazumi Hattori ◽  
Ilhyock Shim ◽  
Yoshihiko Sugihara

Using variance risk premiums (VRPs) nonparametrically calculated from equity markets in selected major developed economies and emerging market economies (EMEs) over 2007–15, this chapter documents the correlation of VRPs across markets, examining whether equity fund flows work as a path through which VRPs spill over globally. It finds that VRPs tend to spike up during market turmoil such as the peak of the global financial crisis and the European debt crisis; that all cross-equity market correlations of VRPs are positive, and that some economy pairs exhibit high levels of the correlation. In terms of volatility contagion, it finds that an increase in US VRPs significantly reduces equity fund flows to other developed economies, but not those to EMEs, following the global financial crisis. Two-stage least squares estimation results show that equity fund flows are a channel for spillover of US VRPs to VRPs in other developed economies.


2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 599-614 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominick Salvatore

This paper examines the reasons for the slow growth in the advanced countries since the recent global financial crisis, the slowdown in growth or recession in emerging market economies, the danger that the world may be drifting toward a new global financial crisis, and that it may face even secular stagnation. The paper concludes that growth is likely to remain slow for the rest of this decade in advanced countries and to continue to decline in emerging market economies. It also examines the danger that with interest rates at the zero-bound level in advanced nations, a new financial bubble may be in the making as investors, in search of returns, undertake excessively risky investments, and that this may lead to a new global financial crisis. It is not certain, however, that the world is facing secular stagnation and, if so, that a new massive fiscal stimulus (as advocated but some) would prevent it or correct it.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Eichacker

This paper asks why Landesbanks, public banks designed to provide credit to German firms in regions underserved by private banks, embraced risky asset and liability balances in the years before the Global Financial Crisis, and subsequently lost billions of dollars in write-downs after the US subprime mortgage bubble burst in 2007. It argues that the German government’s decisions to eliminate protections for Landesbanks increased competitive pressure for public banks, increased the propensity for those banks to adopt risky strategies in order to maximize profits. These actions by Landesbanks and large private banks exposed German households and firms to greater risk and financial vulnerability, and indirectly exposed European financial systems to subprime mortgage risk. It uses balance sheet analysis for different sectors of German finance to show that Landesbanks and Germany’s large private banks adopted higher risk asset and liabilities, engaged in more international activity, and shifted from lending to security acquisition while competing for profits, while Sparkassen, small public savings banks, did not adopt such risky strategies, and successfully shielded German households and small businesses from credit market spillovers following the Global Financial Crisis. The paper contributes nuance to debates about whether public banks are beneficial institutions to promote, and shows that Landesbanks’ failures stemmed from external pressures for them to increase their profits, which increased financial and economic instability in Germany and beyond.


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