On the money creation approach to banking

We study today’s two-tier money creation and destruction system: Commercial banks create bank deposits (privately created money) through loans to firms or asset purchases from the private sector. Bank deposits are destroyed when households buy bank equity or when firms repay loans. Central banks create electronic central bank money (publicly created money or reserves) through loans to commercial banks. In a simple general equilibrium setting, we show that symmetric equilibria yield the first-best level of money creation and lending when prices are flexible, regardless of monetary policy and capital regulation. When prices are rigid, we identify the circumstances in which money creation is excessive or breaks down and the ones in which an adequate combination of monetary policy and capital regulation can restore efficiency. Finally, we provide a series of extensions and generalizations of the results.

Bank of Japan Equity Purchases: The (Non-)Effects of Extreme Quantitative Easing*

From January 2011 through March 2018, the Bank of Japan purchased equity index exchange-traded funds (ETFs) worth about 3.5% of GDP. Identification of the effect of central bank ETF purchases on stock valuations and corporate responses is via differently-weighted and changing stock indices. BOJ purchases lift valuations, increase share issuances, and increase total assets. On average, the latter increase is due to cash and short-term securities rather than capital investment. However, firms with worse corporate governance do increase capital investment. These findings suggest central bank equity purchases are a problematic tool for stimulating economic growth through high broad-based private-sector corporate investment.

Banking Crises Without Panics*

We examine historical banking crises through the lens of bank equity declines, which cover a broad sample of episodes of banking distress with and without banking panics. To do this, we construct a new data set on bank equity returns and narrative information on banking panics for 46 countries over the period of 1870 to 2016. We find that even in the absence of panics, large bank equity declines are associated with substantial credit contractions and output gaps. Although panics are an important amplification mechanism, our results indicate that panics are not necessary for banking crises to have severe economic consequences. Furthermore, panics tend to be preceded by large bank equity declines, suggesting that panics are the result, rather than the cause, of earlier bank losses. We use bank equity returns to uncover a number of forgotten historical banking crises and create a banking crisis chronology that distinguishes between bank equity losses and panics.

Banking Regulation: A Systemic View on Capital Adequacy, Financial Systems and the Regulatory Process

In a comment for the Finance Committee of the Deutscher Bundestag on the finalization of Basel III, I scrutinize the debate on the costs of bank equity, look at the incentive effects and potential distortions provoked by the actual regulatory regimes, and finally describe banks’ regulation as a hysteretic process that creates detrimental phases of under- und overregulation. With regard to the first topic, I find strong arguments in the theory of financial intermediation that, in contradiction to the reasoning in the influential paper of Admati et al. (2010), bank equity is indeed costly and excessive capital requirements would hamper the efficiency of the banking system. Furthermore, I identify several incentive effects of today’s regulatory setting that lead to a more homogenous banking system with larger banks. This development could have negative effect on efficiency, in particular with regard to special needs of the German economy. And although the indivi­dual banks might be safer under the new regime, the evolving structure will probably contain a higher systemic risk.