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Conference Paper
Corporate growth and risk around the world
Journal Article
Commentary to: Central bank dollar swap lines and overseas dollar funding costs
Commentary to: Central bank dollar swap lines and overseas dollar funding costs, by Linda S. Goldberg, Craig Kennedy, and Jason Miu. ; Title of Special Issue: Federal Reserve Policy Responses to the Financial Crisis.
Conference Paper
What drives bank competition? Some international evidence
Using bank-level data, we apply the Panzar and Rosse (1987) methodology to estimate the extent to which changes in input prices are reflected in revenues earned by specific banks in 50 countries' banking systems. We then relate this competitiveness measure to indicators of countries' banking system structures and regulatory regimes. We find systems with greater foreign bank entry and fewer entry and activity restrictions to be more competitive. We find no evidence that our competitiveness measure negatively relates to banking system concentration.
Working Paper
Cryptocurrency Market Reactions to Regulatory News
Cryptocurrencies are often thought to operate out of the reach of national regulation, but in fact their valuations, transaction volumes and user bases react substantially to news about regulatory actions. The impact depends on the specific regulatory category to which the news relates: events related to general bans on cryptocurrencies or to their treatment under securities law have the greatest adverse effect, followed by news on combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism, and on restricting the interoperability of cryptocurrencies with regulated markets. News pointing to the ...
Working Paper
Searching for Yield Abroad : Risk-Taking Through Foreign Investment in U.S. Bonds
The risk-taking effects of low interest rates, now prevailing in many advanced countries, "search-for-yield," can be hard to analyze due to both a paucity of data and challenges in identification. Unique, security-level data on portfolio investment into the United States allow us to overcome both problems. Analyzing holdings of investors from 36 countries in close to 15,000 unique U.S. corporate bonds between 2003 and 2016, we show that declining home-country interest rates lead investors to shift their portfolios toward riskier U.S. corporate bonds, consistent with "search-for-yield". We ...
Working Paper
Home Country Interest Rates and International Investment in U.S. Bonds
We analyze how interest rates affect cross-border portfolio investments. Data on U.S. bond holdings by foreign investors from 31 countries for the period 2003 - 2016 and a large variety in movements in interest rates in these countries provide for a unique way to analyze shifts in investment behavior in response to interest rates. We find that low(er) interest rates, now prevailing in many advanced countries, lead to greater investment in general into the United States, with the effects generally driven by investment in (higher yielding) corporate bonds, rather than in Treasury bonds. In ...
Working Paper
Financial Stability Governance and Central Bank Communications
We investigate how central banks' governance frameworks influence their financial stability communication strategies and assess the effectiveness of these strategies in preventing a worsening of financial cycle conditions. We develop a simple conceptual framework of how central banks communicate about financial stability and how communication shapes the evolution of the financial cycle. We apply our framework using data on the governance characteristics of 24 central banks and the sentiment conveyed in their financial stability reports. We find robust evidence that communications by central ...
Working Paper
\"Low-For-Long\" Interest Rates and Banks' Interest Margins and Profitability : Cross-Country Evidence
Interest rates in many advanced economies have been low for almost a decade now and are often expected to remain so. This creates challenges for banks. Using a sample of 3,385 banks from 47 countries from 2005 to 2013, we find that a one percentage point interest rate drop implies an 8 basis points lower net interest margin, with this effect greater (20 basis points) at low rates. Low rates also adversely affect bank profitability, but with more variation. And for each additional year of "low for long", margins and profitability fall by another 9 and 6 basis points, respectively.
Discussion Paper
Low-for-Long Interest Rates and Net Interest Margins of Banks in Advanced Foreign Economies
This note explores the empirical evidence between changes in interest rates and NIMs for different interest rate environments to discover the potential adverse effects of a low interest rate on bank NIMs. Using cross-country evidence can be insightful to assess a situation that is not so common in any individual country. Overall, the new empirical analysis shows that low rates are contributing to weaker NIMs and identifies an adverse effect that is materially larger when interest rates are low. It suggests that these effects can be material for banks in some key advanced foreign economies ...