Search Results
Working Paper
Credit Ratings, Private Information, and Bank Monitoring Ability
In this paper, we use credit rating data from two large Swedish banks to elicit evidence on banks' loan monitoring ability. For these banks, our tests reveal that banks' internal credit ratings indeed include valuable private information from monitoring, as theory suggests. Banks' private information increases with the size of loans.
Discussion Paper
Enhancing Monitoring of NBFI Exposure: The Case of Open-End Funds
Non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) have grown steadily over the last two decades, becoming important providers of financial intermediation services. As NBFIs naturally interact with banking institutions in many markets and provide a wide range of services, banks may develop significant direct exposures stemming from these counterparty relationships. However, banks may be also exposed to NBFIs indirectly, simply by virtue of commonality in asset holdings. This post and its companion piece focus on this indirect form of exposure and propose ways to identify and quantify such ...
Working Paper
Embedded Supervision: How to Build Regulation into Blockchain Finance
The spread of distributed ledger technology (DLT) in finance could help to improve the efficiency and quality of supervision. This paper makes the case for embedded supervision, i.e., a regulatory framework that provides for compliance in tokenized markets to be automatically monitored by reading the market?s ledger, thus reducing the need for firms to actively collect, verify and deliver data. After sketching out a design for such schemes, the paper explores the conditions under which distributed ledger data might be used to monitor compliance. To this end, a decentralized market is modelled ...
Speech
Testimony on Exploring Financial Risks on Banking Posed by Climate Change
Testimony before the New York State Senate Committees on Banks, Finance, and Environmental Conservation (delivered via videoconference).
Working Paper
Foreign Investment, Regulatory Arbitrage, and the Risk of U.S. Banking Organizations
This study investigates the implications of cross-country differences in banking regulation and supervision for the international subsidiary locations and risk of U.S. bank holding companies (BHCs). We find that U.S. BHCs are more likely to operate subsidiaries in countries with weaker regulation and supervision and that such location decisions are associated with elevated BHC risk and higher contribution to systemic risk. The quality of BHCs? internal controls and risk management play an important role in these location choices and risk outcomes. Overall, our study suggests that U.S. banking ...
Discussion Paper
How Does Supervision Affect Bank Performance during Downturns?
Supervision and regulation are critical tools for the promotion of stability and soundness in the financial sector. In a prior post, we discussed findings from our recent research paper which examines the impact of supervision on bank performance (see earlier post How Does Supervision Affect Banks?). As described in that post, we exploit new supervisory data and develop a novel strategy to estimate the impact of supervision on bank risk taking, earnings, and growth. We find that bank holding companies (BHCs or “banks”) that receive more supervisory attention have less risky loan ...
Discussion Paper
Just Released: What Do Banking Supervisors Do?
In most developed economies, banking is among the most regulated and supervised sectors. While 'regulation' and 'supervision' are often used interchangeably, these two activities are distinct. Banking supervision is a complement to regulation, but its scope is much broader than simply ensuring that an institution is in compliance with regulation. Despite the importance of supervision, information about it is often limited, both because of the heavy reliance upon banks' confidential information and because many supervisory activities and actions are themselves confidential. In a recently ...
Digital Banking: A Look at the Playing Field
Fintech developments have turbocharged banking services competition, leading to more offerings or specialization.
Report
Bank Supervision
We provide a critical review of the empirical and theoretical literature on bank supervision. The 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 both 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 there is less consensus on whether the risk-reducing impact of ...