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International audience; In this paper, we examine the costs and benefits of diversification and expansion into non-traditional activities on the bank level. Using detailed information on the US banking sector over the period 2002–2012, we investigate whether or not banks’ involvement in various business lines has been associated with higher risks and returns. Using cross-sectional analysis, we find evidence that banks’ expansion into non-traditional activities has lacked revenue and diversification benefits: The overall risks of non-traditional banks have been higher, while returns were not. A higher degree of diversification across traditional and certain non-traditional activities, on the contrary, has been associated with higher returns and risk-reduction benefits. The results thus indicate that diversification prior to the financial crisis proved effective in the crisis environment, whereas too high involvement in non-traditional businesses did not. These results hold for small and large banks, banks of different tax status and various profitability and risk measures.

This article aims to describe the sociological studies of credit developed in France over the past dozen years. These studies propose a specific method and approach to address credit, primarily understanding it as a result of social interactions embedded in organizational and legal structures, with consequences on inequalities, social stratification, and individuals’ life experiences. The article is divided into four parts: after an introduction presenting what can be called the French school of the sociology of credit, we present the ‘different voice’ of the French school of the sociology of credit, which analyses the credit market according to a relational approach. The third section examines the construction of social domination at the moment of credit assessment. We then focus on the demand side: borrowers are not atomized individuals but part of households and other local communities. Finally, the conclusion discusses how this French approach to credit may be useful outside of France.

This paper analyzes a two-country model of currency, banks and endogenous default to study whether impediments to credit market integration across jurisdictions impact the desirability of a currency union. We show that when those impediments induce a higher cost for banks to manage cross-border credit compared to domestic credit, welfare may not be maximal under a regime of currency union. But a banking union that would suppress hurdles to banking integration restores the optimality of that currency arrangement. The empirical and policy implications in terms of banking union are discussed.; Cet article propose un modèle avec monnaie externe, banques et défaut endogène sur les emprunts afin d'analyser l'impact du degré d'imperfection dumarché du crédit sur la désirabilité -pour les populations- des unions monétaires.Nous montrons que lorsque ces imperfections entraînent un coût plus élevé pourles banques d'octroyer un crédit sur l'étranger plutôt que dans leur juridiction, le bien-être peut être réduit en régime d'union monétaire. Nous montrons également que la mise en place d'une union bancaire qui supprimeraitces barrières à l'intégration des marchés du crédit restaure le résultat habitueld'optimalité des unions. Les implications empiriques de ces résultats pourl'organisation de l'union bancaire sont discutées.

The current paper analyzes the performance and the choice of portfolio in Islamic banks. We consider a sample of 8 Malaysian universal Islamic banks between 2004 and 2008. We use the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) as an indicator of the degree of diversification. The performance of the banks is measured by the return on assets ratio (ROA) and the Risk Adjusted Return On Capital ratio (RAROC). Finally, we use the Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) of Markowitz to define the efficient frontier and the optimal portfolio.The results show that the corporate and investment activity increases significantly returns on assets. However, retail and commercial activity improves the results and performance of these banks. We find evidence that the level of diversification is not too high and recommend that they become concentrated on just one type of these activities. Finally, the MPT supports the idea that Islamic banks are not efficient.

International audience; This is the first analysis of the incidence of a bank tax that is imposed on banks’ balance sheets. Within the framework of an oligopolistic version of the Monti-Klein model, the pass-through of a bank tax levied on loans is stronger when elasticity of credit demand is low. To test this hypothesis, we investigate the incidence of the Hungarian bank tax that was introduced in 2010 on banks’ assets. This case is well suited for our analysis because the tax rate is much higher for large banks than for small banks, which allows relying on difference-in-difference methodology to disentangle the impact of the tax from any other shock that might have occurred simultaneously. In line with model predictions, our estimations show that the tax is shifted to customers with the smallest demand elasticity, such as households. In terms of economic policy implications, our results suggest that enhanced borrower mobility could reduce the ability of banks to shift taxes to customers.

Our study aims at analyzing Islamic bank efficiency over the period 2001-2008. We found that they were efficient at 92%. The level of efficiency could however vary according to the region where they operate. Asia displays the highest score with 96%. Indeed, country like Malaysia made reforms in order to allow these banks to better cope with the existing financial system, display the highest scores. On the contrary countries with Islamic banking system do not necessarily display efficiency scores superior to the average. The subprime crisis seems to have impacted those banks indirectly. And market power and profitability have a positive impact on Islamic banks efficiency, while it is the contrary for their size. The latter implies that they do not benefit from scale economy, may be because of the specificity of Islamic financial products.

In this paper, we assess the impact of the securities transaction tax (STT) introduced in France in 2012 on market liquidity and volatility. To identify causality, we rely on the unique design of this tax that is imposed only on large French firms, all listed on Euronext. This provides two reliable control groups (smaller French firms and foreign firms also listed on Euronext) and allows using difference-in-difference methodology to isolate the impact of the tax from other economic changes occuring simultaneously. We find that the STT has reduced trading volume, but we find no effect on theoretically based measures of liquidity, such as price impact, and no significant effect on volatility. The results are robust if we rely on different control groups (German stocks), analyze dynamic effects or construct a control group by propensity score matching., Dans cet article, nous évaluons l'impact de la taxe sur les transactions financières (TTF), introduite en France en 2012, sur la liquidité et la volatilité des actions. Cette taxe se prête particulièrement bien à une étude d'impact dans la mesure où seules les grandes entreprises qui ont leur siège social en France sont taxées, permettant ainsi d'identifier deux groupes de contrôle : les autres entreprises françaises et les entreprises étrangères, toutes cotées sur Euronext. Nous utilisons la méthode des doubles-différences pour isoler l'impact de la taxe d'autres changements économiques survens simultanément. Il en ressort que la TTF a réduit les volumes de transaction, mais sans que cela n'ait d'effet sur la liquidité. Nous ne décelons, en outre, aucun effet sur la volatilité. Ces résultats sont robustes même en utilisant d'autres groupes de contrôle (les actions allemandes) ou en appliquant une méthode d'appariement sur les scores de propension.

International audience; Cet article étudie les conséquences pour les banques des exigences de transparence prévues par les accords de Bâle, dans le cadre du débat sur leur application aux pays en développement, dont les pays émergents. Les effets attendus sont ambigus : une transparence accrue implique une augmentation des coûts supportés par les banques, mais le niveau des fonds propres exigés peut diminuer, si le cadre institutionnel le permet. Celui-ci joue donc un rôle primordial dans l’effet global pour les banques d’une transparence accrue.

Since the onset of financial crisis, the System of National Accounts method for measuring the value added in the banking sector has become subject to criticism. Some authors argue that the value added by banks should be the residual net interest income after subtracting the required term and risk premiums on loans and deposits. For the first time, we apply this method to evaluate bank output for France for the period 2003 to 2012. First, we show that on average, using the traditional method, bank output is overestimated by between 31% and 74%. This overestimation is especially pronounced in times of financial stress. Second, we establish that the proposed new method is robust to the choice of various reference rates. Third, we find negative FISIM (Financial Intermediation Services Indirectly Measured) on deposits from 2009. Finally, we check the existence of a single or multiple structural unknown breaks in the long run relationship between retail interest rates and driving market reference rates. We find existence of break dates that are coincident with negative FISIM on deposits. We explain this result by a change in banking behavior that may result from the new banking regulation on liquidity and from banks' adaptation to "near" zero interest rate policy.

We investigate the impact of banks disclosure on the evolution of their CDS spreads during the European sovereign crisis. The disclosure of information helps investors in building expectations; disclosure may participate into the reduction of the information risk premium and may lead to a decrease of CDS spreads. We analyze the CDS spreads changes following the announcement of sovereign credit rating downgrades. We consider 16 dates in the period 2011-2013 and, for each one, we assess the cumulative abnormal CDS spread change (CASC). We build two disclosure indexes: one general and one specifically dedicated to sovereign exposure. We show that the bank exposure to sovereign risk has a positive impact on the CASC. Disclosure about sovereign exposure has a negative impact on CASC showing that information reduce risk premiums. However, the global disclosure increases the CASC; investors may disapprove the disclosure of too much abundant and broad information.

International audience; Social networks and reputation are believed to play important roles in mitigating informational frictions related to financial intermediation, in particular bank lending. We investigate the effect of the network and reputation of financial institutions on the certification value of bank loans using data on syndicated loans to European companies. We find that the presence of more central and reputable leaders in a syndicate substantially increases the stock market's reaction to loan announcements. This certification value is reinforced when informational frictions are more important, but vanishes in case of severe disruptions in the functioning of financial markets, such as during the financial crisis of 2008.

International audience; This study seeks to provide insights into the principle of “integration of coopetition paradox” considered as a managerial necessity to manage coopetition situations. Coopetition is a relationships filled with tensions related to the coexistence of two contradictory dimensions of cooperation and competition. And to manage this situation, individuals need to integrate the coopetive paradox, that means to accept cognitively the paradox and to integrate both contradictory dimensions into their daily activities. The cognitive dimension of the integration principle and its consequences on managerial practices remain under investigated in previous literature. How do individuals perceive the coopetition paradox? What are the consequences of the integration principle on managerial practices? We aim to fill this gap by identifying how individuals are capable of integrating coopetition paradox and how do they deal with it in their daily management. Based on an in-depth study of an exemplar case of intra-firm coopetition we succeed for the first time in the coopetitive literature to show and discuss different capacities of integration of the coopetition paradox between managers. According to the integration principle at the individual level, individuals should cognitively accept the coopetition paradox and behave correspondingly to their cognitive perception, emphasizing on both dimensions of cooperation and competition. However, in this study, we show that managerial practices can be disconnected from a cognitive acceptance of the paradox. Moreover, depending on the level of the cognitive integration, we point out that managerial tools are insufficient to efficiently manage coopetition. We suggest that a specific manager profil is required to integrate the paradox and handle coopetition situations.

Les regles comptables et prudentielles regissant l’intermediation financiere se sont considerablement sophistiquees lors des vingt dernieres annees en se rapprochant des meilleures pratiques internes des institutions financieres. Cette evolution a engendre une plus grande procyclicite et ouvert des options d’arbitrage reglementaire qui ont grandement contribue a la crise de 2008. Les reponses reglementaires qui se dessinent presentent deux risques. D’une part, les evolutions asymetriques de la reglementation bancaire et de celle du shadow banking risquent de conduire a une migration massive du financement de l’economie vers le shadow banking, encore tres instable par nature. D’autre part, un retour en arriere vers des regles prudentielles simplifiees a l’exces telles que le ratio de levier peut creer des distorsions importantes dans le financement de l’economie. Un investissement important dans le capital humain de la supervision et une plus grande discretion des superviseurs dans l’interpretation des regles paraissent mieux a meme de pallier les insuffisances mises a jour par la crise.Classification JEL : G01, G21, G28.

This paper investigates the relationship between disclosure and bank CDS spread during the sovereign debt crisis over the period 2011-2013. We cumulated the evolution of the spread of CDS on 4 different timeframes. We modeled two transparency index: one global and one specifically dedicated to sovereign exposure. We obtained significant results on the impact of targetted sovereign disclosure on the evolution of the CDS spreads, while the global index have not significant impact on the evolution of the CDS spread.

International audience; This paper investigates empirically the impact of bank regulation on the risk of default of WAEMU banks over the period 2000-2010. Our results suggest that banks which have relatively high capital ratios, those focusing on loans as well as large banks have a lower risk of default. However, WAEMU banks seem to finance riskier and more profitable assets to offset the extra cost of subordinated debt. Favorable macroeconomic conditions are factors reducing the risk of default while a high share of the financial sector in GDP increases this risk.; Cette étude analyse empiriquement l’impact de la régulation bancaire sur le risque de défaillance des banques de l’UEMOA de 2000 à 2010. Nos résultats suggèrent que les banques qui ont des ratios de solvabilité élevés, celles qui se concentrent sur l’activité de crédit et les grandes banques ont un risque de défaillance plus faible. Cependant, les banques de l’UEMOA semblent financer des d’actifs plus risqués et plus rémunérateurs pour compenser le surcoût des dettes subordonnées. Des conditions macroéconomiques favorables sont un facteur de réduction du risque de défaillance tandis qu’une part relative du secteur financier dans le PIB plus élevée contribue à accroître ce risque.

International audience; The present paper contributes to the body of knowledge on search frictions in credit markets by demonstrating theirability to explain why the net interest margins of banks behave countercyclically. During periods of expansion, a fall in the net interest margin proceeds from two mechanisms: (i) lenders accept that they must finance entrepreneurs that have lower productivity and (ii) the liquidity of the credit market rises, which simplifies access to loans for entrepreneurs and thereby reinforces their threat point when bargaining the interest rate of the loan.

Central banking in France from 1948 to 1973 was a paradigmatic example of a policy that relied on quantities rather than interest rates. Standard SVAR analyses support the common view that monetary policy was ineffective during this period. However, this approach fails to identify the stance of monetary policy since it does not account for the specificity of quantitative controls on money and credit. An alternative identification strategy based on a narrative approach suggests that monetary policy shocks had strong and lasting effects in the conventional direction and accounted for nearly half of the variance in output and price levels. (JEL E43, E44, E52, E58, G21, G28, N14)

OS; International audience; The following sections are included: •Introduction •Microfinance and Economic Development •Indian Microfinance and the Impact of Commercialization •Minsky's “Financial Instability” Hypothesis •Data and Econometric Methodology •Results and Policy Implications •Conclusions •References

National audience; The post-crisis financial reforms address the need for systemic regulation, focused not only on individual banks but also on the whole financial system. The regulator principal objective is to set banks' capital requirements equal to international minimum standards in order to mimimise systemic risk. Indeed, Basel agreement is designed to guide a judgement about minimum universal levels of capital and remains mainly microprudential in its focus rather than being macroprudential. An alternative model to Basel framework is derived where systemic risk is taken into account in each bank's dynamic. This might be a new departure for prudential policy. It allows for the regulator to compute capital and risk requirements for controlling systemic risk. Moreover, bank regulation is considered in a two-scale level, either at the bank level or at the system-wide level. We test the adequacy of the model on a data set containing 19 banks of 5 major countries from 2005 to 2012. We compute the capital ratio threshold per year for each bank and each country and we rank them according to their level of fragility. Our results suggest to consider an alternative measure of systemic risk that requires minimal capital ratios that are bank-specic and time-varying.

This paper develops a simple model showing how banks can increase the access to finance of small, risky firms by mitigating coordination problems among investors. If investors observe a biased signal about the true implementation cost of real sector projects, the model can be solved for a switching equilibrium in the classical global games approach. We show that the socially optimal interest rate that maximizes the probability of success of the firm is higher than the risk-free rate. Yet if banks maximize investors' expected return, they would choose an interest higher than the socially optimal one. This gives rise to a form of credit rationing, which stems from the funding constraints of the banks., Nous étudions le financement des PME par les banques dans un modèle de type "global games". Il apparait que le taux d'intérêt d'équilibre dans une économie décentralisée avec secteur bancaire concurrentiel est supérieur au taux d'intérêt qui assure le plus grand taux de réussite des projets.

The PhD thesis is a contribution to the definition of a new banking risk related to the economic impacts of climate change. The climate change will impact the clients of a corporate and investment bank and will have consequences on its strategy and the composition of its business portfolio. Nevertheless, uncertainties remain on the economic impacts of climate change and create a new risk for the banks: the carbon risk. The quantification of “GreenHouse Gases (GHG) emissions induced” by the businesses of the bank’s clients is a first step required for managing this new risk. After having studied the various models of carbon accounting, this PhD thesis proposes an analysis tool based on a new form of carbon accounting by allocating the GHG emissions to the economic agents in accordance with their ability to reduce it: “the accounting by issue”. This tool allows mapping sectorally and geographically of the “GHG emissions induced” by a financing and investment portfolio (in debt and equity capital)., Cette thèse apporte une contribution à la définition d’un nouveau risque bancaire lié aux impacts économiques du changement climatique. Le changement climatique impactera les clients d’une Banque de Financement et d’Investissement (BFI) et aura des conséquences sur sa stratégie et la composition de son portefeuille d’activités. En revanche, des incertitudes demeurent sur les impacts économiques du changement climatique et créent un risque bancaire : le risque carbone. La quantification des « émissions de Gaz à Effet de Serre (GES) induites » par les activités des clients de la banque est une première étape nécessaire pour la gestion de ce nouveau risque. Après avoir étudié les différents modèles existants de comptabilité carbone, cette thèse propose un outil d’analyse basé sur une nouvelle forme de comptabilité carbone allouant les émissions de GES aux agents économiques en fonction de leur capacité à les réduire : « la comptabilité par enjeu ». Cet outil permet la réalisation d’une cartographie sectorielle et géographique des « émissions de GES induites » par un portefeuille de financement et d’investissement (en dette et en capital).

This thesis first presents India’s economy and financial system’s recent history and current issues. Then, with an emphasis on the recent turmoil period, it studies the question of financial integration in various markets: equity markets are dealt with in the 1st chapter, CDS spreads are analyzed in the 2nd chapter while the 3rd chapter focuses on the monetary policy-commodity prices nexus. Finally, the last chapter reflects on the ability of the banking system to help the country out of the current crisis. Overall, our results indicate that markets are more integrated since the crisis, which suggest a frailty of the Indian financial structure to exterior shocks. Nevertheless, results for chapter 4 show that the financial system could also allow the economy to recover if the proper reforms are implemented and that banking efficiency is improved., Cette thèse présente dans un premier temps l’histoire récente et les enjeux de l’économie et du système financier indien. Puis, en se concentrant la période récente, elle étudie la question de l’intégration financière sur différents marchés : les marchés actions sont traités dans le 1er chapitre, les spreads des CDS indiens sont abordés dans 2nd chapitre et la relation entre les prix des matières premières et la politique monétaire est analysée dans le 3e chapitre. Enfin, le dernier chapitre pose la question de savoir si un secteur bancaire plus efficient peut aider l’économie indienne à sortir de la crise. Globalement, les résultats indiquent que les marchés étudiés sont plus intégrés depuis la crise, ce qui suggère une fragilité du secteur financier indien aux chocs extérieurs. Néanmoins, les résultats du chapitre 4 montrent, dans le cadre d’un modèle simple, que le système financier peut aussi permettre à l’économie indienne de surmonter ses déboires actuels, s’il l’on y implémente les réformes adéquates et que la productivité des banques est améliorée.

International audience; In this paper, to begin with, we define soft information as qualitative, subjective information produced by banks through the establishment of long-term lending relationships. We then highlight the importance of soft information for cooperative and social banks in the screening, pricing and monitoring of their borrowers as a result of their institutional features (governance, values, etc.) and the specificities of their clientele. We finally emphasise the value of qualitative (economic, social and/or environmental) factors stemming from the production of soft information in predicting credit default events.

La surveillance macroprudentielle beneficie desormais d’un cadre institutionnel dans les pays avances. Cet article presente les outils disponibles pour le diagnostic du marche immobilier residentiel et du marche du credit a l’habitat, marches qui sont intrinsequement lies. Des indicateurs cles font l’objet d’un suivi regulier, mais ils peuvent etre tardifs compte tenu de l’inertie du marche immobilier. Les methodes complementaires de capitalisation risquent egalement de produire des indicateurs tardifs car elles ignorent la reaction de l’offre a terme. Les outils de detection avancee des risques n’ont pas de presupposes theoriques mais ils peuvent ignorer des ajustements inattendus des fondamentaux. La modelisation des comportements offre l’alternative theoriquement la plus satisfaisante, mais presente d’importants defis de mise en œuvre. Enfin, une modelisation du marche immobilier et du marche du credit dans le cas francais est presentee. Classification JEL : G21, G28, R31, R51.

This paper compares the loans granted to male and female entrepreneurs by a French microfinance institution (MFI). The sample period is split in two: before and after the MFI implemented France's regulatory EUR 10,000 loan ceiling. In the first period, the MFI does not co-finance projects with mainstream banks and loan size is gender-insensitive. In the second period, the MFI does co-finance above-ceiling projects with mainstream banks, and we observe a gender gap in loan size. The results suggest that co-financing leads the originally gender-neutral MFI to import disparate treatment from mainstream banks.

La crise financière de 2008 a posé le problème de la valorisation à la juste valeur des instruments financiers, en particulier lorsque les marchés ne sont plus actifs. Le 5 mars 2009 l'IASB, a publié un amendement à la norme IFRS 7 intitulé " Amélioration des informations à fournir sur les instruments financiers ". Désormais les entreprises qui appliquent les IFRS doivent publier des informations sur la juste valeur selon une hiérarchie en trois niveaux, Niveau 1 : Des prix (non ajustés) cotés sur des marchés actifs pour des actifs ou des passifs identiques, Niveau 2 : des données autres que les prix cotés visés au niveau 1, qui sont observables pour l'actif ou le passif concerné, soit directement (à savoir des prix) ou indirectement (à savoir des données dérivées de prix), Niveau 3 : des données relatives à l'actif ou au passif qui ne sont pas basées sur des données observables de marché. L'objectif de cet article est d'analyser l'évolution des pratiques de valorisation suite à la crise financière. Il apparaît que les banques ont augmenté le recours à l'évaluation de deuxième niveau qui constitue aujourd'hui la principale méthode de valorisation des instruments financiers à la juste valeur. Par ailleurs, la taille des banques a un impact très net sur les pratiques de valorisation, les grandes banques ayant le plus recours à des modèles.

We investigate the impact of bank competition on the use of collateral in loan contracts. We develop a theoretical model incorporating information asymmetries in a spatial competition framework where banks choose between screening the borrower and asking for collateral. We show that presence of collateral is more likely when bank competition is low. We then test this prediction empirically on a sample of bank loans from 70 countries. We estimate logit models where the presence of collateral is regressed on bank competition, measured by the Lerner index. Our empirical tests corroborate the theoretical predictions that bank competition reduces the use of collateral. These findings survive several robustness checks.

We identify a potential bias in the methodology disclosed in July 2013 by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) for identifying systemically important financial banks. Contrary to the original objective, the relative importance of the five categories of risk importance (size, cross-jurisdictional activity, interconnectedness, substitutability/financial institution infrastructure, and complexity) may not be equal and the resulting systemic risk scores are mechanically dominated by the most volatile categories. In practice, this bias proved to be serious enough that the substitutability category had to be capped by the BCBS. We show that the bias can be removed by simply standardizing each input prior to computing the systemic risk scores.

This article introduces a special section of the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, containing five papers presented during a conference in Paris in October 2011. The aim of the conference was to derive lessons from the financial crisis, for research on international macroeconomics and for policy. The article opens with a summary of the key mechanisms at play during the crisis. The question of the crisis transmission across borders is addressed, with a focus on international trade and financial institutions. Recent advances in the analysis of sovereign default risk are also discussed. The article concludes with a discussion of policy responses to the crisis. (JEL E32, E44, F14, G01, G21, G28)

This paper examines empirically to which extent public banks feature a different pattern in their lending behaviour over macroeconomic fluctuations. Based on a unique dataset from 1990 to 2010, including at most 459 public banks in 93 countries, I can handle ownership change by including records on privatisations as well as nationalisations during banking crisis, which would otherwise blur the picture. I find that (i) public bank lending is significantly less cyclical than that of private banks, (ii) public banks cut less on their loans during economic downturns, with a positive relation between economic development and their ability to absorb macro shocks, and (iii) privatised banks switch from a regime of low to high lending cyclicality. Then, the lower co-movement of public bank loans with macroeconomic fluctuations reveals both (a) a less vulnerable balance sheet structure and more stable financing sources, which is consistent with a lending relationship business model, (b) as well as delayed loan deterioration, which is a symptom of forbearance and inefficient loan management; the actual combination of the two is not orthogonal to economic development, with high income countries more likely to feature efficient public bank lending cyclicality, while evidences suggest it may reveal an inefficient credit allocation for less developed countries.

The experience of the 2007-09 financial crisis has showed that the bank capital regulation in place was inadequate to deal with "manufacturing" tail risk in the financial sector. This paper proposes an incentive-based design of bank capital regulation aimed at efficiently dealing with tail risk engendered by bank top managers. It has two specific features: (i) first, it incorporates information on the optimal incentive contract between bank shareholders and bank managers, thereby dealing with the internal agency problem; (ii) second, it relies on the mechanism of mandatory recapitalization to ensure this contract is adopted by bank shareholders.

Social banks are financial intermediaries paying attention to non-economic (i.e. social, ethical, and environmental) criteria. To investigate the behavior of social banks on the credit market, this paper proposes both theory and empirics. Our theoretical model rationalizes the idea that reciprocity can generate better repayment performances. Based on a unique hand-collected dataset released by a French social bank, our empirical results are twofold. First, we show that the bank charges below-market interest rates for social projects. Second, regardless of their creditworthiness, motivated borrowers respond to advantageous credit terms by significantly lowering their probability of default. We interpret this outcome as the first evidence of reciprocity in the credit market., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

International audience; By granting credit and issuing money, banks take a liquidity risk that is to say the risk of being unable to reimburse its notes in coins. Four different explanations of a bank liquidity crisis have been provided by different authors, since John Law and up to Walter Bagehot. First, according to Law (1703) and Steuart (1767), the distinction between money of account (the pound sterling) and money of payment (the guinea) may induce a bank run. Second, according to Cantillon (1730), Hume (1752), Ricardo (1810-1823) and the Currency School (1836-1844), the bank reserve becomes insufficient as a consequence of over issues. Third, according to Smith (1776) and the Banking School (1844-1848), discounting of fictitious bills, by decreasing the shareholders’ funds, leads to banking illiquidity. Lastly, according to Thornton (1802) and Bagehot (1873), the liquidity crisis is a consequence of panics: a “flight” to money for Thornton, a “flight” to credit for Bagehot. The analysis of these four different explanations gives a new light on classical monetary controversies.

International audience; We investigate the impact of changes in capital of European banks on their risk- taking behavior from 1992 to 2006, a time period covering the Basel I capital requirements. We specifically focus on the initial level and type of regulatory capital banks hold. First, we assume that risk changes depend on banks' ex ante regulatory capital position. Second, we consider the impact of an increase in each component of regulatory capital on banks' risk changes. We find that, for highly capitalized and strongly undercapitalized banks, an increase in equity positively affects risk; but an increase in subordinated debt has the opposite effect namely for undercapitalized banks. Moderately undercapitalized banks tend to invest in less risky assets when their equity ratio increases but not when they improve their capital position by extending hybrid capital. Hybrid capital and equity have the same impact for banks with low capital buffers. On the whole, our conclusions support the need to implement more explicit thresholds to classify European banks according to their capital ratios but also to clearly distinguish pure equity from hybrid and subordinated instruments.

International audience; We aim to assess how accurately accounting and stock market indicators predict rating changes for Asian banks. We conduct a stepwise process to determine the optimal set of early indicators by tracing upgrades and downgrades from rating agencies, as well as other relevant factors. Our results indicate that both accounting and market indicators are useful leading indicators but are more effective in predicting upgrades than downgrades, especially for large banks. Moreover, early indicators are only significant in predicting rating changes for banks that are more focused on traditional banking activities such as deposit and loan activities. Finally, a higher reliance of banks on subordinated debt is associated with better accuracy of early indicators.

The unequal treatment of children is not gender neutral from the parent side. Our results show that women try to compensate through debt for the unbalanced situation faced by their daughters compared to their sons. However, the lack of symmetry between mothers' and fathers' financial situations leads to the perpetuation of gender inequality through generations., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

This paper investigates the degree of competition in the WAEMU financial industry over the period 2002-2007 using firm-level data (591 year-firm observations). Market structure analysis, the Panzar-Rosse model and conjectural variation are applied to assess the level of competition. The results show that the prevailing market structure in the WAEMU financial industry is concentrated and financial intermediaries operate under imperfect competition. Although competition was fierce during the mid-2000s, the level of competition has remained limited. Moreover, apart from Benin and Mali, the structural and non-structural approaches are closely related, contrary to previous findings, which have some implications for the empirical studies. Finally, a common regulatory framework does not imply similar level of competition. The presence of non-legal barriers is the most plausible explanation of these large differences between WAEMU members.

We assess the extent to which capital buffers (the capital banks hold in excess of the regulatory minimum) exacerbate rather than reduce the cyclical behavior of credit. We empirically study the relationships between output gap, capital buffers and loan growth with firm-level data for French banks over the period 1993-2009. Our findings reveal that bank capital buffers intensify the cyclical credit fluctuations arising from the output gap developments, all the more as better quality capital is considered. Moreover, by performing Granger causality tests at the bank level, we find evidence of a two-way causality between capital buffers and loan growth, pointing to mutually reinforcing mechanisms. Overall, those empirical results lend support to a counter-cyclical financial regulation that focuses on highest-quality capital and aims at smoothing loan growth.

The Money Market : Cash or Financial Securities Market ? As a highly concentrated and interconnected market of operators, the money market is particularly sensitive to any kind of uncertainty relating to the quality of its actors’ balance sheets. It has therefore changed over the past three years to adapt to both asymmetric information and uncertainty. The loss of confidence in the reliability of the big financial institutions’ balance sheets has entailed a significant decrease in unsecured transactions, the development of collateralization and the strengthening of the security procedures that preside over transactions and positions (loan insurance). These changes aimed to invigorate the refunding market and controlled by the Central Bank strengthen the link between government debt and the banks’ balance sheets at a time when the pressure of market discipline on the former is mounting. They also lead the Central Bank to take riskier positions and potentially bail out a bank (the clearing house) that has proved insolvent, and not only short of liquidity. Classification JEL : E52, E58, G21., En tant que réseau d’opérateurs à la fois très concentrés et largement interconnectés, le marché monétaire est particulièrement sensible à toute incertitude sur la qualité des bilans de ses intervenants. Il s’est donc transformé au cours des dernières années pour s’adapter aux asymétries d’information et à l’incertitude. La perte de confiance dans la solidité des bilans des établissements financiers consécutive à la crise financière a entraîné une réduction significative des opérations en blanc, le développement d’opérations de collatéralisation et la montée en charge de procédures de sécurisation des échanges et des positions (assurances crédits, compensation des flux, garantie d’une CCP). Ces transformations, accompagnées par la Banque centrale, pour relancer le marché du refinancement ont cependant débouché sur des liens renforcés entre dettes publiques et bilans des banques, au moment où la pression de la discipline des marchés s’est accrue sur les premières. Elles amènent aussi la Banque centrale à prendre des positions plus risquées et à garantir potentiellement une banque (la chambre de compensation) en situation de d’insolvabilité et non pas seulement en situation d’illiquidité. Classification JEL : E52, E58, G21., Chanel-Reynaud Gisèle. Le marché monétaire, un marché de titres autant que de cash ?. In: Revue d'économie financière, n°106, 2012. Système financier et création de valeur. pp. 265-300.

In response to the financial crisis, the authorities in a number of countries used public funds to recapitalise their banks. Did a reduction of risk in banks' lending follow these rescue operations? To help answer this question, we analyse the balance sheets and syndicated loan signings of 87 large internationally active banks. As loan signing volumes started diminishing across the board in 2009, our evidence shows that rescued banks did not reduce the risk of their new lending significantly more than non-rescued banks. Our results are relevant for the ongoing assessment of public bank rescue programmes.

(VF)L’objectif de cet article est de vérifier empiriquement la relation entre les types de contrat de crédit, l’architecture organisationnelle et la performance des institutions de microfinance. L’économétrie des données de panel permet d’étudier un échantillon de 114 institutions de microfinance sur la période 2001- 2006. Les résultats montrent que l’architecture organisationnelle n’a pas d’influence significative sur les trois dimensions de la performance. Les contrats mixtes ont un effet négatif et significatif sur la rentabilité économique, mais permettent aux institutions de microfinance d’atteindre un nombre important d’emprunteurs. Enfin, les contrats de crédit de groupe jouent un rôle très important dans leur qualité de portefeuille.(VA)This article aims to produce evidence on the relationship between lending contracts, organizational architecture and the performance of microfinance institutions. We analyze panel data for a sample of 114 MFIs during the period stretching from 2001 to 2006. The results show that organizational architecture has no significant influence on the three dimensions of performance. Mixed contracts have a negative and significant effect on the rate of economic returns, but allow the concerned organizations to reach large numbers of borrowers. Finally, joint liability contracts tend to improve the portfolio quality of microfinance institutions.

The huge presence of foreign banks in CEECs leads to a strong dependence to banking foreign claims. They may be cross-border claims or claims of foreign subsidiaries located in the host country. Are foreign banks a factor that attracts foreign claims in the host country? Does their presence stabilize banking foreign flows and in fine the domestic credit supply? Using a Push&Pull framework, we adopt a macroeconomic point of view by using balance of payments data concerning banking foreign financing on all sectors in CEECs. Tests with panel data show that the presence of foreign banks is a substitute for banking foreign loans and is not a factor of their stability. Nevertheless, it has a stabilizing role on the domestic credit.

We examine whether financial sector integration leads to real sector integration through trade. Our conjecture is that banking integration between two regions leads to higher trade flows between them. In our stylized model, this happens because banks with presence in the two regions are better able to assess risks and charge the appropriate premiums for trade-related projects pertinent for the two markets; whereas the same banks charge higher average interest rates for projects that involve trade to other markets from which these banks are absent. We use the deregulation of inter-state banking in the U.S. as a natural experiment to test the implication of our theory model with the state-level Commodity Flow Survey data. Our empirical evidence indicates that there is a trade channel associated with the finance-growth nexus. Based on difference-in-differences estimates, we find that the trade share of state-pairs that have opened their banking market to each other’s financial institutions increased by 14% over a ten year period relative to the trade shares of state-pairs that did not. This increase in trade flows is due to actual bank integration following deregulation: based on instrumental variables estimates, we calculate that an increase in bank integration from zero to 2.28%, the mean of the data, increases trade in the range of 15% to 25%. These magnitudes are probably lower bound estimates for financial barriers in international trade, given that the international financial system is much less integrated than the U.S. financial system.

International audience; Résumé : Des travaux empiriques portant sur les comportements de provisionnement des banques montrent que les provisions pour pertes évoluent de façon contracyclique. Ce fait stylisé est intégré dans un modèle théorique déterminant le comportement d'une banque représentative sur le marché du crédit. Le modèle et les simulations réalisées montrent que les modi…cations du coût de provisionnement supportées par la banque à travers un cycle économique ampli…ent les uctuations sur le marché du crédit. Deux mécanismes sont identi…és pour éliminer cette e¤et d'ampli…cation. D'un point de vue réglementaire, l'adoption d'un système de provisionnement dynamique représente une première solution. Au niveau de la banque, la constitution d'un "coussin de sécurité" en capital bancaire représente une seconde solution. Abstract :The literature on provisioning bank behaviour shows that loan loss provisions are counter-cyclical. Based on this stylised fact, this paper develops a partial equilibrium model of a banking …rm that analyzes how provisioning rules inuence credit market uctuations. The model and the simulations show that a backward-looking provisioning system ampli…es the uctuations in the credit market over an economic cycle. Two solutions are proposed to remove this bank provision channel. First, the regulatory authority can implement a forward-looking provisioning system. Second, if a backward-looking provisioning system rules are implemented, banks can build a capital bu¤er to cover the expected losses which are not covered by loan loss reserves.

International audience; Cet article s'interroge sur le rôle joué par le crédit dans le déroulement des cycles d'affaires et des crises économiques et financières. Plus précisément, il s'agit de porter l'attention sur les comportements microéconomiques de recours au crédit, mais aussi sur les règles institutionnelles évolutives qui contraignent et favorisent ce recours en matière d'organisation du système bancaire et financier. L'excès de crédit et l'importance de l'effet de levier ne sont pas des phénomènes nouveaux mais ont exercé leurs influences respectives dans la plupart des cycles d'affaires qui se sont succédé depuis le début du XIXe siècle. Le rappel et l'analyse historique et théorique de cette récurrence constituent ainsi des moyens privilégiés pour vérifier de façon précise comment l'excès de crédit naît de la croyance collective selon laquelle le renforcement permanent de la limitation de la responsabilité des agents et du transfert du risque conditionne un financement efficace de l'industrie. Après avoir rappelé l'importance accordée au crédit dès le XIXe siècle par Clément Juglar dans la genèse des cycles, la contribution s'intéresse aux crises financières et économiques de 1866, 1882, 1929 et 2007, et tire un certain nombre d'enseignements communs qui permettent de mieux comprendre le poids des excès de crédit dans l'origine des crises.

The current financial crisis offers a unique opportunity to investigate the leading properties of market indicators in a stressed environment and their usefulness from a banking supervision perspective. One pool of relevant information that has been little explored in the empirical literature is the market for bank's exchange-traded option contracts. In this paper, we first extract implied volatility indicators from the prices of the most actively traded option contracts on financial firms' equity. We then examine empirically their ability to predict financial distress by applying survival analysis techniques to a sample of large US financial firms. We find that market indicators extracted from option prices significantly explain the survival time of troubled financial firms and do a better job in predicting financial distress than other time-varying covariates typically included in bank failure models. Overall, both accounting information and option prices contain useful information of subsequent financial problems and, more importantly, the combination produces good forecasts in a high-stress financial world, full of doubts and uncertainties.

The Basel II committee set up directives encouraging banks to use internal scores in order to assess the risk of their customers. This new form of information competes with the existing ones. SMEs are most concerned by these new stakes, due to the lack of transparency. The aim of this paper is to understand the determinants of the choice between substitution and complementarity between the two types of information: “soft” and “hard”, to test a potential effect of this choice on the banking performance and to describe which variables are involved in the decision-making process. The originality of this work is to try to quantify the information costs and to use it as a variable which is affecting the adopted choice.

(VF)L’étude de quelques cas de transformations réussies en Amérique Latine permet de conclure qu’il existerait une relation entre la forme juridique des IMF et leur performance. Cet article se fixe donc comme objectif principal de vérifier cette relation à partir de la comparaison des performances de 148 IMF sur la période de 2001 à 2006. L’échantillon est élargi aux coopératives et mutuelles. Les résultats montrent que les sociétés privées sont socialement plus performantes que les ONG. Par ailleurs, la supériorité de performance des sociétés privées est également vérifiée lorsque la qualité de portefeuille est retenue comme indicateur de mesure de la performance.(VA)Casual observation of several successful transformations in Latin America suggests that there may be a relationship between the legal form of MFIs and their performance. The main objective of this paper is therefore to verify this relationship through the comparison of the performance of 148 MFIs over the period extending from 2001 to 2006. The sample includes cooperatives and mutual’s. The results indicate that private MFIs perform better socially than NGOs. Furthermore, the performance of private corporations is also verified when portfolio quality is used as an indicator for measuring performance.

International audience; In many low-income countries, agriculture is mostly rainfed and crop yield depends highly on climaticfactors. Furthermore, farmers have little access to traditional crop insurance, which suffers from high information asymmetryand transaction costs. Insurances based on meteorological indices could fill this gap since they do not face such drawbacks.However, a full-scale implementation has been slow so far.In this article, the most advanced projects that have taken place in developing countries using these types of cropinsurances are described. Following this, the methodology that has been used to design such projects in order to choose themeteorological index, the indemnity schedule and the insurance premium, is described. Finally the main research issuesare discussed. In particular, more research is needed on implementation, assessment of benefits, how to deal with climatechange, spatial variability of weather and interactions with other hedging methods. Copyright2011 Royal MeteorologicalSociety