{"title":"Banks, freedom, and political connections: New evidence from around the world","authors":"Bartłomiej Cegłowski , Krzysztof Jackowicz , Łukasz Kozłowski , Iwa Kuchciak","doi":"10.1016/j.jfs.2024.101353","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jfs.2024.101353","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines how various facets of social and political freedom shape the impact of political connections on bank lending. Using a new dataset covering the period 2007–2018 and more than 100 countries, we find that the establishment of political connections stimulates lending, but only in countries with constrained media freedom and restricted freedom of association and expression, as well as in those scoring low on political rights and civil liberties. These results suggest that social and political freedom constitute critical factors that limit the resource-allocation distortions caused by political connections.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48027,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Financial Stability","volume":"76 ","pages":"Article 101353"},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2024-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142699292","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Political governance and firm performance in China: Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment","authors":"Lei Cheng","doi":"10.1016/j.jfs.2024.101348","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jfs.2024.101348","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The involvement of the Communist Party of China in corporate decision-making has formed a corporate governance model with “Chinese characteristics” that diverges from commonly studied governance models. This paper aims to provide direct insight into China’s corporate governance model by examining how the involvement of Party organizations in corporate governance influences the performance of private firms. To address endogeneity concerns, we use a quasi-natural experiment (i.e., sudden deaths of board directors) that leads to an exogenous change in the proportion of Party directors. Using difference-in-differences estimation, we find that an increase in the proportion of Party directors (i.e., stronger political governance) improves private firms’ performance. This finding is robust to various tests. Moreover, the channel analysis suggests that the Party organization performs advisory and supervisory functions in corporate governance. Last, we present evidence that the excessive involvement of the Party organization in corporate governance also imposes political costs on private firms.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48027,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Financial Stability","volume":"76 ","pages":"Article 101348"},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2024-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142722629","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Lending standards and output growth","authors":"Divya Kirti","doi":"10.1016/j.jfs.2024.101351","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jfs.2024.101351","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>What drives macro-financial vulnerabilities? Inspired by Minsky–Kindleberger narratives, one prominent view emphasizes that lending standards repeatedly deteriorate in good times, creating exposure to widespread reassessments of risk. Another emphasizes that leverage amplifies negative shocks. This paper constructs panel data on lending standards and uses it to show that Minsky–Kindleberger dynamics interact with leverage. Standards erode with improving economic performance, but do not always co-move with aggregate leverage. The combination of deteriorating standards and leverage—above and beyond leverage alone—signals poor subsequent macroeconomic performance. Inconsistent with models incorporating rational expectations, this poor subsequent performance is systematically reflected in forecast errors.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48027,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Financial Stability","volume":"76 ","pages":"Article 101351"},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2024-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142699293","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Unlocking strategic alliances: The role of common institutional blockholders in promoting collaboration and trust","authors":"Thomas J. Chemmanur , Yao Shen , Jing Xie","doi":"10.1016/j.jfs.2024.101350","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jfs.2024.101350","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper investigates the role of common institutional blockholders (CIBs) in promoting strategic alliances and facilitating the transfer of human capital between alliance partner firms. We find that firms are more likely to form strategic alliances (including research and development (R&D), licensing, manufacturing, and marketing alliances) when they share CIBs with a larger proportion of their industry peers. To establish a causal relationship, we exploit the exogenous shocks to CIB ownership induced by annual Russell 1000/2000 index reconstitutions. Our firm-pair-level analysis indicates that two firms are more likely to form alliances when they share a CIB. Additionally, we show that R&D alliance partner firms connected through CIBs exhibit greater across-partner redeployment of R&D-related human capital than partner firms without CIB connections. Overall, our findings underscore the significance of common institutional blockholder ownership in reducing the distrust that hinders strategic alliance formation and in realizing the economic benefits of such alliances.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48027,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Financial Stability","volume":"76 ","pages":"Article 101350"},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2024-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142699291","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bank lending to fossil fuel firms","authors":"Elias Demetriades, Panagiotis N. Politsidis","doi":"10.1016/j.jfs.2024.101349","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jfs.2024.101349","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>How do banks react to firms’ climate risks? Using almost 80,000 global syndicated loans originated from 2001 to 2021, we study bank lending to fossil fuel firms vis-à-vis other firms. We find that loans to fossil fuel firms are at least 7 % more costly compared to other firms, and even more so toward the end of our sample. However, loan amounts to fossil fuel firms are approximately 22 % larger, implying heavy financing of brown activities. We show that the pricing effects are even stronger for banks with higher reliance on ESG considerations, consistent with the shifts driven by the supply side (bank behaviour). Overall, our findings corroborate the view that banks price in climate risks but continue to heavily lend to polluting firms in the medium term (with an average maturity of four and one quarter years).</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48027,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Financial Stability","volume":"76 ","pages":"Article 101349"},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2024-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142699290","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Funding deposit insurance","authors":"Dick Oosthuizen , Ryan Zalla","doi":"10.1016/j.jfs.2024.101342","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jfs.2024.101342","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We present a quantitative model of deposit insurance to characterize the optimal levels of coverage for depositors and premiums raised from banks. Premiums contribute to a deposit insurance fund that lowers taxpayers’ resolution cost of bank failures. The key model tension is the policymaker’s dynamic tradeoff between building a fund to discourage moral hazard and insulate taxpayers from large fiscal shortfalls, and allowing banks to productively invest their deposits. We find that risk-adjusted premiums reduce moral hazard, enabling the policymaker to increase the share of covered deposits to total deposits by 12.5 percentage points and decrease the share of expected annual bank failures from 0.74% to 0.60%. The model predicts a fund-to-covered-deposits ratio that matches the data and declines in taxpayers’ income due to taxpayers’ risk aversion.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48027,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Financial Stability","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101342"},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2024-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142656828","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The spillover effect of constituency statutes along supply chains: Evidence from supplier commitment","authors":"Dichu Bao , Ruirui Fang , Lixin (Nancy) Su","doi":"10.1016/j.jfs.2024.101347","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jfs.2024.101347","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines the spillover effect of constituency statutes along the supply chain. We posit that the enactment of constituency statutes in customer firms’ incorporation states, by removing legal obstacles for customer firms to cater to non-shareholders’ interests, builds suppliers’ trust and cooperation. Consistent with the notion that constituency statutes entice greater trust from suppliers, we find that suppliers make more relationship-specific investments in the supply chain after the enactment of constituency statutes in customers’ states, indicating a greater commitment to the customer. We also show an improvement in customers’ corporate social responsibility performance in the post-constituency-statute period, thus substantiating the claim that the constituency statutes increase customers’ stakeholder orientation. Cross-sectionally, we find the positive effect of constituency statutes on supplier relationship-specific investments is attenuated if the customer and supplier have more repeated interactions in the past, whereas the effect is more pronounced if suppliers produce durable goods. Overall, we provide novel evidence on the spillover of constituency statutes along the supply chain.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48027,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Financial Stability","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101347"},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2024-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142656345","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Irrelevant answers in customers’ earnings communication conferences and suppliers’ cash holdings","authors":"Xunxiao Wang , Luxi Li , Shibo Bian","doi":"10.1016/j.jfs.2024.101346","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jfs.2024.101346","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines whether and how the quality of manager-investor interactions in customer firms’ online earnings communication conferences affects supplier firms’ cash holdings. We find that customer management’s irrelevant answers, measuring the lack of documented interaction quality, are positively associated with suppliers’ cash holdings. This association is robust to controlling for standard cash holdings determinants and endogeneity. We also find that the effect of irrelevant answers works through signifying the firm’s adverse future business conditions and prospects. Moreover, this effect is more pronounced when suppliers are non-state-owned, more financially constrained, or in a lower concentration industry.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48027,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Financial Stability","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101346"},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2024-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142656830","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"International transmission of monetary policy shocks and the bank lending channel: Evidence from Australia","authors":"Hamid Yahyaei, Abhay Singh, Tom Smith","doi":"10.1016/j.jfs.2024.101343","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jfs.2024.101343","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We examine the transmission of international monetary policy shocks via the bank lending channel. Exploiting a panel of regulatory data on foreign banks operating in Australia, we show that the supply of credit is vulnerable to the international pass-through of monetary policy, with banks headquartered in Asia demonstrating high elasticity. Household and non-financial corporate loans are the most susceptible channels to policy shocks, while higher-margin lending, non-lending assets, and reservable liabilities are insensitive. We demonstrate that although banks curtail lending in the face of tighter monetary policy, they increase their non-reservable borrowing, suggesting an increased reliance on capital markets. Finally, we show that unconventional monetary policies have a muted effect compared to traditional measures.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48027,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Financial Stability","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101343"},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2024-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142592558","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Paul B. McGuinness , João Paulo Vieito , Mingzhu Wang
{"title":"The impact of CSR-engagement, board gender, and stock price synchronicity on female analyst stock coverage decisions","authors":"Paul B. McGuinness , João Paulo Vieito , Mingzhu Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.jfs.2024.101344","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jfs.2024.101344","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The present study investigates the impact of a target entity’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) credentials, board diversity, and stock return synchronicity on analyst coverage decisions. Based on more than 33,000 stock recommendations on UK listed companies, we significantly deepen and extend the relevant literature (<span><span>Kumar, 2010</span></span>; <span><span>Li et al, 2013</span></span>; and <span><span>Li et al., 2024</span></span>) in several important ways. We find female analysts are more likely than male analysts to impound CSR information into stock coverage decisions for entities with intermediate recommendations. For firms with more extreme economic prospects. i.e., at strong buy and sell levels, the positive effect of CSR performance on female analyst coverage weakens. After controlling for the CSR characteristics of a stock, results suggest female analysts are more likely to cover firms with gender-inclusive boards. Results accord with a narrative emphasizing female analysts’ weaker access to firms with less gender-inclusive boards. Our account adds new context and application to the emerging corporate finance literature on gender-based homophily. Finally, we report limited difference in the stock return synchronicity of firms covered by male and female analysts.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48027,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Financial Stability","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 101344"},"PeriodicalIF":6.1,"publicationDate":"2024-10-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142704671","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}