Alexei Karas

Are Private Banks More Efficient than Public Banks? Evidence from Russia

We study whether bank efficiency is related to bank ownership in Russia. We find that foreign banks are more efficient than domestic private banks and - surprisingly - that domes-tic private banks are not more efficient than domestic public banks. These results are not driven by the choice of production process, the banks environment, managements risk preferences. the banks activity mix or size, or the econometric approach. The evidence in fnicl suggests that domestic public banks arc more efficient than domestic private banks and that the efficiency gap between these two ownership types did not narrow after the introduction of deposit insurance in 2004. This may be due to increased switching costs or to the moral hazard effects of deposit insurance. The policy conclusion is that the efficiency of the Russian banking system may benefit more from increased levels of competition and greater access of foreign banks than from bank privatization. JEL classification: G21; P30; P34; P52 Keywords: Bank efficiency; state ownership; foreign ownership; Russia

Are private banks more efficient than public banks

We study whether bank efficiency is related to bank ownership in Russia. We find that foreign banks are more efficient than domestic private banks and, surprisingly, that domestic private banks are not more efficient than domestic public banks. These results are not driven by the choice of production process, the bank’s environment, management’s risk preferences, the bank’s activity mix or size, the econometric approach, or the introduction of deposit insurance. The policy conclusion is that the efficiency of the Russian banking system may benefit more from increased levels of competition and greater access of foreign banks than from bank privatization.

Sophisticated Discipline in Nascent Deposit Markets: Evidence from Post-Communist Russia

Using a database from post-communist, pre-deposit-insurance Russia, we demonstrate the presence of quantity-based sanctioning of weaker banks by both firms and households, particularly after the financial crisis of 1998. Evidence for the standard form of price discipline, however, is notably weak. Estimating the deposit supply function, we show that, particularly for poorly capitalized banks, interest rate increases exhibit diminishing, and eventually negative, returns in terms of deposit attraction, a finding consistent with depositors interpreting the deposit rate itself as a signal of otherwise unobserved bank-level risk.

Liquidity matters: Evidence from the Russian interbank market

We suggest an additional transmission channel of contagion on the interbank market - the liquidity channel. Examining the Russian banking sector, we and that the liquidity channel contributes significantly to understanding and predicting interbank market crises. Interbank market stability Granger causes the interbank market structure, while the opposite causality is rejected. This bolsters the view that the interbank market structure is endogenous. The results corroborate the thesis that prudential regulation at the individual bank level is insufficient to prevent systemic crises. We demonstrate that liquidity injections of a classical lender of last resort can effectively mitigate coordination failures on the interbank market both in theory and practice. Apparently, liquidity does matter.

Beyond the power law : Uncovering stylized facts in interbank networks

We use daily data on bilateral interbank exposures and monthly bank balance sheets to study network characteristics of the Russian interbank market over August 1998–October 2004. Specifically, we examine the distributions of (un)directed (un)weighted degree, nodal attributes (bank assets, capital and capital-to-assets ratio) and edge weights (loan size and counterparty exposure). We search for the theoretical distribution that fits the data best and report the “best” fit parameters.

Identifying VARS Through Heterogeneity: An Application to Bank Runs

We propose to incorporate cross-sectional heterogeneity into structural VARs. Heterogeneity provides an additional dimension along which one can identify structural shocks and perform hypothesis tests. We provide an application to bank runs, based on microeconomic deposit market data. We impose identification restrictions both in the cross-section (across insured and non-insured banks) and across variables (as in macro SVARs). We thus (i) identify bank runs, (ii) quantify the contribution of competing theories, and, (iii) evaluate policies such as deposit insurance. The application suggests substantial promise for the approach and has strong policy implications.

The Effect of Deposit Insurance on Market Discipline: Evidence from a Natural Experiment on Deposit Flows

We explore how the introduction of explicit deposit insurance affects deposit flows into and out of banks of varying risk levels. Using evidence from a natural experiment in Russia, we employ a difference-in-difference estimator to isolate the change in the deposit flows of a newly insured group (households) relative to an uninsured “control” group (firms). This approach improves on earlier studies seeking to identify the effect of deposit insurance on market discipline. We find that the relative sensitivity of households to bank capitalization diminished markedly with the introduction of an insurance program covering their deposits. This was not true for firms, however. We then show the finding is not an artifact of the two groups responding differently to a minor banking crisis that arose at roughly the same time.

A ‘De Soto Effect’ in Industry? Evidence from the Russian Federation

The strengthening of land rights has been proposed as a policy to reduce financial market frictions and promote private investment in low- and middle-income countries. But assessments of these potential effects have proven inconclusive. One reason may be that research has focused on actors that face difficulties accessing credit for reasons other than the security of land tenure. We explore the effect of greater tenure security in a setting in which non-land-related financial market frictions are apt to be mild—that is, among large urban industrial enterprises. Exploiting policy variation across Russian regions and firm-level survey data, we show that private land rights facilitate credit access and promote investment.