Andre Santos

Subsidiaries or Branches; Does One Size Fit All?

The paper examines the relative advantages of different organizational structures for cross-border banking groups and their home and host countries, and discusses the factors influencing a banking group’s choice of branch versus subsidiaries, as well as the financial stability implications for home and host countries. It concludes that, given the diversity of business lines and the varying stages of financial development of different countries, there is no one optimal structure for cross-border expansion. It also notes that, in the absence of an effective cross-border resolution framework, resolving cross-border banking groups organized as subsidiaries may be less costly or destabilizing than resolving groups organized as branches. The ultimate key to financial stability, however, lies in the design of mechanisms that ensure effective oversight and orderly resolution of banks, both at a national and global level. Achieving this objective would reduce financial stability risks of home and host countries and allow banks to organize themselves in a way that best fits their business models.

Estimating the Costs of Financial Regulation

1 We are grateful for the guidance and comments provided and other colleagues in the Monetary and Capital Market Department. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors.

Assessing the Cost of Financial Regulation

This study assesses the overall impact on credit of the financial regulatory reforms in Europe, Japan, and the United States. Long-term cost estimates are provided for Basel III capital and liquidity requirements, derivatives reforms, and higher taxes and fees. Overall, average lending rates in the base case would rise by 18 bps in Europe, 8 bps in Japan, and 28 bps in the United States. These results are similar to the official BIS assessments of Basel III and an OECD analysis, but lower as a result of including expense cuts and reductions in the returns required by investors. As a result, they are markedly lower than those of the IIF.

Recent Advances in Credit Risk Modeling

As is well known, most models of credit risk have failed to measure the credit risks in the context of the global financial crisis. In this context, financial industry representatives, regulators and academics worldwide have given new impetus to efforts to improve credit risk modeling for countries, corporations, financial institutions, and financial instruments. The paper summarizes some of the recent advances in this regard. It considers modifications of structural models, including of the classical Merton model, and efforts to reconcile the structural and the reduced-form models. It also discusses the reassessment of the default correlations using copulas, the pricing of credit index options, and the determination of the prices of distressed debt and estimation of recovery values.

Currency Mismatches and Corporate Default Risk: Modeling, Measurement, and Surveillance Applications

Currency mismatches in corporate balance sheets have been singled out as an important factor underlying the severity of recent financial crises. We propose several structural models for measuring default risk for firms with currency mismatches in their asset/liability structure. The proposed models can be adapted to different exchange rate regimes, are analytically tractable, and can be estimated using available equity price and balance sheet data. The paper provides a detailed explanation on how to calibrate the models and discusses two applications to financial surveillance: the measurement of systematic risk in the corporate sector and the estimation of prudential leverage ratios consistent with regulatory capital ratios in the banking sector.

Are Mexican Business Cycles Asymmetrical

We use the regime-switching econometric models in Hamilton (1989) and Filardo (1994) to study business cycles in Mexico. In particular, we characterize the ups and downs of economic activity in Mexico. As a proxy for economic activity, we use the Mexican quarterly industrial production index from the second quarter of 1972 to the third quarter of 1999. We allow the transition probabilities driving changes in economic activity to be a function of fiscal, financial, and external sector indicators. Our results show that recessions in Mexico are deeper and shorter than expansions.

Puttable and Extendible Bonds : Developing Interest Rate Derivatives for Emerging Markets

This paper analyzes the price stabilizing properties of puttable and extendible bonds, their potential to help develop interest-rate derivative markets, and their use by governments. Their stabilizing properties imply that, when bond prices fall, prices for puttable and extendible bonds fall by less. Their embedded options work as a cushion and replicate the trading gains from hedging long-term bonds with interest rate derivatives. These bonds can help develop interest-rate derivative markets in developing countries and eventually increase demand for long-term government bonds. Informal evidence from OECD countries suggests that these bonds were useful in the 1980s, when interest rates were volatile.

Public Debt Sustainability and Management in a Compound Option Framework

This paper introduces the Asset and Liability Management (ALM) compound option model. The model builds on the observation that the public sector net worth in a multi-period setting corresponds to the value of an option on an option on total government assets. Hence, the ALM compound option model is better suited for analyzing and evaluating the risk profile of public debt than existing one-period models, and is especially useful for analyzing the soundness of exit strategies from the large fiscal expansions undertaken by G-20 countries in the wake of the recent financial crisis. As an illustration, the model is used to analyze the risk profile and sustainability of Australias public debt under different policies.

The Impact of Oil Prices on the Banking System in the GCC

This paper examines the links between global oil price movements and macroeconomic and financial developments in the GCC. Using a range of multivariate panel approaches, including a panel vector autoregression approach, it finds strong empirical evidence of feedback loops between oil price movements, bank balance sheets, and asset prices. Empirical evidence also suggests that bank capital and provisioning have behaved countercyclically through the cycle.

Integrated Ownership and Control in the GCC Corporate Sector

The objective of the paper is to assess ownership and control links in the GCC corporate sector. The analysis focuses on the integrated ownership and network arising from ownership data available in Bloomberg and GCC stock exchanges. The paper finds that ownership is concentrated in GCC public sector institutions, holding companies, financial institutions, and family groups. The paper then considers the effect of different definitions of control on the distribution of consolidated debt. Debt concentration is maximized when the wedge between ownership and control is the largest. This is the case when the largest shareholder has at least 5 percent of total shares as defined in Zingales (1994).