Eric S. Rosengren

The International Transmission of Financial Shocks: The Case of Japan

One of the more dramatic financial events of the late 1980s and early 1990s was the surge in Japanese stock prices that was immediately followed by a very sharp decline of more than 50 percent. While the unprecedented fluctuations in Japanese stock prices were domestic financial shocks, the unique institutional characteristics of the Japanese economy produce a framework that is particularly suited to the transmission of such shocks to other countries through the behavior of the Japanese banking system. The large size of Japanese bank lending operations in the United States enables us to use U.S. banking data to investigate the extent to which this domestic Japanese financial shock was transmitted to the United States, as well as to identify a supply shock to U.S. bank lending that is independent of U.S. loan demand. We find that binding risk-based capital requirements associated with the decline in the Japanese stock market resulted in a decline in commercial lending by Japanese banks in the United States that was both economically and statistically significant. This finding has added importance given the severe real estate loan problems currently faced by Japanese banks. How Japanese bank regulators decide to resolve these problems will have significant implications for credit availability in the United States as well as in other countries with a significant Japanese bank presence.

The capital crunch: neither a borrower nor a lender be

The dramatic reduction in the growth rate of bank lending associated with the 1990-91 recession, particularly in New England, has evoked claims by many observers of a credit crunch. However, because of the difficulty in determining whether the observed slow credit growth is a demand or supply phenomenon, convincing evidence of the practical importance of credit crunches for economic activity remains elusive. We overcome this obstacle by examining a cross-section of banks in New England that have experienced the same economic downturn, effectively controlling for changes in demand. We find empirical support for a capital crunch, whereby poorly capitalized institutions shrink to satisfy capital requirements. This alone is not a sufficient condition for a credit crunch. However, we find s6me additional evidence that the capital crunch may have limited credit availability in New England.

The Real Exchange Rate and Foreign Direct Investment in the United States: Relative Wealth vs. Relative Wage Effects

There has been a significant correlation between United States inward foreign direct investment and the United States real exchange rate since the 1970s. Two alternative reasons for this relationship are that the real exchange rate affects the relative cost of labor and that the real exchange rate alters relative wealth across countries. In this paper we explore these alternatives by examining the determinants of four measures of inward foreign direct investment to the United States from seven industrial countries over the period 1979 to 1991. We find strong evidence that relative wealth significantly affects U.S. inward foreign direct investment. We find no evidence that relative wages have a significant impact on the determination of U.S. foreign direct investment. These results are robust to the choice of countries in our sample and when controlling for changes in tax codes.

Bank regulation and the credit crunch

This study investigates the direct link between regulatory enforcement actions and the shrinkage of bank loans to sectors likely to be bank dependent. We focus on New England because that region has experienced both the widespread application of formal regulatory actions and substantial reductions in new lending by banks. Controlling for weakness in loan demand, previous studies have been able to attribute part of this bank shrinkage to loan supply, with the degree of a bank’s shrinkage related to its capital-to-asset ratio. In this study, we further partition the shrinkage due to loan supply into the component due to explicit regulatory enforcement actions and that due to a voluntary response by bank management to low capital-to-asset ratios. We find that banks with formal actions shrink at a significantly faster rate than those without, even after controlling for differences in capital-to-asset ratios. Furthermore, much of the reduced lending has been in loan categories containing primarily bank-dependent borrowers, indicating that the capital crunch has resulted in a credit crunch.

Bank consolidation and small business lending: it's not just bank size that matters

Concern with the potential effect of bank mergers on small business lending has stemmed from a belief that larger acquirers may be less willing than their smaller targets to be active in the small business lending market. However, we find that in roughly half the commercial and savings bank mergers of the past three years, the acquirer has a larger portfolio share of small business loans than its target; moreover, the most common acquirer of small banks is another small bank. The empirical results support the hypothesis that acquirers tend to recast the target in their own image, causing small business loan portfolio shares of the consolidated bank to converge toward the pre-merger portfolio share of the acquirer. Since acquirers are almost as likely to have larger as smaller shares of small business loans in their portfolios, compared to their targets, this suggests that not all mergers will shrink small business lending; many will actually increase it.

The poor performance of foreign bank subsidiaries: Were the problems acquired or created?

We examine foreign acquisitions of United States banks around the time of the ownership change to determine whether the observed poor performance of foreign subsidiaries is the result of changes in business strategy or the preexisting characteristics of the target bank. We find that many of the problems were already present at the time of acquisition. However, changes in business strategy by the foreign owners were generally not successful in raising the bankss performance level to that of its domestic peers.

Identifying the Macroeconomic Effect of Loan Supply Shocks

Evidence of an operative credit channel has been inconclusive. The inability to clearly distinguish the effects of shocks to loan supply from those to loan demand has made it difficult to quantify the importance of this transmission mechanism to the economy. This paper provides an innovative approach to identifying loan supply shocks that enables us to show that such disturbances have had economically important effects on the U.S. economy over the past two decades. We provide three different pieces of evidence that confirm that loan supply shocks have been successfully isolated from shifts in loan demand: Our measure is particularly important for explaining inventory movements, the component of GDP most likely to be sensitive to shifts in bank loan supply; the effect is present even during periods of strong loan demand; and the effect does not dissipate quickly, as would be the case for demand shocks.

Capital and Risk: New Evidence on Implications of Large Operational Losses

Operational risk is currently receiving significant media attention, as financial scandals have appeared regularly and multiple events have exceeded one billion dollars in total impact. Regulators have also been devoting attention to this risk, and are finalizing proposals that would require banks to hold capital for potential operational losses. This paper uses newly available loss data to model operational risk at internationally active banks. Our results suggest that the amount of capital held for operational risk will often exceed capital held for market risk, and that the largest banks could choose to allocate several billion dollars in capital to operational risk. In addition to capital allocation decisions, our findings should have a direct impact on the compensation and investment models used by large firms, as well as on the optimal allocation of risk management resources.

Bank Real Estate Lending and the New England Capital Crunch

The stock of real estate loans held by New England banks has declined dramatically. Given the limited potential for real estate investments, weak demand for real estate loans is to be expected. However, supply as well as demand factors may account for some of the decline in bank real estate loans. This paper documents that bank lending for real estate may have been constrained by a capital crunch, whereby poorly capitalized banks shrank their assets, including real estate loans, to satisfy capital requirements. Because the loss of bank capital is so widespread in New England, bank-dependent borrowers may have difficulty obtaining real estate financing. Copyright American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.

Does the federal reserve possess an exploitable informational advantage

This paper provides evidence that the Federal Reserve has an informational advantage over the public that can be exploited to improve activist monetary policy. The informational advantage derives from the Fed?s role as a bank supervisor, and it is shown to be of sufficient duration to be effective in guiding activist monetary policy, even in simple rational expectations models. The informational superiority does not result from the Fed having earlier access to publicly released data about the financial condition of banks. Instead, this informational advantage is generated by confidential supervisory knowledge about troubled, non-publicly traded banks. As a result, this information can remain confidential for an extended period of time because these banks do not have an incentive to fully disclose publicly the extent of their financial troubles, and, since they are not publicly traded, are not required to do so. The improvement in forecasts using this confidential information is both statistically significant and economically important, providing a potential justification for activist monetary policy.