Friederike Niepmann

Banking across Borders with Heterogeneous Banks

Individual banks differ substantially in their foreign operations. This paper introduces heterogeneous banks into a general equilibrium framework of banking across borders to explain the documented variation. While the model matches existing micro and macro evidence, novel and unexplored predictions of the theory are also strongly supported by the data: The efficiency of the least efficient bank active in a host country increases the greater the impediments to banking across borders and the efficiency of the banking sector in the host country. There is also evidence of a tradeoff between proximity and fixed costs in banking. Banks hold more assets and liabilities in foreign affiliates relative to cross-border positions if the target country is further away and the cost of foreign direct investment is low. These results suggest that fixed costs play a crucial role in the foreign activities of banks.

International Banking and Cross-Border Effects of Regulation: Lessons from the United States

Domestic prudential regulation can have unintended effects across borders and may be less effective in an environment where banks operate globally. Using U.S. micro-banking data for the first quarter of 2000 through the third quarter of 2013, this study shows that some regulatory changes indeed spill over. First, a foreign country’s tightening of limits on loan-to-value ratios and local currency reserve requirements increase lending growth in the United States through the U.S. branches and subsidiaries of foreign banks. Second, a foreign tightening of capital requirements shifts lending by U.S. global banks away from the country where the tightening occurs to the United States and to other countries. Third, tighter U.S. capital regulation reduces lending by large U.S. global banks to foreign residents.

What determines the composition of international bank flows

This paper studies how frictions to foreign bank operations affect the sectoral composition of banks’ foreign positions, their funding sources and international bank flows. It presents a parsimonious model of banking across borders, which is matched to bank-level data and used to quantify cross-border frictions. The counterfactual analysis shows how higher barriers to foreign bank entry alter the composition of international bank flows and may reverse the direction of net interbank flows. It also highlights that interbank lending and lending to non-banking firms respond differently to changes in foreign and domestic conditions. Ultimately, the analysis suggests that policies that change cross-border banking frictions and, thereby, the composition of banks’ foreign activities affect how shocks are transmitted across borders.