Hendrik Hakenes

Competition, Risk-Shifting,and Public Bail-out Policies

This paper empirically investigates the effect of government bail-out policies on banks outside the safety net. We construct a measure of bail-out perceptions by using rating information. From there, we construct the market shares of insured competitor banks for any given bank, and analyze the impact of this variable on banks’ risk-taking behavior, using a large sample of banks from OECD countries. Our results suggest that government guarantees strongly increase the risk-taking of competitor banks. In contrast, there is no evidence that public guarantees increase the protected banks’ risk-taking, except for banks that have outright public ownership. These results have important implications for the effects of the recent wave of bank bail-outs on banks’ risk-taking behavior.

Bank Size and Risk-Taking Under Basel II

This paper discusses the relationship between bank size and risk-taking under Pillar I of the New Basel Capital Accord. Using a model with imperfect competition and moral hazard, we find that small banks (and hence small borrowers) may profit from the introduction of an internal ratings based (IRB) approach if this approach is applied uniformly across banks. However, the banks right to choose between the standardized and the IRB approaches unambiguously hurts small banks, and pushes them towards higher risk-taking due to fiercer competition. This may even lead to higher aggregate risk in the economy.

Banks without parachutes: Competitive effects of government bail-out policies

We analyze the competitive effects of government bail-out policies in two models with different degrees of transparency in the banking sector. Our main result is that bail-outs lead to higher risk-taking among the protected banks competitors, independently of transparency. The reason is that the prospect of a bail-out induces the protected bank to expand, which intensifies competition in the deposit market, depresses other banks margins, and thereby increases risk-taking incentives. Contrary to conventional wisdom, protected banks may take lower risks when transparency in the banking sector is low and the deposit supply is sufficiently elastic.

Credit Risk Transfer and Bank Competition

We present a banking model with imperfect competition in which borrowers’ access to credit is improved when banks are able to transfer credit risks. However, the market for credit risk transfer (CRT) works smoothly only if the quality of loans is public information. If the quality of loans is private information, banks have an incentive to grant unprofitable loans in order to transfer them to other parties, leading to an increase in aggregate risk. Nevertheless, the introduction of CRT generally increases welfare in our setup. However, under private information, higher competition induces an expansion of loans to unprofitable firms, which in the limit offsets the welfare gains from CRT completely.

Banks without Parachutes -- Competitive Effects of Government Bail-out Policies

The explicit or implicit protection of banks through government bail-out policies is a universal phenomenon. We analyze the competitive effects of such policies in two models with different degrees of transparency in the banking sector. Our main result is that the bail-out policy unambiguously leads to higher risk-taking at those banks that do not enjoy a bail-out guarantee. The reason is that the prospect of a bail-out induces the protected bank to expand, thereby intensifying competition in the deposit market and depressing other banks margins. In contrast, the effects on the protected banks risk-taking and on welfare depend on the transparency of the banking sector.

The Threat of Capital Drain: A Rationale for Public Banks?

This paper yields a rationale for why subsidized public banks may be desirable from a regional perspective in a financially integrated economy. We present a model with credit rationing and heterogeneous regions in which public banks prevent a capital drain from poorer to richer regions by subsidizing local depositors, for example, through a public guarantee. Under some conditions, cooperative banks can perform the same function without any subsidization; however, they may be crowded out by public banks. We also discuss the impact of the political structure on the emergence of public banks in a political-economy setting and the role of interregional mobility.

Looting and risk shifting in banking crises

We construct a model of the banking firm with inside and outside equity and use it to study bank behavior and regulatory policy during crises. In our model, a bank can increase the risk of its asset portfolio (“risk shift”), convert bank assets to the personal benefit of the bank manager (“loot”), or do both. A regulator has three policy tools: it can restrict the bankʼs investment choices; it can make looting more costly; and it can force banks to hold more equity. Capital regulation may increase looting, and in extreme cases even risk shifting. Looting penalties reduce both looting and risk-shifting.

The Threat of Capital Drain: A Rationale for Regional Public Banks?

This paper yields a rationale for why subsidized public banks may increase regional welfare in a financially integrated economy. We present a model with credit rationing and heterogeneous regions in which public banks prevent a capital drain from poorer to richer regions by subsidizing local depositors, for example, through public guarantees. Under some conditions, cooperative banks can perform the same function without any subsidies; however, they may be crowded out by public banks. We also discuss the influence of the political structure on the emergence of public banks in simple political-economy settings and the role of interregional mobility.

The politician and his banker — How to efficiently grant state aid

Politicians should spend money as efficiently as possible. But what is the best method of granting state aid to firms? We use a theoretical model with firms that differ in their success probabilities and compare different types of direct subsidies with indirect subsidies through bank loans. We find that, for a large range of parameters, subsidies through banks entail higher social welfare than direct subsidies, avoiding windfall gains to entrepreneurs and economizing on screening costs. For selfish politicians, subsidizing a bank has the additional advantage that part of the screening costs are born by private banks. Consequently, from a welfare perspective, politicians use subsidized banks inefficiently often.

From poverty measurement to the measurement of downside risk

Abstract It is well known that a close relation between the measurement of inequality and the measurement of risk exists. We demonstrate a similar relation between measures of poverty and downside risk, respectively. Based on properties of poverty measures, a number of axioms for reasonable downside risk measures is suggested and applied to the class of decomposable indices, which includes the lower partial moments as special cases. In a more general perspective, the paper enables those interested in measuring the downside risk of distributions to build upon the wealth of literature on poverty measurement when looking for suitable indices.