Michael Koetter

Enjoying the Quiet Life under Deregulation? Evidence from Adjusted Lerner Indices for U.S. Banks

The quiet life hypothesis posits that firms with market power incur inefficiencies rather than reap monopolistic rents. We propose a simple adjustment to Lerner indices to account for the possibility of forgone rents to test this hypothesis. For a large sample of U.S. commercial banks, we find that adjusted Lerner indices are significantly larger than conventional Lerner indices and trending upward over time. Instrumental variable regressions reject the quiet life hypothesis for cost inefficiencies. However, Lerner indices adjusted for profit inefficiencies reveal a quiet life among U.S. banks.

Effects of heterogeneity on bank efficiency scores

Bank efficiency estimates often serve as a proxy of managerial skill since they quantify sub-optimal production choices. But such deviations can also be due to omitted systematic differences among banks. In this study, we examine the effects of heterogeneity on bank efficiency scores. We compare different specifications of a stochastic cost and alternative profit frontier model with a baseline specification. After conducting a specification test, we discuss heterogeneity effects on efficiency levels, ranks and the tails of the efficiency distribution. We find that heterogeneity controls influence both banks optimal costs and profits and their ability to be efficient. Differences in efficiency scores are important for more than only methodological reasons. First, different ways of accounting for heterogeneity result in estimates of foregone profits and additional costs that are significantly different from what we infer from our general specification. Second, banks are significantly re-ranked when their efficiency is estimated with a specification other than the preferred, general specification. Third, the general specification gives the most reliable estimates of the probability of distress, although differences to the other specifications are low.

Handling Losses in Translog Profit Models

In this article, we compare standard approaches used to handle losses in logarithmic profit models with a simple novel approach. We estimate translog stochastic profit frontiers, and discuss discriminatory power, rank stability and the precision of Profit Efficiency (PE) scores. Contrary to existing methods, our approach does not result in a loss of observations. Our new method enhances rank stability and discriminatory power, and improves the precision of PE scores.

The Cost Efficiency of German Banks: A Comparison of Sfa and DEA

We investigate the consistency of efficiency scores derived with two competing frontier methods in the financial economics literature: Stochastic Frontier and Data Envelopment Analysis. We sample 34,192 observations for all German universal banks and analyze whether efficiency measures yield consistent results according to five criteria between 1993 and 2004: levels, rankings, identification of extreme performers, stability over time and correlation to standard accounting-based measures of performance. We find that non-parametric methods are particularly sensitive to measurement error and outliers. Furthermore, our results show that accounting for systematic differences among commercial, cooperative and savings banks is important to avoid misinterpretation about the status of efficiency of the total banking sector. Finally, despite ongoing fundamental changes in Europe?s largest banking system, efficiency rank stability is very high in the short run. However, we also find that annually estimated efficiency scores are markedly less stable over a period of twelve years, in particular for parametric methods. Thus, the implicit assumption of serial independence of bank production in most methods has an important influence on obtained efficiency rankings.

Does Regional Redistribution Spur Growth

After the German reunification, interregional subsidies accounted for approximately four percent of gross fixed capital investment in the new federal states. We show that between 1992 and 2005 infrastructure and (small) business aid had a negative net impact on regional economic growth. This suggests that regional redistribution was ineffective, potentially due to a lack of spatial concentration to create growth poles.

Slippery slopes of stress: ordered failure events in German banking

Outright bank failures without prior indication of financial instability are very rare. Supervisory authorities monitor banks constantly. Thus, they usually obtain early warning signals that precede ultimate failure and, in fact, banks can be regarded as troubled to varying degrees before outright closure. But to our knowledge virtually all studies that predict bank failures neglect the ordinal nature of bank distress. Exploiting the distress database of the Deutsche Bundesbank we distinguish four different distress events that banks experience. Only the worst entails a bank to exit the market. Weaker orders of distress are, first, compulsory notifications of the authorities about potential problems, second, corrective actions such as warnings and hearings and, third, actions by banking pillars insurance schemes. Since the four categories of hazard functions are not proportional, we specify a generalized ordered logit model to estimate the respective probabilities of distress simultaneously. Our model estimates each set of probabilities with high accuracy and confirms, first, the necessity to account for different kinds of distress events and, second, the violation of the proportional odds assumption implicit in most limited dependent analyses of bank failure.

An Assessment of Bank Merger Success in Germany

Abstract German banks have experienced a merger wave since the early 1990s. However, the success of bank mergers remains a continuous matter of debate.This paper suggests a taxonomy to evaluate post-merger performance on the basis of cost and profit efficiency (CE and PE). I identify successful mergers as those that fulfill simultaneously two criteria. First, merged institutes must exhibit efficiency levels above the average of non-merging banks. Second, banks must exhibit efficiency changes between merger and evaluation year above efficiency changes of nonmerging banks. I assess the post-merger performance up to 11 years after the mergers and relate it to the transfer of skills, the adequacy to merge distressed banks and the role of geographical distance. Roughly every second merger is a success in terms of either CE or PE. The margin of success in terms of CE is narrow, as efficiency differentials between merging and non-merging banks are around 1 and 2 percentage points. PE performance is slightly larger. More importantly, mergers boost in particular the change in PE, thus indicating persistent improvements of merging banks to improve the ability to generate profits.

The Effects of Privatization and Consolidation on Bank Productivity: Comparative Evidence from Italy and Germany

The Italian and German banking systems shared similar characteristics early in the 1990s but have evolved in different directions since then: Italy privatized its publicly-owned banks while Germany has maintained a large share of state-owned savings banks. Contemporaneously, banks in both markets engaged heavily in mergers and acquisitions. We analyze how these activities have affected banks productivity in the period 1994-2004, differentiating between technical change, efficiency change and scale economies. We find that privatized banks experienced a significant increase in productivity, especially if they subsequently merged with other banks. German banks were still able to increase their productivity through consolidation.

Recovery Determinants of Distressed Banks: Regulators, Market Discipline, or the Environment?

Based on detailed regulatory intervention data among German banks during 1994-2008, we test if supervisory measures affect the likelihood and the timing of bank recovery. Severe regulatory measures increase both the likelihood of recovery and its duration while weak measures are insignificant. Results seem not to be driven by regulators directing measures to particularly bad banks. That is, our results remain intact when we exclude banks that eventually exit the market due to restructuring mergers or moratoria. More transparent publication requirements of public incorporation that indicate more exposure to market discipline are barely or not at all significant. Increasing earnings and cleaning credit portfolios are consistently of importance to increase recovery likelihood, whereas earnings growth accelerates the timing of recovery. Macroeconomic conditions also matter for bank recovery. Hence, concerted micro- and macro-prudential policies are key to facilitate distressed bank recovery.

Did TARP Distort Competition Among Sound Unsupported Banks

This study investigates if the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) distorted price competition in U.S. banking. Political indicators reveal bailout expectations after 2009, manifested as beliefs about the predicted probability of receiving equity support relative to failing during the TARP disbursement period. In addition, the TARP affected the competitive conduct of unsupported banks after the program stopped in the fourth quarter of 2009. Loan rates were higher, and the risk premium required by depositors was lower for banks with higher bailout expectations. The interest margins of unsupported banks increased in the immediate aftermath of the TARP disbursement but not after 2010. No effects emerged for loan or deposit growth, which suggests that protected banks did not increase their market shares at the expense of less protected banks.