Mikhail Mamonov

Stress Test: Will Russian Banks Need New Government Support?

The article analyzes factors affecting growth of the share of nonperforming loans in the loan portfolios of Russian banks. Using the results of stress tests of Russian banks, the authors assess their potential capital needs in 2010 and estimate the share of government assistance in capital injections. The authors also define the scale of vulnerable bank groups in the Russian banking sector.

Bad Management, Skimping, or Both? The Relationship between Cost Efficiency and Loan Quality in Russian Banks

This paper investigates the relationship between operating cost efficiency and the loan quality of Rus-sian banks. It tries to answer the question whether it is always beneficial for banks to be highly cost effi-cient (the “bad management” hypothesis) or whether this higher cost efficiency could mean inadequate spending on borrower screening, which could subject banks to higher credit risk exposures in the future (the “skimping” hypothesis)? Our main result implies that, while the “bad management” hypothesis holds on average for the banking sector as a whole, the “skimping” hypothesis could be the case for those Russian banks that are not just highly cost efficient, as predicted by Berger and DeYoung (1997) for US banks, but that at the same time pursue aggressive strategies in the market for loans to house-holds and non-financial firms, especially during the pre-crisis periods when banks are too optimistic to pay increased attention to the quality of borrowers in order to extract higher profits in the short run. In-terestingly, we show that the “skimping” strategy is not the case for those Russian banks that demon-strate a lower equity-to-assets ratio and that are highly cost efficient at the same time because, as we be-lieve, higher financial leverage forces these banks to filter out low quality borrowers to be able to repay borrowed funds. From perspective of regulatory policy, these conclusions provide clear arguments in favor of differential prudential regulation in Russia, which could, if being implemented, positively affect the loan quality of both banks that are skimpers (through restricting loans growth by higher capital ade-quacy requirements and/or increased payments to the Russian Deposit Insurance Agency) and banks that are not (through eliminating incentives to grow too fast), thus improving the stability of the banking sector as a whole

Price interactions in the Russian credit market: Who is fighting whom and when do banks facilitate collusion?

This paper analyzes how banks react on the interest rate policy of their rivals when the industry-wide price competition is strengthening over different phases of business cycle in both retail and corporate segments of credit market in Russia. Our estimations, based on the models proposed in the literature on New Industrial Empirical Organization (NIEO), show that price wars are taking place from time to time in the retail as well as in the corporate segments of Russian credit market; more often — in periods of macroeconomic crisis, and are started by the banks from the top-30 group (in terms of assets, excluding Sberbank), the most warlike group within the Russian banking system. During the non-crisis periods banks are turning to facilitate collusions. The retail segment of credit market appears to be significantly more competitive as compared to the corporate one.

The Cult of Cash in Russia

The authors survey the types of cashless payments, explain their advantages and disadvantages, analyze the factors that promote and impede their use in Russia, and consider how monetary and credit policy and technical measures can facilitate the transition from cash to cashless payment.