Mustafa Disli

Are Islamic Banks Subject to Depositor Discipline

We look at market discipline in the Islamic deposit market of Turkey for the period after the 2000 crisis. We find support for quantity based disciplining of Islamic banks through the capital ratio. The evidence for price disciplining is, however, less convincing. In addition, we also look at the effect of the deposit insurance reform in which the dual deposit insurance was revised and all banks were put under the same deposit insurance company in December 2005. We observe that the reform increased quantity based disciplining in the Turkish Islamic deposit market.

Bank lending channel in a dual banking system: Why are Islamic banks so responsive?

We examine the interest rate sensitivity of both deposits and credits at Islamic and con- ventional banks in Turkey. We find that the bank lending channel is especially operative for Islamic banks. Impulse responses for conventional and Islamic banks reveal that Islamic bank depositors’ sensitivity to policy rate changes are substantially larger than that of con- ventional bank depositors. Next to heavily dependence on deposit funding, we consider that inertia in Islamic bank deposit rates impedes these banks to keep those depositors who con- sider the opportunity cost of monetary policy rates is unbearable. At the lending side, we obtain similar results, implying that tight monetary policy leads to a larger contraction in Islamic bank credits. This finding is a reflection of the favorable attitude of Islamic banks towards SME financing. When similar relationships are analysed for currency and inflation shocks, we again find larger responses for Islamic banks showing the cyclical nature of SME credits.

FINANCIAL CRISIS, MACROPRUDENTIAL POLICIES AND DEPOSITOR DISCIPLINE

This paper examines to what extent macroprudential policies in the Turkish banking sector affected the functioning of depositor discipline. Our results suggest that depositors’ responses for poor bank performance get stronger after the 2008 crisis, when various macroprudential measures were implemented to preserve financial stability. In the aftermath of the crisis, bank behavior toward depositors also alters. Ahead of the crisis, banks did not significantly respond to the discipline exerted by depositors, however, banks begin offering higher rates to curb deposit withdrawals afterwards. Our findings suggest that the implementation of macroprudential tools seem to have a positive impact on financial stability, since, in the post-2008 period, regulatory supervision have been more firmly assisted by the market.

Bank Rebranding and Depositor Loyalty

We analyze how rebranding affects depositor discipline in a sample of Turkish banks. Depositor discipline refers to the empirical regularity that banks with higher capitalization attract more deposits at lower cost. Bank rebranding tends to increase depositor discipline, especially when there is only a small cosmetic change to the name. Rebranding a Turkish named bank into a foreign named one is associated with increased depositor discipline. In a similar manner, depositor discipline tends to decrease in the short-run if the bank rebrands from a foreign name to a Turkish one. These results suggest the presence of depositor ethnocentrism. Our main findings are robust to controls for major ownership changes and for selection effects.

Bank Competition and Outreach: Evidence from Turkey

In light of the importance of banking sector outreach and given concerns that competition may adversely affect it, this study explores the empirical linkage between banking structure and outreach in Turkey for the period 1988-2010. Bank-, province-, and bank-province-level estimation results indicate that competition is in general conducive to the outreach of banks. We do not find evidence for collusive behavior among banks when they have multimarket contact. At the province level, the presence of foreign-owned banks is associated with higher outreach, while at the bank-province level, we observe that outreach of domestic banks exceeds that of foreign banks. Together, these results suggest that there are procompetitive spillover effects from foreign banks to their domestic counterparts.

Macroeconomic shocks and Islamic bank behavior in Turkey

Events such as the ‘credit crunch’, ‘bank run’, ‘financial contagion’, ‘flight to quality’ and ‘systemic risks’ have widely transpired in recent times. One important dimension permeating these events is the dynamic link between macroeconomic shocks and banks’ behaviour. Economic crises experienced by five East Asian countries in the late 1990s were accompanied by financial sector problems. The Great Recession of the late 2000s also corresponded to heightened solvency risks affecting over-leveraged banks and financial institutions in many developed countries. In a world of imperfect information, adverse macroeconomic shocks could weaken firms’ balance sheets, diminish bank capital and trigger financial disintermediation. Positive shocks, on the contrary, could increase firms’ net worth and prompt additional bank lending. Understanding the nature of this interaction offers regulators, supervisors, firms and households valuable insights into the process of policymaking, financial intermediation and responding to boom and bust cycles in the economy.