Neeltje van Horen

Running for the Exit? International Bank Lending During a Financial Crisis

The global financial crisis and the related sharp reduction in cross-border credit have reignited the debate about the risks of financial globalization. We use loan-level data on lending by the largest international banks to their various countries of operation to examine how banks reduced cross-border credit after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Country-, firm-, and bank-fixed effects allow us to disentangle credit supply and demand and to simultaneously control for the unobserved traits of banks as well as the countries and firms they lend to. We document substantial heterogeneity in the extent to which different banks retrenched from the same country: there was no blanket ‘run for the exit’. Instead, banks reduced credit less to markets that were geographically close; where they had more lending experience; where they operated a subsidiary; and where they were integrated into a network of domestic co-lenders. Deeper financial integration is associated with more stable cross-border credit during times of crisis.

Running for the Exit: International Banks and Crisis Transmission

The global financial crisis has reignited the debate about the risks of financial globalization, in particular the international transmission of financial shocks. We use data on individual loans by the largest international banks to their various countries of operation to examine whether banks’ access to borrower information affected the transmission of the financial shock across borders. The simultaneous use of country- and bank-fixed effects allows us to disentangle credit supply and demand and to control for general bank characteristics. We find that during the crisis banks continued to lend more to countries that are geographically close, where they are integrated into a network of domestic co-lenders, and where they had gained experience by building relationships with (repeat) borrowers.

The Impact of Sovereign Debt Exposure on Bank Lending: Evidence from the European Debt Crisis

Using loan-level data, we find that syndicated lending by European banks with sizeable balance sheet exposures to impaired sovereign debt was negatively affected after the start of the euro area sovereign debt crisis. We also observe a reallocation away from foreign (especially US) markets. The overall reduction in lending is not driven by changes in borrower demand and/or quality, or by other types of shocks to bank balance sheets. The slowdown in lending is lower for banks that reduced their debt holdings in the later stages programs.

Impact of Foreign Banks

This paper provides a critical assessment of the costs and benefits of foreign bank ownership. It reviews the extensive literature on the impact of foreign banks and uses a unique database on bank ownership, covering 129 countries, to (re-)examine a number of the issues discussed. It documents (changes in) foreign bank presence between 1995 and 2009, highlighting important differences across host and home countries and strong bilateral patterns. It finds that foreign banks tend to outperform domestic banks in developing countries, countries with weak institutions and where foreign banks do not play a major role. In addition, being from a geographically close home country increases the profitability of foreign banks. In terms of impact, it shows that foreign banks can deter domestic financial sector development in developing countries, countries with weak institutions and where foreign banks play a minor role. Examining the impact of foreign banks on financial stability, it finds that during the global crisis, foreign banks reduced credit more compared to domestic banks in countries where they had a small role, but not when dominant or funded locally. These findings show that, when analyzing the impact of foreign bank presence accounting for heterogeneity, including bilateral ownership, is crucial.

When arm's length is too far. Relationship banking over the business cycle

Using a novel way to identify relationship and transaction banks, we study how banks’ lending techniques affect funding to SMEs over the business cycle. For 21 countries we link the lending techniques that banks use in the direct vicinity of firms to these firms’ credit constraints at two contrasting points of the business cycle. We show that relationship lending alleviates credit constraints during a cyclical downturn but not during a boom period. The positive impact of relationship lending in an economic downturn is strongest for smaller and more opaque firms and in regions where the downturn is more severe.

Emerging Market Liquidity and Crises

Whereas conventional wisdom argues that markets shut down during crises, with sellers struggling to find buyers, we find that markets continue to operate during financial turmoil, even in narrow and volatile emerging economies. Simple event studies indicate that both trading volume and trading costs increase in crisis times. Prices change more with each dollar transacted (pushing the Amihud illiquidity measure up) and bid-ask spreads widen. More generally, econometric estimates show that large price downturns, typical of crises, are associated with higher trading activity and increased trading costs, with trading activity declining only later as crises progress. Thus, while trading activity tends to be negatively related to trading costs during tranquil times (and across securities), this relation appears to break down during crises. These results are consistent with the analytical literature on portfolio rebalancing by heterogeneous agents in times of crises.

Trade Credit as a Competitiveness Tool;Evidence from Developing Countries

Statistics show that the sale of goods on credit is widespread among firms even when they are financially constrained and thus face relatively high costs in providing trade credit. A possible explanation for this is the use of trade credit as a competitiveness tool. By analyzing both the impact of customer as well as producer market power on a firms decision to provide trade credit, we examine whether trade credit is indeed used as a way to lock in customers by firms in developing countries. Using a new dataset containing a large number of firms in 42 developing countries, we find strong evidence that an important driving force behind the decision to provide trade credit is the urge to be competitive. This especially holds for those firms that still have to establish a solid market reputation and for firms located in countries with an underdeveloped banking sector.

International Financial Integration through the Law of One Price

The authors argue that the cross-market premium (the ratio between the domestic and the international market price of cross-listed stocks) provides a valuable measure of international financial integration, reflecting accurately the factors that segment markets and inhibit price arbitrage. Applying to equity markets recent methodological developments in the purchasing power parity literature, they show that nonlinear Threshold Autoregressive (TAR) models properly capture the behavior of the cross market premium. The estimates reveal the presence of narrow non-arbitrage bands and indicate that price differences outside these bands are rapidly arbitraged away, much faster than what has been documented for good markets. Moreover, the authors find that financial integration increases with market liquidity. Capital controls, when binding, contribute to segment financial markets by widening the non-arbitrage bands and making price disparities more persistent. Crisis episodes are associated withhigher volatility, rather than by more persistent deviations from the law of one price.

The Crisis as a Wake-Up Call- Do Banks Tighten Screening and Monitoring During a Financial Crisis?

To what extent was the credit contraction during the global financial crisis due to more intense screening and monitoring by banks? We address this question by analyzing changes in the structure of a large number of syndicated loans to private, non-financial corporations. We find an increase in retention rates among syndicate arrangers during the crisis that we cannot explain by borrower risk or interbank liquidity alone. This increased ‘skin in the game’ is especially pronounced when information asymmetries between the borrower and the lending syndicate – or within the syndicate – are high. This indicates that the reduction in bank lending during the crisis was at least partly caused by stricter bank screening and monitoring: a wake-up call.

Customer Market Power and the Provision of Trade Credit: Evidence from Eastern Europe and Central Asia

Statistics show that the sale of goods on credit is widespread among firms even when they are capital constrained and thus face relatively high costs in providing trade credit. This study provides an explanation for this by arguing that customers that possess strong market power are able to increase their customer surplus by demanding to purchase the goods on credit. This gain in customer surplus increases with the degree of asymmetric information between buyer and seller with respect to product quality. Therefore, firms that are perceived as risky are especially subject to the market power of the customer and have to sell their goods on credit. Using detailed firm-level data from a large number of firms in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, this paper finds evidence consistent with this hypothesis. We find a strong positive correlation between customer market power and trade credit provision. Furthermore, this relationship is especially strong when the supplier is more risky and in countries with limited financial sector development or weak legal system.