Tobias Körner

Public Ownership of Banks and Economic Growth

In an influential article, La Porta et al. (2002) argue that public ownership of banks is associated with lower GDP growth. We show that this relationship does not hold for all countries, but depends on a countrys initial conditions, in particular its financial development and political institutions. Public ownership is harmful only if a country has low financial development and low institutional quality. The negative impact of public ownership on growth fades quickly as the financial and political system develops. In highly developed countries, we find no or even positive effects. Policy conclusions for individual countries are likely to be misleading if such heterogeneity is ignored.

Public Ownership of Banks and Economic Growth – The Role of Heterogeneity

In an influential paper, La Porta, Lopez-De-Silanes and Shleifer (2002) argued that public ownership of banks is associated with lower GDP growth. We show that this relationship does not hold for all countries, but depends on a country’s financial development and political institutions. Public ownership is harmful only if a country has low financial development and low institutional quality. The negative impact of public ownership on growth fades quickly as the financial and political system develops. In highly developed countries, we find no or even positive effects. Policy conclusions for individual countries are likely to be misleading if such heterogeneity is ignored.

Abolishing Public Guarantees in the Absence of Market Discipline

This paper shows that the abolition of state guarantees to publicly owned banks in Germany resulted in an increase in funding costs at German savings banks. Rather than being the result of increased market discipline, the increase in funding costs is shown to be driven by spillover effects from German Landesbanken who themselves had suffered from the abolition of guarantees and who spread their own cost increase through the public banking network. Higher funding costs and the resulting drop in bank charter values translated into higher risk-taking at German savings bank.

Supervisory Board Qualification of German Banks - Legal Standards and Survey Evidence

Improving the regulation of banks has been at the centre of economic policy actions since the outbreak of the global financial crisis. One of the many and conceptually very different measures proposed is to improve the corporate governance of banks by setting qualification standards for banks’ non-executive directors. To explore the rationale of such a regulation implemented in Germany, we conducted a detailed survey among supervisory board members of German banks covering their educational background, professional status and experience, as well as non-occupation related activities. We document that general education among supervisory board members is high, but very few board members can rely on a professional background in banking and finance. This is especially true for chairpersons. A higher share of professionals among board members primarily reflects the presence of employee representatives. The majority of board members reports leadership experience, chairpersons more often than ordinary members. Some of these findings strongly depend on the bank’s legal form, its size and business model, suggesting that both market forces and institutional characteristics of banking markets are important determinants of the qualification level of non-executive directors.

Board Accountability and Risk Taking in Banking – Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment

In this paper, a law reform is evaluated that aimed at improving the corporate governance of banks by tightening accountability and legal liability of outside directors. The causal effect of the reform on bank risk is identified by difference-in-differences and triple differences strategies. The estimation results show that banks subject to the reform increased capital and liquidity ratios. Hence, designing board-level governance can be an effective policy tool for altering the risk-taking behavior of banks.