Global Financial Stability Report
Risk Taking, Liquidity, and Shadow Banking: Curbing Excess While Promoting Growth
October 2014
Disclaimer: As used in this volume the term “country” does not in all cases refer to a territorial entity that is a state as understood by international law and practice. As used here, the term also covers some territorial entities that are not states but for which statistical data are maintained on a separate and independent basis.
The October 2014 Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR) finds that six years after the start of the crisis, the global economic recovery continues to rely heavily on accommodative monetary policies in advanced economies. Monetary accommodation remains critical in supporting the economy by encouraging economic risk taking in the form of increased real spending by households and greater willingness to invest and hire by businesses. However, prolonged monetary ease may also encourage excessive financial risk taking.
Contents
Front Matter
Chapter 1: Improving the Balance Between Financial and Economic Risk Taking
Chapter 1 concludes that although economic benefits of monetary ease are becoming more evident in some economies, market and liquidity risks have increased to levels that could compromise financial stability if left unaddressed. The best way to safeguard financial stability and improve the balance between economic and financial risk taking is to put in place policies that enhance the transmission of monetary policy to the real economy—thus promoting economic risk taking—and address financial excesses through well-designed macroprudential measures.
| Tables | |||
| 1.1 Corporate and Banking Sector Fundamentals | |||
| 1.2 Changes in Business Models and Strategic Direction | |||
| 1.3 Major Bond Index Sensitivities | |||
| 1.4 Key Macroprudential Policy Recommendations and Recent Country Examples | |||
| 1.5 Capital Investment Regressions | |||
| 1.6 Summary of Capital Structure of Sample Firms | |||
| 1.7 Major Recent Regulatory Measures and Potential Impacts on Select Bank Business Lines | |||
| 1.8 Results of Tests for Independence between Assets’ Volatility and the Volatility of the U.S. Treasury Total Return Index when the Latter Acts as an Originator of Shocks | |||
| Figures | |||
| Chart | Data | 1.1 Global Financial Stability Map | |
| Chart | Data | 1.2 Global Financial Stability Map: Risks and Conditions | |
| Chart | Data | 1.3 United States: How Far Along the Exit Process? | |
| Chart | Data | 1.4 Emerging Market Developments | |
| Chart | Data | 1.5 Financial Markets Are Buoyant, Despite Economic Disappointments | |
| Chart | Data | 1.6 Global Heat Maps | |
| Chart | Data | 1.7 Indebtedness and Leverage in Selected Advanced Economies | |
| Chart | Data | 1.8 United States: Capital Expenditure Developments in Nonfinancial Firms | |
| Chart | Data | 1.9 Euro Area Nonfinancial Firms: Capital Expenditure Developments | |
| Chart | Data | 1.10 Financial Risk Taking and Volatility | |
| Chart | Data | 1.11 United States: Nonfinancial Corporations’ Credit Fundamentals | |
| Chart | Data | 1.12 United States: Equity Market Fundamentals | |
| Chart | Data | 1.13 Emerging Market Corporate Debt and Fundamentals | |
| Chart | Data | 1.14 China Corporate Indicators | |
| Chart | Data | 1.15 China’s Shadow Banking and Real Estate Markets | |
| Chart | Data | 1.16 Bank Capitalization | |
| Chart Chart |
Data | 1.17 Bank Balance Sheets and Profitability | |
| Chart | Data | 1.18 Where Are Banks in Their Transition to New Business Models? | |
| Chart | Data | 1.19 Bank Lending and Nonbank Sources of Credit | |
| Chart | Data | 1.20 Market Liquidity: Rising Flow but Deteriorating Depth | |
| Chart | 1.21 Feedback Loop between Performance, Flow, and Illiquidity | ||
| Chart | 1.22 Asset Management Industry Impact on Liquidity | ||
| Chart | Data | 1.23 Liquidity Risk Amplifiers | |
| Chart | Data | 1.24 Evolution and Concentration of Asset Allocations to Emerging Markets | |
| Chart | Data | 1.25 Volatility Developments | |
| Chart | Data | 1.26 Monetary Policy Normalization | |
| Chart | Data | 1.27 Stretched Valuations across Asset Classes | |
| Chart | Data | 1.28 Cross-Country Distribution | |
| Chart | 1.29 Analysis of Selected European Spreads | ||
| Chart | 1.30 Volatility Multiples between High and Low States | ||
Chapter 2: Shadow Banking Around the Globe: How Large, and How Risky?
Chapter 2 examines the growth of shadow banking around the globe, assessing risks and discussing regulatory responses. Although shadow banking takes vastly different forms within and across countries, some of its key drivers tend to be common to all: search for yield, regulatory circumvention, and demand by institutional investors. The contribution of shadow banks to systemic risks in the financial system is much larger in the United States than in Europe. The chapter calls for a more encompassing (macroprudential) approach to regulation and for enhanced data provision.
| Boxes | |||||
| Chart Chart |
2.1 The Run on the Shadow Banking System and Bank Losses during the Financial Crisis | ||||
| Chart | Data | 2.2 New Shadow Banking Developments | |||
| Chart | 2.3 China: Bank Characteristics and Wealth Management Product Issuance | ||||
| Tables | |||||
| 2.1 Comparison of Shadow Banking Measures | |||||
| 2.2 Summary of Panel Regression on Shadow Banking Growth | |||||
| 2.3 List of Economies Included in the Empirical Studies | |||||
| 2.4 List of Variables Used in Regression Analysis | |||||
| 2.5 Panel Regression of Shadow Banking Growth: Flow of Funds Sample, 1990−2013 | |||||
| 2.6 Panel Regression of Shadow Banking Growth: Financial Stability Board Sample, 2002-2012 | |||||
| 2.7 Snapshot of the New International Regulatory Initiatives | |||||
| Figures | |||||
| Chart | 2.1 Broad Shadow Banking Measures | ||||
| Chart | Data | 2.2 Lending by Shadow Banks | |||
| Chart | 2.3 Traditional versus Shadow Banking Intermediation | ||||
| Chart | 2.4 Alternative Measures of Shadow Banking Size | ||||
| Chart | 2.5 Shadow Banking Subsectors | ||||
| Chart | Data | 2.6 Size of the Shadow Banking Markets | |||
| Chart | 2.7 Drivers of Shadow Banking | ||||
| Chart | 2.8 Sensitivity Analysis by Subsector | ||||
| Chart | 2.9 Brazil: Investment Funds, Insurance Companies and Pension Funds, and the Interest Rate | ||||
| Chart | 2.10 Shadow Banking Risks in the Euro Area, the United States, and Japan | ||||
| Chart | Data | 2.11 Systemic Risk and Interdependence of Financial Intermediaries | |||
| Chart | Data | 2.12 U.S. Intermediaries' Contribution to Distress Vulnerability of the Euro Area Banking Sector | |||
| Chart | 2.13 Effective Shadow Banking Regulation Must Cover Activities and Entities | ||||
| Chart | 2.14 Policy Framework to Mitigate Shadow Banking Risks | ||||
| Chart | 2.15 Different Definitions of Shadow Banking | ||||
| Chart | 2.16 Components of Broad and Narrow Measures of Noncore Liabilities | ||||
Chapter 3: Risk Taking By Banks: The Role of Governance and Executive Pay
Chapter 3 discusses how conflicts of interest between bank managers, shareholders, and debt holders can lead to excessive bank risk taking from society’s point of view. It finds that banks with boards of directors independent from management take less risk. There is no clear relation between bank risk and the level of executive compensation, but a better alignment of bankers’ pay with long-term outcomes is associated with less risk.
| Boxes | |||||
| Chart | 3.1 Types of Executive Compensation | ||||
| 3.2 Trends in the Regulation of Bankers’ Pay | |||||
| 3.3 Adjusting Compensation for Bank Managers: Advantages and Pitfalls | |||||
| Chart | Data | 3.4 Integrity in Financial Institutions | |||
| 3.5 Regulation and Risk-Taking Incentives: Basel I to III | |||||
| Tables | |||||
| 3.1 Equity Payoffs with Various Distances to Default | |||||
| 3.2 Reform Initiatives in Various Jurisdictions | |||||
| 3.3 Governance Characteristics Used as Explanatory Variables in the Empirical Analysis | |||||
| 3.4 Summary of the Empirical Literature | |||||
| 3.5 Measures of Risk Used in the Empirical Analysis | |||||
| 3.6 Summary Results of the Empirical Analysis | |||||
| 3.7 Number of Banks by Country in Samples for Various Regressions | |||||
| 3.8 Robustness in Subsamples | |||||
| 3.9 Gambling for Resurrection | |||||
| Figures | |||||
| Chart | Data | 3.1 Corporate Complexity and Opacity: Dispersion of Earnings-per-Share Forecasts by Sector | |||
| Chart | Data | 3.2 Trends in Compensation Practices in Banks | |||
| Chart | Data | 3.3 Summary Statistics of Boards and Risk Management in Banks | |||
| Chart | 3.4 Bank Governance and Risk Taking | ||||
| Chart | 3.5 Bank Governance and Risk Taking during the Global Financial Crisis | ||||
| Chart | 3.6 Size-Adjusted Compensation and Risk Taking | ||||
| Chart | 3.7 Summary of Main Findings: Impact on Risk Taking | ||||
| Chart | 3.8 Economic Significance of Bank Governance Variables | ||||
Statistical Appendix
| Figures | |||
| Chart | Data | 1. Major Net Exporters and Importers of Capital, 2013 | |
| Chart | 2. Sovereign Credit Default Swap Spreads | ||
| Chart | 3. Selected Credit Default Swap Spreads | ||
| Chart | 4. Selected Spreads | ||
| Chart | 5. Implied Volatility Indices | ||
| Chart | Data | 6. U.S. Corporate Bond Market | |
| Chart | Data | 7. Euro Area Corporate Bond Market | |
| Chart | Data | 8. U.S. Commercial Paper Market | |
| Tables | |||
| Data | 1. Capital Market Size: Selected Indicators, 2013 | ||
| Data | 2. MSCI Equity Market Indices | ||
| Data | 3. Emerging Markets Bond Index: EMBI Global Sovereign Yield Spreads | ||
| Data | 4. Emerging Market Private External Financing: Total Bonds, Equities, and Loans | ||
| Data | 5. Emerging Market Private External Financing: Bonds | ||
| Data | 6. Emerging Market Private External Financing: Equity | ||
| Data | 7. Emerging Market Private External Financing: Loans | ||
| Data | 8. Equity Valuation Measures: Dividend-Yield Ratios | ||
| Data | 9. Equity Valuation Measures: Price/Earnings Ratios | ||
| Data | 10. Emerging Markets: Mutual Funds | ||
(*)Please note that effective with the April 2011 issue, the IMF’s Statistics Department has assumed responsibility for compiling the Financial Soundness Indicators tables and they are no longer part of this appendix. However, these tables will continue to be linked to the GFSR Statistical Appendix on the IMF’s public website.
The following symbols have been used throughout this appendix:
. . . to indicate that data are not available;
—— to indicate that the figure is zero or less than half the final digit shown, or that the item does not exist;
- between years and months (for example, 2008–09 or January–June) to indicate the years or months covered, including the beginning and ending years or months;
/ between years (for example, 2008/09) to indicate a fiscal or financial year.
“Billion” means a thousand million; “trillion” means a thousand billion.
“Basis points” refer to hundredths of 1 percentage point (for example, 25 basis points are equivalent to ¼ of 1 percentage point).
“n.a.” means not applicable.
Minor discrepancies between constituent figures and totals are due to rounding.