A distinguished economist examines competition, regulation, and stability in today's global banks Does too much competition in banking hurt society? What policies can best protect and stabilize banking without stifling it? Institutional responses to such questions have evolved over time, from interventionist regulatory control after the Great Depression to the liberalization policies that started in the United States in the 1970s. The global financial crisis of 2007–2009, which originated from an oversupply of credit, once again raised questions about excessive banking competition and what should be done about it. Competition and Stability in Banking addresses the critical relationships between competition, regulation, and stability, and the implications of coordinating banking regulations with competition policies. Xavier Vives argues that while competition is not responsible for fragility in banking, there are trade-offs between competition and stability. Well-designed regulations would alleviate these trade-offs but not eliminate them, and the specificity of competition in banking should be accounted for. Vives argues that regulation and competition policy should be coordinated, with tighter prudential requirements in more competitive situations, but he also shows that supervisory and competition authorities should stand separate from each other, each pursuing its own objective. Vives reviews the theory and empirics of banking competition, drawing on up-to-date analysis that incorporates the characteristics of modern market-based banking, and he looks at regulation, competition policies, and crisis interventions in Europe and the United States, as well as in emerging economies. Focusing on why banking competition policies are necessary, Competition and Stability in Banking examines regulation's impact on the industry's efficiency and effectiveness.

We study versions of a general equilibrium banking model with moral hazard under either constant or increasing returns to scale of the intermediation technology used by banks to screen and/or monitor borrowers. If the intermediation technology exhibits increasing returns to scale, or it is relatively efficient, then perfect competition is optimal and supports the lowest feasible level of bank risk. Conversely, if the intermediation technology exhibits constant returns to scale, or is relatively inefficient, then imperfect competition and intermediate levels of bank risks are optimal. These results are empirically relevant and carry significant implications for financial policy.

This report examines the interplay between banking competition and financial stability, taking into account the experiences in the recent global crisis and the policy response to it. The report has been prepared by members of the Directorate of ...

Banking market integration in the Asia Pacific has greatly accelerated in recent years, in an environment of many other rapid advances in banking and finance. This has increased competition between domestic and foreign banks, and made the measurement of bank efficiency, competition, and liquidity creation a critical issue for both policy makers and bank managers. This book investigates important policy-related issues in Asia Pacific banking. It analyses the link between competition and stability, examining the cases of fourteen Asia Pacific countries between 2003 and 2010, and goes on to discuss whether bank shareholder value is influenced by cost and profit efficiency changes over time. The authors explore the different ways in which banks in Asia-Pacific create liquidity, and whether this is linked to capital generation. This book provides valuable insight for researchers, policy makers and bank managers with an interest in financial rationalization, restructuring and consolidation.

This book aims to form part of the growing literature on the banking system in developing countries in its aim to show the levels of stability in the banking sector of small economies. Any banking system is vulnerable to economic distress but one supported by universal and commercial banks that are efficient, stable, and which enjoy sufficient market power is most likely to withstand economic turmoil. Such is the Philippines’ Universal and Commercial Banking system, which displayed remarkable resilience to unprecedented economic shock. Using data from 2005 to 2019, the five chapters of this work delve into the industrial organization framework of the banking industry in the Philippines, offering researchers, graduate and undergraduate students, and academics the first comprehensive research on bank competition, concentration, efficiency and financial stability in the Philippines.

Traditional bank competition policy seeks to balance efficiency with incentives to take risk. The main tools are rules guiding entry/exit and consolidation of banks. This paper seeks to refine this view in light of recent changes to financial services provision. Modern banking is largely market-based and contestable. Consequently, banks in advanced economies today have structurally low charter values and high incentives to take risk. In such an environment, traditional policies that seek to affect the degree of competition by focusing on market structure (i.e. concentration) may have limited effect. We argue that bank competition policy should be reoriented to deal with the too-big-to-fail (TBTF) problem. It should also focus on the permissible scope of activities rather than on market structure of banks. And following a crisis, competition policy should facilitate resolution by temporarily allowing higher concentration and government control of banks.

We analyze how bank profitability impacts financial stability from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. We first develop a theoretical model of the relationship between bank profitability and financial stability by exploring the role of non-interest income and retail-oriented business models. We then conduct panel regression analysis to examine the empirical determinants of bank risks and profitability, and how the level and the source of bank profitability affect risks for 431 publicly traded banks (U.S., advanced Europe, and GSIBs) from 2004 to 2017. Results reveal that profitability is negatively associated with both a bank’s contribution to systemic risk and its idiosyncratic risk, and an over-reliance on non-interest income, wholesale funding and leverage is associated with higher risks. Low competition is associated with low idiosyncratic risk but a high contribution to systemic risk. Lastly, the problem loans ratio and the cost-to-income ratio are found to be key factors that influence bank profitability. The paper’s findings suggest that policy makers should strive to better understand the source of bank profitability, especially where there is an over-reliance on market-based non-interest income, leverage, and wholesale funding.