Macroprudential policies are being implemented around the globe. A key question is whether these policies prompt substitution toward the non-bank financial sector. This column presents compelling evidence of such ‘waterbed effects’ after macroprudential policy action. Substitution towards non-bank credit is stronger when policy measures applied to banks are binding and are implemented in countries with well-developed financial markets. While systemic risks may nonetheless decline, waterbed effects highlight the importance of developing macroprudential policies beyond banking.
Financial regulation and banking
There are still remarkable gaps in the data available on the overall structure of the financial systems of major economies. This column presents rough estimates for the UK and the US that suggest some surprising structural differences between the two systems and which point to areas where better measurement is needed. The authors note that there is a strong case for policymakers to think about the system as an interconnected whole, rather than as a set of distinct sectors to be regulated in isolation.
Private equity buyouts arouse intense interest among investors and business owners as well as policymakers and politicians, but the difficulty of assembling the data needed for a systematic evaluation makes assessing their effects hard. This column uses data on thousands of buyouts in the US to examine the effects on employment, job reallocation, productivity, and worker compensation. The findings suggest that the effects differ greatly by type of buyout, with the credit conditions at the time of buyout, and with the post-buyout evolution of credit conditions and the macroeconomy, casting doubt on the efficacy of ‘one-size-fits-all’ policy prescriptions for private equity.
Discrimination in access to financial services can prevent women from exploiting their entrepreneurial potential. This column reports on a lab-in-the-field experiment to test for the presence of gender discrimination in small business lending in Turkey. It finds that while unconditional loan approval rates are the same for male and female applicants, there exists a more subtle form of discrimination, with loan officers 30% more likely to make loan approval conditional on the presence of a guarantor when an application appears to come from a female instead of a male entrepreneur. This discrimination is concentrated among young, inexperienced, and gender-biased officers.
BigTech firms are entering finance, and their access to massive amounts of information may give them an edge in areas like credit assessment and beyond. This column assesses the economic forces behind the adoption of Big Tech services in finance. It shows that BigTech lenders thrive in countries with less competitive banks and less strict regulation, and that they have an information advantage from the use of big data and machine learning.
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27 - 29 November 2019 / Florence, Italy / Florence School of Banking and Finance, European University Institute
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28 - 29 November 2019 / Santiago, Chile / Millennium Institute in Market Imperfections and Public Policy (MIPP) and Center for Applied Economics, University of Chile
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28 - 29 November 2019 / University Jaume I, Castellon, Spain / University Jaume I. INTECO Joint Research Group.
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12 - 14 December 2019 / National University of Singapore (NUS) / National University of Singapore (NUS)
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16 - 17 December 2019 / Frankfurt am Main / European Central Bank
