Are Bank Shareholders Enemies of Regulators or a Potential Source of Market Discipline?
40 Pages Posted: 2 Aug 2006 Last revised: 15 Feb 2009
Date Written: October 2006
Abstract
In moral hazard models, bank shareholders have incentives to transfer wealth from the deposit insurer - that is, maximize put option value - by pursuing riskier strategies. For safe banks with large charter value, however, the risk-taking incentive is outweighed by the possibility of losing charter value. Focusing on the relationship between book value, market value, and a risk measure, this paper develops a semi-parametric model for estimating the critical level of bank risk at which put option value starts to dominate charter value. From these estimates, we infer the extent to which the risk-taking incentive prevailed during 1986-92, a period characterized by serious banking problems and financial turmoil. We find that despite the difficult financial environment, shareholders' risk-taking incentive was confined primarily to a small fraction of highly risky banks.
Keywords: market discipline, charter value, put option value, spline estimation
JEL Classification: G21, G28
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?
Recommended Papers
-
Relationship Lending and Lines of Credit in Small Firm Finance
By Allen N. Berger and Gregory F. Udell
-
Lines of Credit and Relationship Lending in Small Firm Finance
By Allen N. Berger and Gregory F. Udell
-
Information Production and Capital Allocation: Decentralized vs. Hierarchical Firms
-
Information Production and Capital Allocation: Decentralized vs. Hierarchical Firms
-
Does Distance Still Matter? The Information Revolution in Small Business Lending
-
Does Distance Still Matter? The Information Revolution in Small Business Lending
-
By Allen N. Berger, Philip E. Strahan, ...
-
By Allen N. Berger, Nathan Miller, ...
-
By Allen N. Berger, Nathan Miller, ...
-
By Allen N. Berger and Gregory F. Udell