Suchergebnisse

We study a conflict of interest faced by universal banks that conduct proprietary trading alongside their retail banking services. Our dataset contains the stock holdings of each and every German bank and of their corresponding retail clients. We investigate (i) whether banks deliberately push stocks from their proprietary portfolios into their retail customer portfolios, (ii) whether those stocks subsequently underperform, and (iii) whether retail customers of banks with proprietary trading earn lower long-term portfolio returns than their peers. We present affirmative evidence on all three questions and conclude that proprietary trading can, in fact, be very detrimental to retail investors.

We study differences in the price paid for liquidity across banks using price data at the individual bank level. Unique to this paper, we also have data on individual banks' reserve requirements and actual reserve holdings, thus allowing us to gauge the extent to which a bank is short or long liquidity. We find that the price a bank pays for liquidity depends on the liquidity positions of other banks, as well as its own. There is evidence that liquidity squeezes occasionally occur and short banks pay more the larger is the potential for a squeeze. The price paid for liquidity is decreasing in bank size and small banks are more adversely affected by an increased potential for a squeeze. Contrary to what one might expect, banks in formal liquidity networks do not pay less. -- Liquidity ; banking ; squeezes ; money markets ; repo auctions

This paper studies the implications of cross-border financial integration for financial stability when banks' loan portfolios adjust endogenously. Banks can be subject to sectoral and aggregate domestic shocks. After integration they can share these risks in a complete interbank market. When banks have a comparative advantage in providing credit to certain industries, they will exploit the enhanced risk sharing opportunities through more specialization in lending. The enhanced concentration in lending does not increase risk, because a well-functioning interbank market allows to achieve the necessary diversification. The greater need for risk sharing through it increases, however, the risk of cross-border contagion. Better risk sharing and greater risk of contagion tend to offset each other and financial integration improves welfare since specialization benefits are realized. -- Financial integration ; specialization ; interbank market ; financial contagion