Jonathan Smith and Gerardo Ferrara
Just like the beginning of an unforeseen family argument, two key tenets of the post-crisis reforms have unexpectedly started to butt heads: the leverage ratio capital requirement and the mandatory requirement to centrally clear certain over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives.
Continue reading “New banking regulation: is it affecting the clearing of derivatives?”
Qun Harris, Analise Mercieca, Emma Soane and Misa Tanaka.
The bonus regulations were introduced based on the consensus amongst financial regulators that compensation practices were a contributing factor to the 2008-9 financial crisis. But little is known about how they affect behaviour in practice. So we conducted a lab experiment to examine how different bonus structures affect individuals’ risk and effort choices. We find that restrictions on bonuses, such as a bonus cap, can incentivise people to take less risk. But their risk-mitigating effects weaken or disappear once bonus payment is made conditional on hitting a high performance target. We also find some evidence that bonus cap discourages effort to search for better projects.
Continue reading “How do bonus structures affect risk and effort choices? Insight from a lab experiment”Sebastian de-Ramon, Bill Francis and Michael Straughan.
There is a debate in the regulatory and academic community about whether competition is good or bad for bank stability, particularly following the financial crisis (see Chapter 6 of the Independent Commission on Banking final report). The debate tends to be seen as a head-to-head argument between two camps: those that see competition as bad for stability (competition-fragility) versus those that see competition as good (competition-stability). In new research, we look at how competition affects the stability of banks in the UK. We find that competition affects less stable firms differently than more stable firms and that focussing on what happens to the average firm may not be sufficient.
Continue reading “Does competition help or hinder bank stability in the UK?”David Kynaston
Last May, the Bank organised an economic history workshop at the St Clere Estate, home of former governor Montagu Norman. In this guest post, one of the speakers David Kynaston, visiting Professor at Kingston University, reflects on more than three centuries of Bank history…
It was a huge honour to be asked by Mervyn King to write a history of the Bank. The eventual book, Till Time’s Last Sand, was published last autumn. It covers 1694 to 2013 and is based heavily on the Bank’s own archive. Fitting more than 300 years of history into a single volume was a difficult task, and condensing that into a short blog post is harder still. Here I will try to bring out a handful of key lessons from my research into the Bank’s history that might be useful for the policymakers, economists and other interested observers of today – and their successors…
Fergus Cumming
Imagine you have just passed your driving test. After many hours of careful instruction, you are keen to put your good driving habits to the test on the open road. You phone up your insurance company but discover that your insurance premiums will cost you hundreds of pounds more than you can afford because “newly-qualified drivers are worse than average”. This post is about how developments in the car insurance market have the potential to revolutionise the way we drive and how we guard against the risks of bangs, scrapes and scratches. The increased use of telematics (also known as black boxes) has important implications for anyone who might consider driving, policymakers and for society as a whole.
Continue reading “Car insurance telematics: why the black box should become more transparent”
Benjamin Guin and Perttu Korhonen
A well-insulated house reduces heat loss during cold winter periods and it keeps outdoor heat from entering during hot summer conditions. Hence, effective insulation can reduce the need for households to use cooling and heating systems. While this can lower greenhouse gas emissions by households, it also reduces homeowners’ energy bills, which can free up available income. This can protect households from unexpected decreases in income (e.g. reduced overtime payments) or increases in expenses (e.g. healthcare costs). It could also help homeowners to make their mortgage payments even if such shocks occurred. But does this also imply that mortgages against energy-efficient properties are less credit-risky?
Mark Egan, Gregor Matvos and Amit Seru
Earlier this year the Bank hosted a joint conference with ECB and the Federal Reserve Board on Gender and Career Progression. In this guest post, Mark Egan, Gregor Matvos and Amit Seru summarise the paper they presented on the differential punishment of male and females in the US financial industry.
The gender pay gap – that women earn lower wages than men – is well known. Is that where the disparity in the workplace ends? No. In a new working paper, we document the existence of the “gender punishment gap”. We study the career trajectories of more than 1.2 million men and women working in the US financial advisory industry and examine how their careers evolve following misconduct. Women face more severe punishment at both the firm and industry level for similar missteps. Following an incidence of misconduct, women are 20% more likely to lose their jobs and 30% less likely to find new jobs relative to their male counterparts. The punishment gap is especially prominent in firms with few female managers.
Continue reading “When Harry Fired Sally: The Gender Punishment Gap”
Alex Ntelekos, Dimitris Papachristou and Juan Duan
The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season was the fifth most active in 168 years. It was also one of only six seasons to see multiple Cat 5 hurricanes (Irma & Maria). These two hurricanes, followed similar tracks and, together with Hurricane Harvey, occurred close together. This situation can hinder relief efforts. For insurers it may also lead to resource strain, disputes and unhedged risks, if insurers do not have enough ‘sideways’ reinsurance cover. Our post asks whether three major hurricanes occurring in the US in close succession really was exceptional or, as our analysis of recent data suggests, it might happen more often in future. Is the insurance industry underestimating the likely ‘clustering’ of major hurricanes?
David Bholat and James Brookes
In a recent research paper, we show that the way supervisors write to banks and building societies (hereafter ‘banks’) has changed since the financial crisis. Supervisors now adopt a more directive, forward-looking, complex and formal style than they did before the financial crisis. We also show that their language and linguistic style is related to the nature of the bank. For instance, banks that are closest to failure get letters that have a lot of risk-related language in them. In this blog, we discuss the linguistic features that most sharply distinguish different types of letters, and the machine learning algorithm we used to arrive at our conclusions.
Sachin Galaiya
The interest-only product has undergone tremendous evolution, from its mass-market glory days in the run-up to the crisis, to its rebirth as a niche product. However, since reaching a low-point in 2016, the interest-only market is starting to show signs of life again as lenders re-enter the market.
Continue reading “Bitesize: The rise and fall of interest only mortgages”