حسابداری قیمت بازار و نظم و انضباط سپرده گذار: بانک های منطقه ای ژاپنی

We examine the determinants of Japanese regional bank pricing-to-market decisions and their impact on the intensity of depositor discipline, in the form of the sensitivity of deposit growth to bank financial conditions. To obtain consistent estimates, we first model and estimate the bank pricing-to-market decision and then estimate the intensity of depositor discipline after conditioning for that decision. We find that banks were less likely to adopt market price accounting the larger were their unrealized securities losses. We also find statistically significant evidence of depositor discipline among banks that elected to price to market. Our results indicate that depositor discipline was more intense for the subset of banks that adopted market price accounting.

Private depositors and investors may discipline financial institutions for falling into precarious capital positions, either by requiring higher expected returns for their assets or removing their assets entirely. Such market discipline enhances the financial regulatory environment by increasing bank incentives to maintain adequate capital positions and avoid excessive risk (e.g., Flannery, 1998). There is ample evidence that such market discipline exists among bank bond holders (e.g., Flannery and Sorescu, 1996 and Morgan and Stiroh, 2001). Moreover, a number of studies have documented market discipline among uninsured depositors in the United States. Goldberg and Hudgins (2002) find that the share of uninsured deposits declines among failed institutions in the proximity of their failure date. Park and Peristiani (1998) find that holders of large certificates of deposit discipline problem thrifts by moving their assets to other banks or demanding higher interest rates from their troubled bank.

This paper examines the determinants and consequences of Japanese regional bank decisions concerning pricing to market. Our results suggest that the primary consideration in the pricing to market decision was its anticipated regulatory impact. Bank decisions were sensitive to their magnitude of the unrealized securities losses. This result was unsurprising, as Japanese banks had already revealed their asset positions elsewhere in their public statements. We also found significant evidence of depositor discipline, in the form of sensitivity of deposit growth rates to bank financial conditions, for the sample of banks that chose to price their securities to market. Moreover, our point estimates indicated that depositors in the sub-sample of banks that priced to market were more sensitive to bank financial conditions than in the other sub-sample. While our large estimated standard errors in the non-MPA sub-sample generally precluded statistical conclusions of differences in sensitivity to bank financial conditions, we did find that growth in total deposits in the MPA sub-sample were more sensitive to dividend issues than the non-MPA sub-sample at a 5% confidence level.