نظم و انضباط بازار در طول بحران: شواهدی از سپرده گذاران بانک در کشورهای در حال تحول

The Central European banking industry is dominated by foreign-owned banks. During the recent crisis, for the first time since the transition, foreign parent companies were frequently in a worse financial condition than their subsidiaries. This situation created a unique opportunity to study new aspects of market discipline exercised by non-financial depositors. Using a comprehensive data set, we find that the recent crisis did not change the sensitivity of deposit growth rates to accounting risk measures. We establish that depositors’ actions were more strongly influenced by negative press rumors concerning parent companies than by fundamentals. The impact of rumors was especially perceptible when rumors turned out ex post to be founded. Additionally, we document that public aid announcements were primarily interpreted by depositors as confirmation of a parent company’s financial distress. Our results indicate that depositors react rationally to sources of information other than financial statements; this discovery has policy implications, as depositor discipline is usually the only viable and universal source of market discipline for banks in emerging economies.

Banking systems in Central European (CE) countries are dominated by foreign-owned entities. As a result, during the recent financial crisis, which originated in developed economies, financial instability was largely imported into the CE banking industry from abroad. This phenomenon, unprecedented in the history of Central Europe since the fall of Communism, created a unique opportunity to study new aspects of market discipline exercised by non-financial depositors. More specifically, we were able to address important research questions in the described context: whether depositors react flexibly to changing sources of risk; whether depositors base decisions on fundamentals or on rumors; whether depositors can assess the informational content of rumors; and whether depositors’ decisions are affected by public aid received by foreign parent companies.

Market discipline has the potential to play a vital role in promoting financial stability. It may encourage banks to augment capital adequacy and choose safer asset structures. In addition, as Ferguson and Stevenson (2007) explain, market discipline can improve banks’ incentives to monitor borrowers. In CE countries, depositor discipline is the only viable and universal source of market discipline in banking for three reasons. First, the market for banks’ subordinated debt is virtually non-existent. Second, only selected banks are listed on regional stock exchanges. Third, shareholders’ goals need not coincide with the interests of either the public as a whole or depositors in particular (Bliss and Flannery, 2001, Park and Peristiani, 2001 and Gropp and Vesala, 2001).