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This thesis includes three interconnected essays which, building on the work by Hart and Zingales (2011), lay down the foundations for a new theory of financial intermediation. The first essay explains the Hart and Zingales (HZ) framework and shows that their results are not general. In the HZ model, there is a lack of simultaneous double coincidence of wants, and future income is not pledgeable. This implies that agents need money to trade. However, holding money entails an opportunity cost that leads to a waste of resources. Because of this inefficiency, pecuniary externalities have welfare consequences that private price-taking agents fail to internalize. I find that HZ's result, whereby the market produces inefficiently high levels of liquidity, cannot be generalized, because the conflict between private and social incentives to create money depends on agents' preferences. In the second essay I construct a framework that explains the transactions, precautionary and speculative demand for money. Again, the welfare analysis indicates that, depending on individuals' preferences, the market may produce inefficiently high or low levels of liquidity. The results also evidence that the speculative demand for money exists only when households are risk averse in their wealth. In that case, private and social incentives to hold money are stronger, but the market produces insufficient means of payment relative to the social optimum. The third essay introduces active financial institutions, and examines the role played by moral hazard in the provision of and demand for liquidity. Limited liability and the non-contractibility of bank investment policy induce highly levered financial institutions to invest in an inefficient gambling asset. I find that, when the probability that banks gamble is non-zero, the primary goal of public intervention is to address the moral hazard problem by restricting the creation of liquidity. Several policies to address this inefficiency are discussed and analyzed.

Thesis (M.Com. (Economics))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, School of Economic and Business Sciences, 2013. / This paper assesses the level of financial intermediation in the South African financial industry and the reasons for these levels of intermediation. Different banking intermediation measures are considered and mostly reflect disintermediation during the 1993 to 2009 period. Panel regressions are run to assess which economic factors had the biggest impact on intermediation by SA’s four largest banks (Absa Bank, Standard Bank of South Africa, Firstrand Bank and Nedbank). It is found that bank intermediation was impacted by bank size, profitability, as well as the level of competition and client relationships. The level of financial intermediation in SA has been low, negatively impacting on banks intermediation ability, and possibly impeding government and corporate sectors’ investment and economic activity.

This thesis is a collection of three essays with contributions to the empirical literature on banking and the lending channel of monetary policy. The first essay on monetary policy identification addresses the endogeneity of the monetary policy measure employed in most bank level studies of the lending channel. It shows how an identified, exogenous measure of policy evokes different lending dynamics in U.S. commercial banks compared to the standard endogenous measure of monetary policy. The second essay empirically assesses the impact of financial deregulation on the lending channel in the U.S. In particular, it analyses how the gradual phasing out of deposit rate ceilings commonly known as Regulation Q significantly altered bank level frictions as well as the transmission of monetary policy to individual bank lending. While the first two essays consider U.S. bank level data, the third essay analyses individual bank level lending responses in the euro area. Its contribution lies in the construction of a range of exogenous and unanticipated monetary policy shocks as well as in the introduction of a financial conditions index into standard lending regressions. It finds that the lending responses of individual banks to monetary policy do not support the existence of a separate lending channel in the euro area. Further, equilibrium lending responses to policy as measured by a range of policy shocks is non-linear in financial conditions. Specifically, financial conditions as measured by the relative performance of a broad index of euro area banking stocks to the overall euro area stock market reverse the impact of monetary policy on lending.

<p>This dissertation presents a quantitative study on the relationship between financial intermediation and the macroeconomy of the United States. It consists of two major chapters, with the first chapter studying adverse shocks to interbank market lending, and with the second chapter studying a theoretical model where aggregate balance sheets of the financial and non-financial sectors play a key role in financial intermediation frictions.</p><p>In the first chapter, I empirically investigate a novel macroeconomic shock: the funding liquidity shock. Funding liquidity is defined as the ability of a (financial) institution to raise cash at short notice, with interbank market loans being a very common source of short-term external funding. Using the "TED spread" as a proxy of aggregate funding liquidity for the period from 1971M1 to 2009M9, I first discover that, by using the vector-autoregression approach, an unanticipated adverse TED shock brings significant recessionary effects: industrial production and prices fall, and the unemployment rate rises. The contraction lasts for about twenty months. I also recover the conventional monetary policy shock, the macro impact of which is in line with the results of Christiano et al (1998) and Christiano et al (2005) . I then follow the factor model approach and find that the excess returns of small-firm portfolios are more negatively impacted by an adverse funding liquidity shock. I also present evidence that this shock as a "risk factor" is priced in the cross-section of equity returns. Moreover, a proposed factor model which includes the structural funding liquidity and monetary policy shocks as factors is able to explain the cross-sectional returns of portfolios sorted on size and book-to-market ratio as well as the Fama and French (1993) three-factor model does. Lastly, I present empirical evidence that funding liquidity and market liquidity mutually affect each other.</p><p>I start the second chapter by showing that, in U.S. data, the balance sheet health of the financial sector, as measured by its equity capital and debt level, is a leading indicator of the balance sheet health of the nonfinancial sector. This fact, and the apparent role of the financial sector in the recent global financial crisis, motivate a general equilibrium macroeconomic model featuring the balance sheets of both sectors. I estimate and study a model within the "loanable funds" framework of Holmstrom and Tirole (1997), which introduces a double moral hazard problem in the financial intermediation process. I find that financial frictions modeled within this framework give rise to a shock transmission mechanism quantitatively different from the one that arises with the conventional modeling assumption, in New Keynesian business cycle models, of convex investment adjustment costs. Financial equity capital plays an important role in determining the depth and persistence of declines in output and investment due to negative shocks to the economy. Moreover, I find that shocks to the financial intermediation process cause persistent recessions, and that these shocks explain a significant portion of the variation in investment. The estimated model is also able to replicate some aspects of the cross-correlation structure of the balance sheet variables of the two sectors.</p> / Dissertation

Yes / The financial crisis of 2008 provides evidence for the instability of the conventional banking system. Social banks may present a viable alternative for conventional banks. This paper analyzes the performance of social banks related to the bank business model, economic efficiency, asset quality and stability by comparing social banks with banks where the difference is likely to be large, namely with the 30 global systemically important banks (G-­SIBs) of the Financial Stability Board over the period 2000-­2014. We also analyze the relative impact of the global financial crises on the bank performance. The performance of social banks and G-­SIBs is surprisingly similar.

Yes / The financial crisis of 2008 provides evidence for the instability of the conventional banking system. Social banks may present a viable alternative for conventional banks. This paper analyzes the performance of social banks related to the bank business model, economic efficiency, asset quality and stability by comparing social banks with banks where the difference is likely to be large, namely with the 30 global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) of the Financial Stability Board over the period 2000-2014. We also analyze the relative impact of the global financial crises on the bank performance. The performance of social banks and G-SIBs is surprisingly similar.

Yes / The financial crisis of 2008 provides evidence for the instability of the conventional banking system. Social banks may present a viable alternative for conventional banks. This article analyses the performance of social banks related to the bank business model, economic efficiency, asset quality, and stability by comparing social banks with banks where the difference is likely to be large, namely with the 30 global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) of the Financial Stability Board over the period 2000–2014. We also analyse the relative impact of the global financial crisis on the bank performance. The performance of social banks and G-SIBs is surprisingly similar.

隨著金融交易與經濟活動的不斷演變，以及資訊科技的更迭與普及，有別於傳統的、非實體型態的金融中介機構逐漸威脅過去如銀行、保險公司等傳統中介機構的功能與收益，故隨之而來討論新型態金融中介是否仍有助於經濟成長、如何影響金融中介發展等議題也漸漸升溫。有鑒於此，本文第2.3章將探討兩種不同型態的中介機構(銀行與群眾募資平台) 之風險穩定程度，並據此提出新的分析結論。 金融中介在向大眾提供資金融通服務的同時也面臨風險。以信用風險及流動性風險為例，銀行利用創新金融工具，不但能將手中融資貸款部位的信用風險轉移至願冒險投資的投資人手中，藉此增加資金以繼續提供融資服務，成功達到幫助銀行增加利潤、分散信用風險，以及增加流動性等功能，但實際上，這些可能違約的信用風險其實並未消失。 本文試圖重新檢視金融中介的信用風險議題，首先分析銀行產業結構會如何影響銀行的違約風險；並關注次貸後因市場流動性急遽消失而新興的新興金融工具--群眾募資，是否將再次導致市場上高風險項目的出現。

投資人在獲取報酬之前，可能發現其它更為有利的投資機會、甚至在短期時發生消費需求，因而有臨時要求抽回資金的可能。投資人面對如此流動性風險（liquidity risk），金融資產與活期存款皆可扮演提供流動性（liquidity provision）的功能。部分文獻上質疑，當金融市場與銀行同時存在時，活期存款亦具有可交易性，則銀行提供流動性之功能如何。本文依循Diamond（1997）所提出金融市場有限參與率的觀念，考慮投資人在可交易性資產之外，尚可選擇將部分資金投資於不具有可交易性、但具有較高效率性的長期生產活動。當銀行並未存在時，投資人不僅無法達到跨期補助（cross-subsidization）性質的消費型態，甚至將發生效率性的損害。一旦銀行（a coalition）存在時，集中資金持有後將可代表投資人進行效率性的投資活動，再將短期與長期投資報酬以提領契約的方式配置予兩類型投資人，將可避免掉效率性的損失。且由於銀行選擇的長期投資方式是不具有可交易性的效率性長期生產活動，因此提領契約當中所約定的第2期求償權（date 2 claims）是不可交易的。於是乎，銀行確實可設計符合社會最適化條件的提領契約，使得其存款客戶達到社會最適化的消費機會集合。也因此，投資人願意將資金完全存放銀行，次級市場的資產交易活動不再存在。