The thesis examines subordinated debt holder market discipline in UK credit institutions during the period 1995 to 2002. The topic is relevant as current research is questioning the role and effectiveness of rules-based bank regulatory oversight, and favouring, instead, incentive-compatible regulatory design and market discipline. In particular, the literature proposes using signals from subordinated debt holders to constrain bank risk-taking. In addition, this market oversight may provide information signals to regulatory agencies that are useful in improving bank regulatory design. The thesis researches two prominent issues related to subordinated debt holder market discipline and, therefore, contributes to the debate in introducing incentive-compatible polices in bank regulatory design. First, testing the risk sensitivity of UK credit institution subordinated debt spreads assesses whether investors are signalling bank risk in market prices. The UK evidence supports the theoretical literature in claiming that eliminating too-big-to-fail policies can encourage effective incentive-based mechanisms. Secondly, the research examines the appropriateness of introducing a mandatory subordinated debt policy in the UK. The empirical analysis raises a number of themes, many of which are in stark contrast to US and other European banks' subordinated debt characteristics. The conclusion is that the regular issuance of subordinated debt should be the overriding policy tool to signal and constrain bank risk-taking (i.e. direct discipline). Extending the policy to include indirect market discipline through a standardised mandatory subordinated debt requirement would impose substantial costs and should not be implemented.

The thesis deals with the US mortgage crisis of 2008. The mortgage crisis, the following financial crisis and the debt crisis have affected billions of people around the world. It has been widely covered in literature. This thesis, however, takes a different approach. It analyses the crisis form the point of view of law and economics, looking for overlaps between those disciplines. The author does not accept the divide between law and economics. It is necessary to consider both views in order to understand the crisis. This work does not seek causes of the crisis primarily in the banks and the lack of regulation, as is common view. Rather, this thesis looks for systemic failures and root causes. It focuses on monetary policy (especially the US Fed), the regulatory institutions, bank management and the role of credit rating agencies and exotic financial instruments. In the first part of the work, the author looks at possible causes in different areas: Monetary policy and global trade imbalances, regulation of the mortgage market and government support of affordable housing, banks and their management (corporate governance), regulation and deregulation of the banking sector (with emphasis on the functioning of regulatory institutions, their legal basis and historical context), so-called securitization and...

The dominant role of credit ratings, along with the failure of important FIs, exacerbated the 2008 crisis and caused further damage to European economies, which highlighted the need for effective regulation to prevent a reoccurrence. This thesis investigates the effect of EU and US recent regulatory reforms of the rating industry on the quality of credit ratings of financial institutions (FIs), as well as the impact of the new EU financial regulatory initiatives on the performance of FIs. The first empirical Chapter focuses on the EU reforms of credit rating agencies (CRAs) and provides evidence supporting the presence of a conservative rating bias in the post regulatory period, as increased scrutiny, fines and liability increase the cost of over rating. CRAs exhibit an unwarranted decrease in EU FI ratings, evidenced by an increase in false warning and a fall in the informativeness of FI rating downgrades in the post regulatory period. A subsequent rise in stock market responses to rating upgrades is consistent with CRAs expending greater effort to ensure they are justified. The second empirical Chapter focuses on the US reforms of CRAs and reports no significant impact on FI ratings, rather each CRA has responded differently to the passage of the US Dodd-Frank Act (DFA). There is, however, a significant reduction in stock market reactions to FI credit rating signals, consistent with diminishing reliance on credit ratings by market participants in the US. The third empirical Chapter builds and estimates a dynamic model of FI behaviour using discrete choice dynamic programming (DCDP). The model is used to simulate and examine the impact of regulations, including EU reforms of CRAs, capital adequacy regulation (Basel III), and the bail-in regime, on FIs' behaviour in the real economy. The results show that the shift to increasingly conservative rating behaviour triggered by the CRA reforms has caused FIs to respond by manipulating their capital ratios and to reduce lending activities. The results also show that more stringent capital requirements stimulate FIs to hold more capital, reduce lending and reveal a positive influence in reducing bank insolvency rates, particularly during the crisis period. The introduction of a bail-in regime reveals similar results, but crucially stimulates the adoption of a stable equilibrium (unlike Basel III). This thesis highlights drawbacks with the current regulatory reforms of the EU and US FI rating industries and suggests potential solutions. The thesis also informs the policy debate surrounding the best way to regulate both CRAs and FIs and ensure that there is not a reoccurrence of the problems present in the 2008 financial crisis.

The aim of the diploma thesis is to analyze the evolution of banking regulation from the turn of the 19th and 20th century with regard to the introduction of global standards of regulation and supervision. Great emphasis was placed on the status and functionality of the current regulation and also on its future shape as Basel III rules. In the theoretical part Basel I and Basel II projects are presented. The first of these is the concept from 1987 (Basel I) with the emphasis on greater stability and reliability of the international banking system. Basel I, however, represented a very simple and straightforward form of regulation, where the only monitored standard is bank's credit exposure. The amendment to Basel I and primarily Basel II, introduced a pillar regulation structure, which is still valid and provides national regulator a sufficient power to carry out its activities. The second, practical part of the thesis is devoted to current development and problems of banking regulation. This part introducing Basel III represents not only the key point of the gradual increase in the amount of regulatory capital until 2019, but also the introduction of uniform standards for measuring liquidity and strengthening the supervisory powers.

By using Arellano and Bond GMM estimator, this paper analyzes how the regulation framework of Basel, affects the profitability level of the banking industry. The data consists of savings and commercial banks located in 16 different OECD countries over the time period from 1992 to 2009. The cross-country study, evaluates, whether increased capital requirements have a negative effect on bank profitability, meaning, if banks that keep a larger capital buffer earn a lower return or if banks that increase capital are better prepared for the financial crisis and therefore manage to get a better return. To evaluate the effect, the time period utilized is divided into a pre-crisis period (1992 to 2007), which is compared with an average over the total period (1992-2009). The measure of profitability is the return on equity and to control for business cycle fluctuations macro economic factors are included. Previous research results are scattered and indicate that decreased risk taking increases profitability, meanwhile increased regulation decreases profitability. The main findings in this paper are that Tier 1 capital and risk-weighted assets have a negative effect on profitability, whereas the capital buffer illustrates a positive effect.

Historically, banks have always had a central role in the economy. Their decisions do not only affect their shareholders and customers but the whole economic system. As a consequence, the financial crisis of 2007-2008 has shown that bank management is a huge matter and that the failure of one bank can affect tremendously the whole banking system and the economy. For these reasons, banks need to be regulated by external organisations that constrain them to adjust their regulatory capital via their risk weighted assets. This paper examines the significant factors of the spread between the scenarios on Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) of the 2016 stress test for EU banks. CET1 is a component of capital adequacy ratio and measures the connections between capital euntens’ris-weighted assets. On a methodological standpoint, this research is based on a positivist approach this meaning that a quantitative analysis has been performed. The sample used in this research is composed of 51 banks from 15 countries across EU and European Economic Area. All of these banks have been analysed by the European Banking Authority (EBA) which has conducted stress test in order to assess CET1 as regards to Basel III framework. The researchers have elaborated a conceptual model in order to select the most relevant variables that might affect the spread of CET1. The hypotheses are based on previous researches and take into account the following independent variables: Size, Stock Exchange Listed, Leverage ratio, Loans on Assets, Net Interest Margin, Risk-Weighted Assets to Total Assets and Profitability. Simple linear regression and multiple linear regressions have been performed to test the impact of all the independent variables on the spread of CET1. The statistical analyses have revealed that there are no significant relationships between the selected variables, except for size that has a significant negative impact on the spread as part of the multiple regression. Therefore, none of the hypotheses can be supported. These results provide new insights in the banking sector and to a larger extent for finance. They may be considered as a basis for future research on the spread of CET1.

The subject matter of this thesis is a treatise on legal regulation of bank activities. I have chosen this topic for its recency in a connection with global financial crisis and also in a connection with application of new European legislation in the field of bank regulation. Activities of banks belong among one of the most regulated market areas because eventual failures of banks are very dangerous not only for a functioning of the bank system but also for a huge amount of other subjects dependent on proper financial factoring. An importance of bank regulation is also given by a large amount of depositors who have their money deposited with the bank and who can lose their funds in the case of a failure of the bank unless the institutes of the financial safety net will provide compensation. Regulatory rules impact on banks already in the phase of their origin. There are strict conditions for an obtaining of the bank license from a reason of a prevention of an entry of unhealthy business subjects to bank market to avoid problems prior to their creation. An exit from bank market is also regulated in the form of a different legal regulation of insolvency and liquidation of the bank. The thesis is divided into eleven chapters which are divided into several subsequent subchapters. The thesis starts with...

Purpose:The purpose is to investigate the adequacy of the Basel Accords to fulfill the underlying ideas of reducing risk and stabilizing the financial sector, or if it allows banks to use regulatory arbitrage to maintain a desired productive efficiency- and risk level. Methodology:A two-step analysis is constructed where each bank’s efficiency is first estimated, followed by a panel data regression on the efficiency-score and on a proxy for bank risk.  Conclusion:We found evidence supporting that the third Basel Accord have been more effective, by a reduced risk as a consequence of both an increased capital adequacy ratio and the implementation. However, we cannot confirm that the capital requirements inhibit bank efficiency, but there is evidence of an impaired efficiency since the implementation of the third accord, suggesting that the supervision, for instance, has a weakening effect on efficiency. Moreover, there are also implication of the strengthened capital requirements, in terms of quantity and quality of capital, more efficiently fulfilling the accords purpose of reducing risk.

This dissertation includes three chapters. The first chapter studies the question of whether countries with different fiscal capacity should optimally have different ex-ante minimum bank capital requirements. In an environment with endogenously incomplete markets and overinvestment because of moral hazard and pecuniary externalities, I show that countries with larger fiscal capacity should have lower minimum ex-ante bank capital requirements. I also show that, in addition to the minimum capital requirement, regulators in countries with a concentrated financial sector and large fiscal capacity (which are also countries with strong moral hazard) should impose a limit on the amount of liquidity pledged by financial institutions in a crisis state (for example, restrict the amount of put options/CDS contracts sold by financial institutions). The second chapter studies the welfare implications of a concentrated, imperfectly competitive banking sector, which faces a bank net worth constraint in a small open economy (SOE) environment. There are two standard sources of inefficiency --- pecuniary externalities, which lead to overinvestment, and a standard monopolistic underinvestment force. I show that the optimal policy instruments include subsidies on firm borrowing costs in certain periods and capital account controls in others, which is a good proxy for the behavior of emerging markets. For every country, there exists a financial sector with a particular banking sector concentration, for which the inefficiencies offset each other and no government intervention is required in some periods. Furthermore, this paper documents a novel theoretical result --- the interaction between future binding bank net worth constraints and dynamic (future) underinvestment could lead to ex-ante overinvestment even in economies with a single monopolistic bank where there are no pecuniary externalities. The last third chapter, which is coauthored with Kenneth Rogoff, evaluates a new class of exchange rate forecasting studies, which claim that structural models are getting closer to being able to forecast exchange rates at short horizons. We argue that misinterpretation of some new out-of-sample tests for nested models, over-reliance on asymptotic test statistics, and failure to sufficiently check robustness to alternative time windows have led many studies to overstate even the relatively thin positive results that have been found. / Economics

On July 20/21 in 2012, an international workshop was held on the subject of the global impact of the Euro-Financial-Crisis at the University of Potsdam. Prof. Dr. Detlev Hummel, faculty Finance and Banking, was the host of the event. Academic colleagues from Beijing, Moscow and Connecticut (USA) as well as domestic capital market and banking experts presented their analyses. Different aspects of national and international finance markets were examined, with a focus on the European region, China and Russia. Mistakes and failures of the banking regulations were identified as one, but note the sole cause of the economic problems. A lack of budget discipline of some politicians and the loss of business competitiveness of certain European nations were mentioned, too. Some members of the European Union did not succeed in mastering the challenges of the global economy. There have been structural issues in some states that impede their competitiveness in the global market, for example with China. The participants pointed out a number of other reasons for the crisis, like dubious distribution types as well as a lack of transparency of certain financial products. Furthermore, remuneration and incentive schemas of investment banks and especially the reckless risk management policy of large banks were identified as other factors for the crisis. The participants of the international workshop in Potsdam agree that the birth of the Euro-currency was a political event and will remain a challenge. The reform of the banking supervision and further steps towards an economic and fiscal union are new research tasks. / Am 20./21. Juli 2012 fand an der Universität Potsdam ein internationaler Erfahrungsaustausch über die globalen Folgen der Euro-Finanzkrise statt. Eingeladen hatte Prof. Dr. Detlev Hummel, Lehrstuhl für Betriebswirtschaftslehre mit dem Schwerpunkt Finanzierung und Banken. Kooperationspartner aus Peking, St. Petersburg und Moskau sowie Connecticut (USA), wie auch heimische Kapitalmarkt- und Bankexperten trugen Analysen vor. Es wurden unterschiedliche Aspekte aus Sicht nationaler und internationaler Finanzmärkte vorgestellt, wobei neben dem europäischen Raum auch China und Russland im Fokus standen. Die Ursachen der Euro-Finanzkrise wurden einerseits in einer unzureichenden Bankenregulierung gesehen. Eine mangelnde Haushaltsdisziplin politischer Entscheidungsträger und der Verlust der Wettbewerbsfähigkeit bestimmter europäischer Staaten standen ebenso zur Debatte. Teile der europäischen Gemeinschaft haben die Herausforderungen der Globalisierung nicht gemeistert. Es handelt sich hierbei um Strukturprobleme einzelner Staaten, die eine globale Wettbewerbsfä-higkeit, beispielsweise gegenüber China, verhindern. Weitere Ursachen - wie die teils fragwürdigen Vertriebsformen sowie die mangelnde Transparenz bestimmter Finanzprodukte, aber auch extreme Vergütungs- und Anreizmechanismen von Investmentbanken, vor allem aber die leichtfertige Risikopolitik großer Institute sowie Systemschwächen dabei - wurden aufgezeigt. Die Teilnehmer des internationalen Workshops in Potsdam waren sich darüber einig, dass die Einführung des Euro ein politisches Ereignis war und eine solche Herausforderung bleibt. Die Reform der europäischen Bankenaufsicht und weitere Schritte in Richtung einer wirtschaftlichen und finanzpolitischen Union stellen neue Aufgaben für die Forschung dar.