0000000001293185

AUTHOR

Isabel Schnabel

Financial Sector Reform After the Subprime Crisis: Has Anything Happened?

We analyze the reactions of stock returns and the spreads of credit default swaps (CDS) of banks from Europe and the USA to four major regulatory reforms in the aftermath of the subprime crisis, employing an event study analysis. Contrary to public perception, we find that financial markets indeed reacted to the structural reforms enacted at the national level. The reforms succeeded in reducing bail-out expectations relative to the post-bail-out period, especially for systemic banks. The strongest effects were found for the Dodd–Frank Act and in particular for the Volcker rule. Bank profitability was affected in all countries, showing up in lower equity returns.

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Why banks are not too big to fail - evidence from the CDS market

This paper argues that bank size is not a satisfactory measure of systemic risk because it neglects aspects such as interconnectedness, correlation, and the economic context. In order to differentiate the effect of bank size from that of systemic importance, we control for systemic risk using the CoVaR measure introduced by Adrian and Brunnermeier (2011). We show that a bank's contribution to systemic risk has a significant negative effect on banks’ credit default swap (CDS) spreads, supporting the too‐systemic‐to‐fail hypothesis. Once we control for systemic risk, bank size (relative to gross domestic product (GDP)) has either no or a positive effect on banks’ CDS spreads. The effect of ba…

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Financial Sector Reform after the Crisis: Has Anything Happened?

We analyze the reaction of stock returns and CDS spreads of banks from Europe and the United States to four major regulatory reforms in the aftermath of the subprime crisis, employing an event study analysis. In contrast to the public perception that nothing has happened, we find that financial markets indeed reacted to the structural reforms enacted at the national level. All reforms succeeded in reducing bail-out expectations, especially for systemic banks. However, banks’ profitability was also affected, showing up in lower equity returns. The strongest effects were found for the Dodd-Frank Act (especially the Volcker rule), whereas market reactions to the German restructuring law were s…

research product

Financial Sector Reform After the Crisis: Has Anything Happened?

We analyze the reactions of stock returns and CDS spreads of banks from Europe and the United States to four major regulatory reforms in the aftermath of the subprime crisis, employing an event study analysis. In contrast to the public perception that nothing has happened, we find that financial markets indeed reacted to the structural reforms enacted at the national level. All reforms succeeded in reducing bail-out expectations, especially for systemic banks. However, banks' profitability was also affected, showing up in lower equity returns. The strongest effects were found for the Dodd-Frank Act (especially the Volcker rule), whereas market reactions to the German restructuring law were …

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Financial Fragmentation and Economic Growth in Europe

Using industry data from Eurostat and applying the Rajan-Zingales methodology, we investigate the real growth effects of banking sector integration in the European Union. Our sample stretches from 2000 until 2012 and includes the phase of rapid financial integration before the global financial crisis as well as the following phase of financial fragmentation and bank deleveraging. We find evidence that banking sector integration had a more than four times stronger growth effect during the crisis than in normal times. Growth effects are also stronger in times of domestic bank deleveraging. We conclude that concerns of European policy makers about fragmentation in the European banking sector a…

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