Eco Notepad features educational articles that present the research, studies and economic expertise of the Banque de France. The blog is aimed at students, professionals, journalists and academics. Some articles will be devoted to analyses carried out by the Bank's branch network, on specific topics. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Banque de France, the Eurosystem, or the institutions employing these authors.
Eco Notepad editors asks authors submitting a post to the blog to confirm that they have no conflicts of interest. If one of the authors of a blog benefits of an external financing, he should state the sources of financial support for the particular research it describes.
By Dominique Durant, Kevin Parra Ramirez, Geneviève Toubol
The descriptive data associated with large enterprise identifiers (LEIs) provide up-to-date information on groups’ ownership structure, as well as on the legal form and location of their operations, including those in off-shore financial centres (OFCs). Extending the obligation to have an LEI would thus help to make global financial transactions more transparent.
Chart 1: Distribution of locations of foreign subsidiaries, by parent company nationality
Unlike the fictitious scenarios used in standard prudential stress test exercises (see post "Bank stress tests: tools for prudential analysis – Episode 1"), the Covid-19 crisis represents an unprecedented adverse scenario. This is an opportunity to draw the first lessons from it: (i) on the resilience of the banking system, as observed for the time being, and (ii) on the improvement of stress-test tools in the light of this experience.
Chart 1: Loss of GDP in the stress tests and during recent crises (pp)
In order to protect banks from macroeconomic and financial shocks, prudential authorities use a range of risk analysis tools, among them stress tests. What are they? What purpose do they serve? This blog post answers these questions and is accompanied by a second post on the “real-life” stress placed on banks by the Covid-19 crisis.
Chart 1: Steps in a bottom-up bank stress-test exercise.
Even though the Fed does not have an explicit financial stability objective extending beyond its supervisory responsibilities, the public speeches of Fed officials reveal that there is a relationship between the higher proportion of speaking time on financial stability topics and more accommodative monetary policy. Financial stability became a topic of concern in Fed speeches especially around the global financial crisis.
Chart 1. Main topics covered in Fed speeches Source: Istrefi, Odendahl, Sestieri (2020). The chart shows the proportion of six topics extracted from the Fed speeches for the period 1997 to 2018. The topic proportions displayed are annual averages.
The coronavirus crisis and decline in economic activity have led to a steep rise in the need for financing. As a result, net issuance of public and private debt securities in the euro area has increased to unprecedented levels. The main buyers are central banks and banking institutions, and, to a lesser extent, non-euro area residents.
Chart 1: Public and private debt issuance has reached record levels in the euro area (Seasonally adjusted data, EUR billions) Source: European Central Bank (author’ s calculations).
The health crisis has left a significant number of businesses in urgent need of cash. In response, public authorities have put in place various support mechanisms, including a scheme to provide State-Guaranteed Loans (SGLs). The credit mediation system is currently helping businesses that have received an initial refusal from a bank in response to their SGL request.
Chart 1: Number of requests for credit mediation from businesses (monthly average) Source: Banque de France, Credit Mediation Scheme for Businesses
Bank solvency and liquidity risks mutually interact. Using a model that simultaneously estimates the solvency and liquidity ratios of French banks, it is possible to incorporate them jointly into a stress scenario. It shows that the financial environment has a significant impact, but only in times of crisis, and that solvency has an impact on liquidity, not vice versa.
Chart 1: Solvency ratio and liquidity ratio of French banks since 1993 Sources: ACPR, authors’ calculations.
We assess the link between banks' commitments to take climate issues seriously, measured by a climate performance rating based on their declarations, and the changes in their lending in France to greenhouse gas emitting industries between 2010 and 2017. A higher score appears to be associated with lower growth in lending to large enterprises in the five most carbon-intensive industries. However, lending to SMEs is not affected.
Chart 1: Banks’ pro-climate commitments and share of loans to firms in the most carbon-intensive industries in France. Source: Banque de France, authors’ calculations.
What would the economic cost of a systemic firm going bust be? This post addresses this question by assessing the recessionary effect of a systemic default. Within two years, such an event is expected to be followed by a 3% decrease in aggregate consumption and by three more systemic defaults.
Figure 1: Euro area probability of consumption dropping by more than 10% or 20% (horizon= 12 months) Source: Gourieroux, Monfort, Mouabbi and Renne (2019)
2019 saw very significant growth in labelled funds. With subscription rates higher than the industry average and broadly comparable levels of performance, the label is proving to be a factor of attractiveness for investors. However, the success of the labels is uneven and their penetration in the landscape of French collective investment management remains limited. Further educational and promotional efforts are still needed to step up the distribution of these products among savers.
Chart 1. Labelled funds accounted for only 7% of the French collective investment management market in 2019 Sources: Association française de la gestion financière (AFG – the French Asset Management Association), Banque de France and the French Ministries for the Economy and for Ecological Transition. Note: Estimate of the responsible investment collective man