School Of Business Administration: Financial Review

Financial institutions are the topic of the 2003 Eastern Finance Association Symposium. The symposium papers illustrate the importance of bank research for improving our understanding of both financial and nonfinancial firms. Benston begins the symposium with an overview of banking. Three papers consider different aspects of banks' commercial lending: Frame, Padhi, and Woosley; Gottesman and Roberts; and Gonas, Highfield, and Mullineaux. Next, DeYoung and Rice analyze increases in bank's increased noninterest income. Finally, two papers illustrate the benefits of using banking data: Hasan and Wall, in examining the management of financial reporting, and Sfiridis and Daniels, in examining the implications of different organizational forms.

Keywords: banks, loans, research

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What’s Special about Banks?

George J. Benston

I delineate six aspects of how banks have been “special” (although not unique) and then consider whether and to what extent these attributes are still relevant. These include efficiently produced products, importance for the development and growth of economies, international scope, role in economic instability and the conduct of monetary policy, early regulation by governments, and source of data for academic researchers and institutions. Despite changes in the environment and in the ways in which financial services are provided, banks still are special. However, their specialness for public policy concerns is limited, now, to frauds and deposit insurance. I suggest ways in which these concerns can be dealt with efficiently.

Keywords: banks, financial intermediaries, bank specialness, bank regulation

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Credit Scoring and the Availability of Small Business Credit in Low- and Moderate-Income Areas

W. Scott Frame, Michael Padhi, Lynn Woosley

This paper estimates that credit scoring is associated with about a $3,900 increase in small business lending per sample banking organization, per low- and moderate-income (LMI) area served, and this effect is roughly equivalent to that estimated for higher-income areas. For our sample, this corresponds to a $536 million increase in small business credit in LMI areas in 1997 than otherwise would have been the case. This effect appears to be driven by increased out-of-market lending by banking organizations, as in-market lending generally declines. Overall, it does not appear that credit scoring has a disparate impact on LMI areas.

Keywords: credit scoring, small business lending, low-income, Community Reinvestment Act

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Maturity and Corporate Loan Pricing

Aron A. Gottesman, Gordon S. Roberts

We investigate the relation between corporate loan spreads and maturity to test whether lenders are compensated for longer maturity loans (tradeoff hypothesis) or limit their exposure by forcing riskier borrowers to take short-term loans (credit-quality hypothesis). Earlier studies reject the tradeoff hypothesis. We use the LPC DealScan database to create a matched sample of pairs of loans to the same borrower on the same day holding credit quality constant. We perform mean of difference tests and cross-sectional and regression analyses, and find evidence supporting both the tradeoff and credit quality hypotheses.

Keywords: bank, borrower, loan, contract terms

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When Are Commercial Loans Secured?

John S. Gonas, Michael J. Highfield, Donald J. Mullineaux

We analyze the factors that influence the decision to secure a commercial loan. We find evidence that variables reflecting adverse selection, moral hazard, and the prospects for default all affect the likelihood a loan will be collateralized. We find no evidence in favor of the predictions of certain theoretical models that high-quality firms signal by providing collateral. Our results also show that lenders with less risk protection in the form of equity capital are more likely to require collateral, but that banks themselves are less likely to secure loans than nonbanks. Certain loan characteristics also influence the collateralization decision.

Keywords: secured loans, collateral, credit risk, information asymmetry, moral hazard

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Noninterest Income and Financial Performance at U.S. Commercial Banks

Robert DeYoung, Tara Rice

Noninterest income now accounts for over 40% of operating income in the U.S. commercial banking industry. This paper demonstrates a number of empirical links between bank noninterest income, business strategies, market conditions, technological change, and financial performance between 1989 and 2001. The results indicate that well-managed banks expand more slowly into noninterest activities, and that marginal increases in noninterest income are associated with poorer risk-return tradeoffs on average. These findings suggest that noninterest income is coexisting with, rather than replacing, interest income from the intermediation activities that remain banks’ core financial services function.

Keywords: banks, noninterest income, deregulation

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Erratum

Determinants of the Loan Loss Allowance: Some Cross-Country Comparisons

Iftekhar Hasan, Larry D. Wall

This paper analyzes the determinants of banks’ loan loss allowance for samples of U.S. banks and three non-U.S. samples: a group of 21 countries, Canada, and Japan. The model includes fundamental (or nondiscretionary) determinants of the allowance, such as nonperforming loans, and discretionary determinants, such as income before the loan loss provision. The results suggest that the loan loss allowance is sensitive to preprovision income in almost all samples. However, the results also suggest that some variables thought to reflect fundamental factors in U.S. analysis, such as net charge-offs, are not significant factors for non-U.S. banks.

Keywords: loan loss allowance, accounting standards, international banking, nonperforming loan, discretionary accruals

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The Relative Cost Efficiency of Stock versus Mutual Thrifts: A Bayesian Approach

James M. Sfiridis, Kenneth N. Daniels

The relative cost efficiency of the mutual versus stock forms of ownership for thrifts has been a relevant issue in an era of deregulation and competition in the financial services industry. In this study, Bayesian- based Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) resampling methods are used to solve a stochastic cost frontier model and effectively determine cost efficiencies for the stock and mutual thrift groups. We find a statistically significant difference between both the cost frontiers and the cost efficiencies of the two groups, with the stock group operating at the lower-cost point. Agency problems explain a significant portion of the cost efficiency difference. Capital structure differences, though not helping to explain differences in cost efficiency, do help to explain differences in cost structure and managerial attitudes toward risk.

Keywords: thrifts, cost efficiency, stochastic cost frontier, Gibbs sampler, data augmentation

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Unpublished appendix

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The University of Mississippi: School of Business Administration