Money, Banking and Financial Markets

Primers

Primers

 
 
Posts tagged Skin in the game
Understanding Bank Capital: A Primer

Over the past 40 years, U.S. capital markets have grown much faster than banks, so that banks’ share of credit to the private nonfinancial sector has dropped from 55% to 34% (see BIS statistics here).  Nevertheless, banks remain a critical part of the financial system. They operate the payments system, supply credit, and serve as agents and catalysts for a wide range of other financial transactions. As a result, their well-being remains a key concern. A resilient banking system is, above all, one that has sufficient capital to weather the loan defaults and declines in asset values that will inevitably come.

In this primer, we explain the nature of bank capital, highlighting its role as a form of self-insurance providing both a buffer against unforeseen losses and an incentive to manage risk-taking. We describe some of the challenges in measuring capital and briefly discuss a range of approaches for setting capital requirements. While we do not know the optimal level of capital that banks (or other intermediaries) should be required to hold, we suggest a practical approach for setting requirements that would promote the safety of the financial system without diminishing its efficiency....

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Steve Cecchetti and Kim SchoenholtzAssets, Liabilities, Net worth, Capital, Capital adequacy, Capital requirements, Loss-absorbing capacity, Exposure, Leverage ratio, Debt-equity ratio, Self-insurance, Incentives, Solvency, Liquidity, Risk-weighted assets, Derivatives, Balance sheet, Off-balance sheet, Debt overhang, Gamble for redemption, Skin in the game, Too big to fail, Time consistency, Adverse selection, Goodwill, Intangible capital, Deferred tax assets, Credit conversion factor, US GAAP, IFRS, Hypothetical portfolio exercise, Modigliani-Miller theorem, Minneapolis Plan, Narrow banking, De factor bank, Credit supply, De facto bank, Primer
Adverse Selection: A Primer

Information is the basis for our economic and financial decisions. As buyers, we collect information about products before entering into a transaction. As investors, the same goes for information about firms seeking our funds. This is information that sellers and fund-seeking firms typically have. But, when it is too difficult or too costly to collect information, markets function poorly or not at all.

Economists use the term adverse selection to describe the problem of distinguishing a good feature from a bad feature when one party to a transaction has more information than the other party. The degree of adverse selection depends on how costly it is for the uninformed actor to observe the hidden attributes of a product or counterparty. When key characteristics are sufficiently expensive to discern, adverse selection can make an otherwise healthy market disappear.

In this primer, we examine three examples of adverse selection: (1) used cars; (2) health insurance; and (3) private finance. We use these examples to highlight mechanisms for addressing the problem....

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Steve Cecchetti and Kim SchoenholtzAdverse selection, Asymmetric information, Financial crisis, Health insurance, ACA, Obamacare, Supreme Court, Preexisting conditions, Market for lemons, Used cars, Financial markets, Screening, Signaling, Hidden attributes, Disclosure, Collateral, Banks, Mortgages, Skin in the game, Risk aversion, Primer, Market failure, Complete information