Credit gaps in Belgium : identification, characteristics and lessons for macroprudential policy (original) (raw)
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How Should Credit Gaps Be Measured? An Application to European Countries
IMF Working Papers, 2020
Assessing when credit is excessive is important to understand macro-financial vulnerabilities and guide macroprudential policy. The Basel Credit Gap (BCG) – the deviation of the credit-to-GDP ratio from its long-term trend estimated with a one-sided Hodrick-Prescott (HP) filter—is the indicator preferred by the Basel Committee because of its good performance as an early warning of banking crises. However, for a number of European countries this indicator implausibly suggests that credit should go back to its level at the peak of the boom after the credit cycle turns, resulting in large negative gaps that might delay the activation of macroprudential policies. We explore two different approaches—a multivariate filter based on economic theory and a fundamentals-based panel regression. Each approach has pros and cons, but they both provide a useful complement to the BCG in assessing macro-financial vulnerabilities in Europe.
The credit-to-GDP gap and countercyclical capital buffers: questions and answers
Basel III uses the gap between the credit-to-GDP ratio and its long-term trend as a guide for setting countercyclical capital buffers. Criticism of this choice centres on three areas: (i) the suitability of the guide given the objective of the buffer; (ii) the early warning indicator properties of the guide for banking crises (especially for emerging market economies); and (iii) practical measurement problems. While many criticisms have merit, some misinterpret the objective of the instrument and the role of the indicator. Historically, for a large cross section of countries and crisis episodes, the credit-to-GDP gap is a robust single indicator for the build-up of financial vulnerabilities. As such, its role is to inform, rather than dictate, supervisors' judgmental decisions regarding the appropriate level of the countercyclical buffer.
2018
Do banks with low capital extend excessive credit to weak firms, and does this matter for aggregate efficiency? Using a unique data set that covers almost all bank-firm relationships in Italy in the period 2008-2013, we find that, during the Eurozone financial crisis: (i) Under-capitalized banks cut credit to healthy firms (but not to zombie firms) and are more likely to prolong a credit relationship with a zombie firm, compared to stronger banks. (ii) In areas-sectors with more low-capital banks, zombie firms are more likely to survive and non-zombies are more likely to go bankrupt; (iii) Nevertheless, bank under-capitalization does not hurt the growth rate of healthy firms, while it allows zombie firms to grow faster. This goes against previous influential findings that, we argue, face a serious identification problem. Thus, while banks with low capital can be an important source of aggregate inefficiency in the long run, their contribution to the severity of the great recession v...
2020
We revisit the analysis by Drehmann and Yetman (2018) and conclude that measuring the credit gap based on the 5-year growth rate of the credit-to-GDP ratio produces a more reliable and robust predictor of financial crises than does the Hodrick-Prescott filtered series. We also conclude that estimating the credit gap based on the forecast error of a 5-year-ahead regression can be even more useful, provided a sufficiently long sample is available to estimate coefficients of the regression.
WP/17/256 Credit Growth and Economic Recovery in Europe After the Global Financial Crisis
This paper reviews the empirical relationships between credit growth, economic recovery, and bank profitability in Europe after the global financial crisis (GFC). We find that the post-GFC recoveries in Europe have been weaker than previous recoveries, with the "double-dip" recessions in 2011-12 in many countries and the worldwide reach of the GFC explaining the underperformance. Bank lending has been subdued as well, but this appears to have only held back the recovery relatively moderately. A 10 percent increase in bank credit to the private sector is associated with a rise of 0.6-1 percent in real GDP and 2-2½ percent in real private investment. These relationships have not changed significantly during and after the GFC. Loan quality, customer deposits, bank equity price index, and bank capital appear to be closely linked to bank lending. As expected, bank profitability is positively and significantly influenced by credit growth, but this relationship has weakened after the GFC. JEL Classification Numbers: C23, C26, E51, G01, G21, O47, O52;
Optimizing Credit Gaps for Predicting Financial Crises: Modelling Choices and Tradeoffs
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2021
Credit gaps are good predictors for financial crises, and banking regulators recommend using them to inform countercyclical capital buffers for banks. Researchers typically create credit gap measures using trend-cycle decomposition methods, which require many modelling choices, such as the method used, and the smoothness of the underlying trend. Other choices hinge on the tradeoffs implicit in how gaps are used as early warning indicators (EWIs) for predicting crises, such as the preference over false positives and false negatives. We evaluate how the performance of credit-gap-based EWIs for predicting crises is influenced by these modelling choices. For the most common trend-cycle decomposition methods used to recover credit gaps, we find that optimally smoothing the trend enhances out-of-sample prediction. We also show that out-ofsample performance improves further when we consider a preference for robustness of the credit gap estimates to the arrival of new information, which is important as any EWI should work in real-time. We offer several practical implications.
Are Weak Banks Leading Credit Booms? Evidence from Emerging Europe
Comparative Economic Studies, 2008
The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate. This paper examines the behavior of bank soundness indicators during episodes of brisk loan growth, using bank-level data for central and eastern Europe and controlling for the feedback effect of credit growth on bank soundness. No evidence is found that rapid loan expansion has weakened banks during the last decade, but over time weaker banks seem to have started to expand at least as fast as, and in some markets faster than, stronger banks. These findings suggest that during credit booms supervisors need to carefully monitor the soundness of rapidly expanding banks and stand ready to take action to limit the expansion of weak banks. 11B JEL Classification Numbers: G21, G28, P34 1 The authors gratefully acknowledge cooperation of the central banks of the Czech Republic,
Credit Misallocation During the European Financial Crisis
SSRN Electronic Journal
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Les imperfections du marché de crédit et le cycle d'affaires
2015
The crisis of 2009 raised the question whether the financial conditions matter for the business cycles and the propagation of shocks originating in the financial sphere. I tried to drive a fine analysis of this issue using micro-founded general equilibrium models. The modelling choice was backed by empirical motivations. In three essays, i study the impact of monetary and financial shocks on growth and labour market dynamics. First, an expansionary monetary policy eases credit conditions, raises risk tolerance and the quality of borrowers and generates a liquidity effect. The potency of the monetary policy and the size of the credit channel depend considerably on the degree of financial frictions in the credit market. Second, a restrictive monetary policy shock, an positive credit shock and a positive uncertainty shocks have similar effects on the economy: they plunge the economy in a recession, with output, job creations, and hours worked decreasing, while unemployment and job dest...