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The recent rise of nonperforming loans (NPLs) in some Asian economies calls for close analysis of the determinants, the potential macrofinancial feedback effects, and the implications for financial stability in the region. Using a dynamic panel model, we assess the determinants of the evolution of bank-specific NPLs in Asia and find that macroeconomic conditions and bank-specific factors – such as rapid credit growth and excessive bank lending – contribute to the buildup of NPLs. Further, a panel vector autoregression (VAR) analysis of macrofinancial implications of NPLs in emerging Asia offers significant evidence for feedback effects of NPLs on the real economy and financial variables. Impulse response functions demonstrate that a rising NPL ratio decreases the GDP growth, credit supply and increases the unemployment rate. Our findings underline the importance of considering policy options to swiftly and effectively manage and respond to a buildup of NPLs. The national and regional mechanisms underlying NPL resolution are important for safeguarding financial stability in an increasingly interconnected global financial system.

Lessons from the most recent financial crisis show specific vulnerabilities of financial markets due to weaknesses in the structure of the financial system (structural fragility). As the literature points out, the impact of systemic risk can be closely related to issues of concentration (“too big to fail”) and dependency (“too connected to fail”). However, different structural variables are emphasized in various ways, and most authors analyze each variable separately. This raises the questions of how structural fragility, as a cause of systemic distress, can be assessed more comprehensively and consistently, and what the implications are for modeling it within an integrated systemic risk framework. This paper seeks to address these issues.

On the basis of theoretical considerations and in the light of current transformations in financial markets, this paper explores elements of structural fragility and the requirements for modeling them.

The paper suggests an extended approach for conceptualizing structural fragility, evaluates directions for quantifying structural issues in early warning systems (EWSs) for systemic crises, and lays a theoretical groundwork for further empirical studies.

The need for supervisory actions to prevent crises is urgent, as is the need for integrating structural aspects into EWSs for systemic financial crises. Since a significant aspect of a financial firm's risk comes from outside the firm, individual institutions should understand and monitor the structural aspects of the various risk networks they are in.

This paper aims to suggest ways to complete the enhancement of the policy responses to systemic banking crises that followed the Great Financial Crisis.

An integrated macrofinancial analytical framework was designed to overcome the segregation between macro work, based on national accounting concepts, and prudential oversight of financial institutions, based on business accounting and concepts.

The design and implementation of the integrated macrofinancial framework are within reach, supported by extensive ongoing research work around the world, and correspond to rising expectations by the international community. It will lead to improvements in the way systemic banking crises are managed. Even more importantly, it offers a promising avenue to make further progress in the prevention of future crises.

The main limitations are the need to overcome the well-known constraints of national accounting, and to overcome the enduring silo separating macro-economists from financial sector experts. The implications are the need for extensive additional interaction between these two groups of experts.

The practical, operational implications are extensive, and could yield a major impact on the global financial stability work agenda. The design of policy responses to systemic banking crises could be profoundly affected, in particular with regard to the target of these responses (corporates vs banks in particular).

The direct and indirect costs of systemic banking crises could be reduced, with widespread benefits for society at large.

This is a fully original new proposed approach with extensive operational value for practitioners.

Following Ang and Piazzesi’s (2003) study, the authors use an affine term structure model to study the relevance of macroeconomic (domestic and foreign) factors for Peru’s sovereign yield curve in the period from November 2005 to December 2015. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Risk premia are modeled as time-varying and depend on both observable and unobservable factors; and the authors estimate a vector autoregressive model considering no-arbitrage assumptions.

The authors find evidence that macro factors help to improve the fit of the model and explain a substantial amount of variation in bond yields. However, their influence is very sensitive to the specification model. Variance decompositions show that macro factors explain a significant share of the movements at the short and middle segments of the yield curve (up to 50 percent), while unobservable factors are the main drivers for most of the movements at the long end of the yield curve (up to 80 percent). Furthermore, the authors find that international markets are relevant for the determination of the risk premium in the short term. Higher uncertainty in international markets increases bond yields, although this effect vanishes quickly. Finally, the authors find that no-arbitrage restrictions with the incorporation of macro factors improve forecasts.

To the authors’ knowledge this is the first application of this type of models using data from an emerging country such as Peru.

Using time-series data on the US banking industry for the period 1984Q1-2016Q2, the present study aims to examine the impact of both aggregate and sector-specific non-performing loans (NPLs) on aggregate and sectoral product and labor markets.

Using both single equation ordinary least squares and instrumental variables regressions, the study compares the sensitivity of sector-specific gross domestic product (GDP) and employment growth to changes in both aggregate and sectoral NPLs. Moreover, the paper uses vector autoregressions (VARs) to dynamically trace the impact and duration of NPLs on different types of real economic activity..

Rise in total NPLs reduces US real GDP growth that is most accentuated for construction sector GDP. Likewise, total NPLs significantly lowers both total and non-farm employment growth, financial activities and construction sector employment growth, with the latter showing most sensitivity. Moreover, NPLs in commercial and industrial sector, consumer lending, non-farm non-residential, construction and land development, single- and multi-family residential sectors reduce corresponding sectoral employment growth. The VARs largely confirm these findings with shocks to total NPLs having the most immediate and persistent inimical impact on construction-sector GDP growth.

The deleterious impact of different categories of NPLs on both aggregate as well as sector-specific product and labor markets illustrate that a distressed banking sector is a serious obstacle to the real sector. The findings underscore the need not only to clean up NPLs for the sake of banks financial soundness but also to reduce their pernicious effects on the health of the US economy. For bank regulatory authorities in the USA, it indicates constant monitoring of banks in their jurisdiction and identifying early warning signals to mitigate the potential real sector losses due to rising NPLs.

The extant literature on NPLs has mainly focused on explaining its underlying determinants but not on its real sector consequences. The present paper examines the impact of NPLs on different facets of real economic activity, an issue that has been rarely studied and especially not on the US economy. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of existing literature focuses on aggregate NPLs. The relationships derived in such studies, while useful, can mask important differences between different types of NPLs and real economic activity. The present paper explores the impact of disaggregated NPLs in the US banking industry on corresponding sector-specific product and labor markets, again an issue that has not been studied previously.

This study aims to analyze the impact of corporate governance on firms’ external financing decisions in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The authors analyzed a unique set of panel data comprising 2,425 nonfinancial firms whose shares are traded on stock exchanges in countries in the MENA region. The authors fitted an ordinary least squares model to estimate the regression coefficients. The authors performed a sensitivity analysis using alternative measures of the critical variables and an endogeneity analysis using instrumental variable methods with plausible external instruments.

The results revealed that corporate governance characteristics of firms are strongly associated with their degree of leverage. They also showed that macrofinancial conditions, financial regulations, corporate governance enforcement and social conditions mitigate the impact of corporate governance on firms’ financing decisions.

A larger sample size will further improve the results; however, this is difficult and depends on the extent to which increasing disclosure practices allow more corporate information to reach international databases.

This study provides new evidence on the role of corporate governance on firms’ financing decisions and documents the essential mitigating role of institutions, alerting managers to consider them.

This study is a novel attempt. Based on information from different data sources, this study explored the predictive power of corporate governance, ownership structures and other firm-specific characteristics in explaining corporate leverage in MENA countries. Overall, the analysis provides new evidence of the association between corporate governance and capital structure in the MENA region, highlighting the critical role of institutions.