Is Europe Overbanked?
"This paper is after a difficult question: has banking grown too much in Europe? The difficultly of the question lies in the words “too much”, which require a normative answer. We must take a stance on how much is “too much”, based on the needs of the real economy in Europe.
To tackle the question, we take an approach similar to that of a doctor treating a patient who seems overweight. The doctor’s first step is anamnesis: to collect information about the patient’s current and past weight and their medical history; and to benchmark these data against those of other people. Likewise, in Section 1 we review basic facts about the banking system in Europe, including its size, recent growth, concentration and leverage, and compare these data with those of other banking systems. According to all indicators, our patient is abnormally heavy.
The doctor must then make a diagnosis: as to whether the patient has gained “too much” weight, in the sense of weight gain leading to problems such as high blood pressure, sleep and breathing difficulties, and so on.
Similarly, in Section 2 we explore whether the European banking system has expanded beyond the point where it makes positive contributions (at the margin) to the real economy. Specifically, we investigate whether banks’ recent expansion is associated with (i) lower and more volatile economic growth; and (ii) excessive risk-taking and more frequent financial crises, including banking and sovereign debt crises.
At this point, the doctor considers why the patient has gained so much weight, i.e. turns to etiology: is it eating disorders, a sedentary lifestyle, or a disease? This question is asked not just out of curiosity, but because these causes entail different prognoses regarding the future of the patient’s health and different therapies. Similarly, Europe’s overbanking problem reflects various causes (described in Section 3): (i) government support and inadequate prudential supervision have exacerbated banks’ moral hazard problems; (ii) politicians in some countries have encouraged such expansion, for instance to promote “national champions” or to stimulate employment growth for electoral reasons; and (iii) the cost mix of European banks may have induced banks to overextend their market presence.
Finally, after gathering and evaluating all the evidence, the doctor prescribes therapies for the sorry patient. The objective of therapy is to address the root causes of the illness; alleviate nasty symptoms; and avoid unintended side-effects. Likewise, in Section 4, we outline possible policies to address overbanking in Europe.
We are not the first doctors that the European banking system has consulted in recent years. Our patient has just taken a potent medicine (the CRD IV package) and has prescriptions for more (BRRD, SSM, SRM, and possibly structural reform). Indeed, our patient has grown tired of this medicinal onslaught: he has “therapy fatigue”. But, in our view, more is needed. Some therapies could have a higher dosage; others have not been tried at all. We think that a course of new treatments will brighten the prognosis: helping the European banking system to make a speedy and lasting recovery from its current bloated state."
This publication was originally published by ESRB – European Systemic Risk Board as Reports of the Advisory Scientific Committee No. 4/June 2014 “Is Europe Overbanked?”. It was presented by Marco Pagano during the mBank-CASE Seminar no. 132 "Is Europe overbanked?".
The report was written by a group of the ESRB’s Advisory Scientific Committee, chaired by Marco Pagano and assisted by Sam Langfield. In addition, the ASC group comprised Viral Acharya, Arnoud Boot, Markus Brunnermeier, Claudia Buch, Martin Hellwig, André Sapir and Ieke van den Burg.
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