Christoph Memmel Book order

We investigate whether banks actively manage their exposure to interest rate risk in the short run. Using bank-level data of German banks for the period 2011Q4- 2017Q2, we find evidence that banks actively manage their interest rate risk exposure in their banking books: They take account of their regulatory situation and adjust their exposure to the earning opportunities of this risk. We also find that the customers' preferences predominantly determine the fixed-interest period of housing loans and that the fixed-interest period of these loans has an impact on the banks' overall exposure to interest rate risk. This last finding is not in line with active interest rate risk management

This paper investigates determinants of banks' structural exposure to interest rate risk in their banking book. Using bank-level data for German banks, we find evidence that a bank's exposure to interest rate risk depends on its presumed optimization horizon. The longer the presumed optimization horizon is, the more the bank is exposed to interest rate risk in its banking book. Moreover, there is evidence that banks hedge their earnings risk resulting from falling interest levels with exposure to interest rate risk. The more a bank is exposed to the risk of a decline in the interest rate level, the higher its exposure to interest rate risk.

We investigate German banks' exposure to interest rate risk. In finance, higher demand for a risky asset is typically associated with higher expected return. However, employing a utility function which implies both risk-averse and risk-seeking behavior depending on the level of profits, we show that this relationship may get weaker and even change its sign at low profit levels. For the period 2005-2014, we find not only the common positive relationship of higher expected returns and rising interest rate exposure but also that this relationship does become weaker with falling operative income, its sign eventually changing.

Using a unique data set on German banks' loans to the German real economy, we investigate banks' credit risk. This data set includes the volume of loans per bank and industry as well as the corresponding write-downs. Our empirical study for the period 2003-2011 yields the following results: (i) Beyond the nationwide credit loss rate, industry composition, and regional factors, the loans' maturity structure is found to drive the bank-wide loss rates in the credit portfolio. (ii) The nationwide loss rate has the most impact, followed by the maturity structure and the industry composition. (iii) For nationwide banks, these common factors explain about 26% of the time variation in the loss rate of credit portfolios; for regional banks, this percentage is less than eight percent.

Carrying out interbank contagion simulations for the German banking sector for the period from the first quarter of 2008 to the second quarter of 2011, we obtain the following results: (i) The system becomes less vulnerable to direct interbank contagion over time. (ii) The loss distribution for each point in time can be condensed into one indicator, the expected number of failures, without much loss of information. (iii) Important determinants of this indicator are the banks' capital, their interbank lending in the system, the loss given default and how equal banks spread their claims among other banks. -- Interbank market ; contagion ; time dimension

We decompose the change in banks' net interest margin into a change in market-wide bank rates and a change in the balance-sheet composition. Our empirical findings from a detailed data set on German banks' balance-sheet positions, broken down into different maturities, creditors and borrowers and degrees of liquidity are as follows: (i) Changes in bank rates have a much greater impact on and explain more of the variation in net interest margins than do changes in balance-sheet compositions. (ii) Changes in bank rates and changes in balance-sheet compositions affect the change in the net interest margin less strongly for derivative users than for non-users. On average, banks employ interest rate derivatives to reduce on-balance risk. (iii) When risk-taking becomes more lucrative, banks tend to increase their on-balance exposure. This effect is more pronounced for derivative users than for non-users. -- Net Interest Margin ; Banking ; Balance-Sheet Composition