IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/ratioi/0063.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Long-Term Relationship between Capital and Earnings in Banking: Sweden 1870–2001

Author

Listed:

Abstract

Contrary to received wisdom, two recent studies report a negative relation-ship between leverage and profitability in banking in the 1980s and early 1990s. This study presents new data on the leverage and profitability of Swedish commercial banks in 1870–2001, and explore the sign of the relation-ship in the long term. In the studied period, the capital-asset ratio decreased by a factor four, while return-on-equity more than doubled. The Leverage Formula postulates a positive linear relation between return-on-equity and the debt-equity ratio. A strong positive linear relationship was found over the period 1871–1980, but not in 1980–2001. Thus, while supporting the re-sults of the previous studies, a long-term “normal” positive relationship be-tween leverage and profitability is also reaffirmed.

Suggested Citation

  • Hortlund, Per, 2005. "The Long-Term Relationship between Capital and Earnings in Banking: Sweden 1870–2001," Ratio Working Papers 63, The Ratio Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:ratioi:0063
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ratio.se/pdf/wp/ph_relationship.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Demirguc, Asli & Huizinga, Harry, 1999. "Determinants of Commercial Bank Interest Margins and Profitability: Some International Evidence," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 13(2), pages 379-408, May.
    2. Berger, Allen N, 1995. "The Relationship between Capital and Earnings in Banking," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 27(2), pages 432-456, May.
    3. Berger, Allen N. & Herring, Richard J. & Szego, Giorgio P., 1995. "The role of capital in financial institutions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(3-4), pages 393-430, June.
    4. Englund, Peter, 1999. "The Swedish Banking Crisis: Roots and Consequences," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 15(3), pages 80-97, Autumn.
    5. Capie, Forrest & Billings, Mark, 2001. "Profitability in English banking in the twentieth century," European Review of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(3), pages 367-401, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hortlund, Per, 2005. "The Long-Term Relationship between Capital and Earnings in Banking," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 611, Stockholm School of Economics, revised 17 Nov 2005.
    2. Ozili, Peterson, K, 2016. "Bank Profitability and Capital Regulation: Evidence from Listed and non-Listed Banks in Africa," MPRA Paper 75856, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Elijah Brewer III & George Kaufman & Larry Wall, 2008. "Bank Capital Ratios Across Countries: Why Do They Vary?," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 34(2), pages 177-201, December.
    4. Phong T. H. Ngo, 2006. "Endogenous Capital and Profitability in Banking," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 2006-464, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
    5. Paroush, Jacob & Schreiber, Ben Z., 2019. "Profitability, capital, and risk in US commercial and savings banks: Re-examination of estimation methods," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 148-162.
    6. Vighneswara Swamy, 2017. "Determinants of Bank Asset Quality and Profitability: An Empirical Assessment," Applied Economics Quarterly (formerly: Konjunkturpolitik), Duncker & Humblot GmbH, Berlin, vol. 63(1), pages 97-135.
    7. Robert Stewart & Murshed Chowdhury & Vaalmikki Arjoon, 2021. "Bank stability and economic growth: trade-offs or opportunities?," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 61(2), pages 827-853, August.
    8. Baah Aye Kusi & Elikplimi Komla Agbloyor & Vera Ogeh Fiador & Kofi Achampong Osei, 2016. "Does Information Sharing Promote or Detract from Bank Returns: Evidence from Ghana," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 28(3), pages 332-343, September.
    9. Mr. Selim A Elekdag & Sheheryar Malik & Ms. Srobona Mitra, 2019. "Breaking the Bank? A Probabilistic Assessment of Euro Area Bank Profitability," IMF Working Papers 2019/254, International Monetary Fund.
    10. Hesna Genay, 1998. "Assessing the condition of Japanese banks: how informative are accounting earnings?," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, vol. 22(Q IV), pages 12-34.
    11. Carletti, Elena & Cerasi, Vittoria & Daltung, Sonja, 2007. "Multiple-bank lending: Diversification and free-riding in monitoring," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 425-451, July.
    12. Jain Mayank & Malik Taniya & Malik Sakshi, 2023. "Deciphering Financial Health and Risk: Hierarchical Relationships and Interdependencies among Key Factors," Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Economics and Business, Sciendo, vol. 11(1), pages 162-185, October.
    13. Esteban Miguélez & Jonathan Spiteri & Simon Grima, 2019. "Establishing the Contributing Factors to the Resurrection of PIIGS Banks Following the Crisis: A Panel Data Analysis," International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), vol. 0(1), pages 3-34.
    14. Fadzlan Sufian & Muzafar Shah Habibullah, 2010. "Bank-specific, Industry-specific and Macroeconomic Determinants of Bank Efficiency," Margin: The Journal of Applied Economic Research, National Council of Applied Economic Research, vol. 4(4), pages 427-461, November.
    15. repec:spt:apfiba:v::y:2018:i::f:8_2_1 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Santosh Kumar Das & Khushboo Uppal, 2021. "NPAs and profitability in Indian banks: an empirical analysis," Future Business Journal, Springer, vol. 7(1), pages 1-9, December.
    17. Berger, Allen N. & Bonaccorsi di Patti, Emilia, 2006. "Capital structure and firm performance: A new approach to testing agency theory and an application to the banking industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 1065-1102, April.
    18. Ghosh, Saibal, 2016. "Political transition and bank performance: How important was the Arab Spring?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 372-382.
    19. Bakoush, Mohamed & Abouarab, Rabab & Wolfe, Simon, 2019. "Disentangling the impact of securitization on bank profitability," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 519-537.
    20. Norman Zakiyy & Kamal Halili Hassan, 2016. "The Management Process at the Pretrial Stage under Malaysian Rules of Court 2012," European Journal of Economics and Business Studies Articles, Revistia Research and Publishing, vol. 2, ejes_v2_i.
    21. Robin, Iftekhar & Salim, Ruhul & Bloch, Harry, 2018. "Financial performance of commercial banks in the post-reform era: Further evidence from Bangladesh," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 43-54.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    return-on-equity; leverage; bank capital;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • N23 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • N24 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - Europe: 1913-

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:ratioi:0063. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Martin Korpi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ratiose.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.