IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/20758.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Does the Geographic Expansion of Bank Assets Reduce Risk?

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Goetz
  • Luc Laeven
  • Ross Levine

Abstract

We develop a new identification strategy to evaluate the impact of the geographic expansion of bank holding company (BHC) assets across U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) on BHC risk. We find that the geographic expansion of bank assets reduces risk. Moreover, geographic expansion reduces risk more when BHCs expand into economically dissimilar MSAs, i.e., MSAs with different industrial structures and business cycles. We do not find that geographic diversification improves loan quality. Our results are consistent with arguments that geographic expansion lowers risk by reducing exposure to idiosyncratic local risks and inconsistent with arguments that geographic expansion, on net, increases risk by reducing the ability of BHCs to monitor loans and manage risks.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Goetz & Luc Laeven & Ross Levine, 2014. "Does the Geographic Expansion of Bank Assets Reduce Risk?," NBER Working Papers 20758, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20758
    Note: CF EFG IFM
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w20758.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kalemli-Ozcan, Sebnem & Papaioannou, Elias & Peydró, José-Luis, 2013. "Financial regulation, financial globalization, and the synchronization of economic activity," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 68(3), pages 1179-1228.
    2. Laeven, Luc & Levine, Ross, 2007. "Is there a diversification discount in financial conglomerates?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 331-367, August.
    3. Jensen, Michael C, 1986. "Agency Costs of Free Cash Flow, Corporate Finance, and Takeovers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(2), pages 323-329, May.
    4. Saiying (Esther) Deng & Elyas Elyasiani, 2008. "Geographic Diversification, Bank Holding Company Value, and Risk," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 40(6), pages 1217-1238, September.
    5. Bernanke, Ben S, 1983. "Nonmonetary Effects of the Financial Crisis in Propagation of the Great Depression," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(3), pages 257-276, June.
    6. Berger, Allen N & Hannan, Timothy H, 1989. "The Price-Concentration Relationship in Banking," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 71(2), pages 291-299, May.
    7. Keeley, Michael C, 1990. "Deposit Insurance, Risk, and Market Power in Banking," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(5), pages 1183-1200, December.
    8. Marianne Baxter & Robert G. King, 1999. "Measuring Business Cycles: Approximate Band-Pass Filters For Economic Time Series," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(4), pages 575-593, November.
    9. Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan & Bent E. Sørensen & Oved Yosha, 2003. "Risk Sharing and Industrial Specialization: Regional and International Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(3), pages 903-918, June.
    10. Charles W. Calomiris & Doron Nissim, 2007. "Activity-Based Valuation of Bank Holding Companies," NBER Working Papers 12918, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Berger, Allen N. & Miller, Nathan H. & Petersen, Mitchell A. & Rajan, Raghuram G. & Stein, Jeremy C., 2005. "Does function follow organizational form? Evidence from the lending practices of large and small banks," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 237-269, May.
    12. Anil K. Kashyap & Raghuram Rajan & Jeremy C. Stein, 2002. "Banks as Liquidity Providers: An Explanation for the Coexistence of Lending and Deposit‐taking," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(1), pages 33-73, February.
    13. Calomiris, Charles W & Mason, Joseph R, 1997. "Contagion and Bank Failures during the Great Depression: The June 1932 Chicago Banking Panic," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(5), pages 863-883, December.
    14. John H. Boyd & Mark Gertler, 1993. "US Commercial Banking: Trends, Cycles, and Policy," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1993, Volume 8, pages 319-377, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Reint Gropp & Hendrik Hakenes & Isabel Schnabel, 2011. "Competition, Risk-shifting, and Public Bail-out Policies," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(6), pages 2084-2120.
    16. Boyd, John H. & Prescott, Edward C., 1986. "Financial intermediary-coalitions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 211-232, April.
    17. Brickley, James A. & Linck, James S. & Smith, Clifford Jr., 2003. "Boundaries of the firm: evidence from the banking industry," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(3), pages 351-383, December.
    18. Berger, Allen N. & Hanweck, Gerald A. & Humphrey, David B., 1987. "Competitive viability in banking : Scale, scope, and product mix economies," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 501-520, December.
    19. Charles W. Calomiris & Joseph R. Mason, 2003. "Fundamentals, Panics, and Bank Distress During the Depression," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(5), pages 1615-1647, December.
    20. Papke, Leslie E & Wooldridge, Jeffrey M, 1996. "Econometric Methods for Fractional Response Variables with an Application to 401(K) Plan Participation Rates," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(6), pages 619-632, Nov.-Dec..
    21. Evan Gatev & Til Schuermann & Philip E. Strahan, 2009. "Managing Bank Liquidity Risk: How Deposit-Loan Synergies Vary with Market Conditions," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(3), pages 995-1020, March.
    22. Donald Morgan & Bertrand Rime & Philip Strahan, 2003. "Bank Integration and State Business Cycles," NBER Working Papers 9704, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    23. Viral V. Acharya & Iftekhar Hasan & Anthony Saunders, 2006. "Should Banks Be Diversified? Evidence from Individual Bank Loan Portfolios," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 79(3), pages 1355-1412, May.
    24. Douglas W. Diamond, 1984. "Financial Intermediation and Delegated Monitoring," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 51(3), pages 393-414.
    25. Randall S. Kroszner & Philip E. Strahan, 1999. "What Drives Deregulation? Economics and Politics of the Relaxation of Bank Branching Restrictions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(4), pages 1437-1467.
    26. Pyle, David H, 1971. "On the Theory of Financial Intermediation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 26(3), pages 737-747, June.
    27. John H. Boyd & Gianni De Nicoló, 2005. "The Theory of Bank Risk Taking and Competition Revisited," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(3), pages 1329-1343, June.
    28. Victor Aguirregabiria & Robert Clark & Hui Wang, 2016. "Diversification of geographic risk in retail bank networks: evidence from bank expansion after the Riegle-Neal Act," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 47(3), pages 529-572, August.
    29. Dafna Avraham & Patricia Selvaggi & James Vickery, 2012. "A Structural view of U.S. bank holding companies," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue 07, pages 65-81.
    30. Martin R. Goetz & Luc Laeven & Ross Levine, 2013. "Identifying the Valuation Effects and Agency Costs of Corporate Diversification: Evidence from the Geographic Diversification of U.S. Banks," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(7), pages 1787-1823.
    31. Baxter, Marianne & Kouparitsas, Michael A., 2005. "Determinants of business cycle comovement: a robust analysis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 113-157, January.
    32. Jith Jayaratne & Philip E. Strahan, 1996. "The Finance-Growth Nexus: Evidence from Bank Branch Deregulation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(3), pages 639-670.
    33. Papke, Leslie E. & Wooldridge, Jeffrey M., 2008. "Panel data methods for fractional response variables with an application to test pass rates," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 145(1-2), pages 121-133, July.
    34. Boyd, John H. & Runkle, David E., 1993. "Size and performance of banking firms : Testing the predictions of theory," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 47-67, February.
    35. Demsetz, Rebecca S & Strahan, Philip E, 1997. "Diversification, Size, and Risk at Bank Holding Companies," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(3), pages 300-313, August.
    36. Denis, David J & Denis, Diane K & Sarin, Atulya, 1997. "Agency Problems, Equity Ownership, and Corporate Diversification," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 135-160, March.
    37. Donald P. Morgan & Bertrand Rime & Philip E. Strahan, 2004. "Bank Integration and State Business Cycles," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(4), pages 1555-1584.
    38. Servaes, Henri, 1996. "The Value of Diversification during the Conglomerate Merger Wave," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(4), pages 1201-1225, September.
    39. Akhigbe, Aigbe & Whyte, Ann Marie, 2003. "Changes in market assessments of bank risk following the Riegle-Neal Act of 1994," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 87-102, January.
    40. Andrew Winton, 1999. "Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket? Diversification and Specialization in Lending," Center for Financial Institutions Working Papers 00-16, Wharton School Center for Financial Institutions, University of Pennsylvania.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Andreas Haufler & Ian Wooton, 2016. "Cross-Border Banking in Regulated Markets: Is Financial Integration Desirable?," CESifo Working Paper Series 6150, CESifo.
    2. Ross Levine & Chen Lin & Wensi Xie, 2021. "Geographic Diversification and Banks’ Funding Costs," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(5), pages 2657-2678, May.
    3. Jiang, Liangliang & Levine, Ross & Lin, Chen, 2019. "Competition and Bank Liquidity Creation," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 54(2), pages 513-538, April.
    4. Flor, Michael A. & Klarl, Torben, 2017. "On the cyclicity of regional house prices: New evidence for U.S. metropolitan statistical areas," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 134-156.
    5. Chernobai, Anna & Ozdagli, Ali & Wang, Jianlin, 2021. "Business complexity and risk management: Evidence from operational risk events in U.S. bank holding companies," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 418-440.
    6. Liangliang Jiang & Ross Levine & Chen Lin, 2016. "Competition and Bank Opacity," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(7), pages 1911-1942.
    7. Schüwer, Ulrich & Gropp, Reint E. & Noth, Felix, 2016. "What drives banks' geographic expansion? The role of locally non-diversifiable risk," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145885, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    8. Zamore, Stephen, 2018. "Should microfinance institutions diversify or focus? A global analysis," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 105-119.

    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. Goetz, Martin R. & Laeven, Luc & Levine, Ross, 2016. "Does the geographic expansion of banks reduce risk?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(2), pages 346-362.
    2. Martin Goetz & Luc Laeven & Ross Levine, 2011. "The Valuation Effects of Geographic Diversification: Evidence from U.S. Banks," NBER Working Papers 17660, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Ross Levine & Chen Lin & Wensi Xie, 2021. "Geographic Diversification and Banks’ Funding Costs," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(5), pages 2657-2678, May.
    4. Cardozo, Pamela & Morales-Acevedo, Paola & Murcia, Andrés & Rosado, Alejandra, 2022. "Does the geographical complexity of the Colombian financial conglomerates increase banks’ risk? The role of diversification, regulatory arbitrage, and funding costs," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    5. Berger, Allen N. & Öztekin, Özde & Roman, Raluca A., 2023. "Geographic deregulation and bank capital structure," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    6. Schüwer, Ulrich & Gropp, Reint E. & Noth, Felix, 2016. "What drives banks' geographic expansion? The role of locally non-diversifiable risk," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145885, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    7. Avramidis, Panagiotis & Cabolis, Christos & Serfes, Konstantinos, 2018. "Bank size and market value: The role of direct monitoring and delegation costs," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 127-138.
    8. Martin R. Goetz, 2012. "Bank diversification, market structure and bank risk taking: theory and evidence from U.S. commercial banks," Supervisory Research and Analysis Working Papers QAU12-2, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    9. Chernobai, Anna & Ozdagli, Ali & Wang, Jianlin, 2021. "Business complexity and risk management: Evidence from operational risk events in U.S. bank holding companies," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 418-440.
    10. Berger, Allen N. & El Ghoul, Sadok & Guedhami, Omrane & Roman, Raluca A., 2022. "Geographic deregulation and banks’ cost of equity capital," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    11. Faia, Ester & Laffitte, Sebastien & Ottaviano, Gianmarco I.P., 2019. "Foreign expansion, competition and bank risk," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 179-199.
    12. Berger, Allen N. & Hasan, Iftekhar & Zhou, Mingming, 2010. "The effects of focus versus diversification on bank performance: Evidence from Chinese banks," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(7), pages 1417-1435, July.
    13. Liangliang Jiang & Ross Levine & Chen Lin, 2023. "Does Competition Affect Bank Risk?," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 55(5), pages 1043-1076, August.
    14. Berger, Allen N. & Hasan, Iftekhar & Korhonen, Iikka & Zhou, Mingming, 2010. "Does diversification increase or decrease bank risk and performance? : Evidence on diversification and the risk-return tradeoff in banking," BOFIT Discussion Papers 9/2010, Bank of Finland, Institute for Economies in Transition.
    15. Allen N. Berger & Sadok El Ghoul & Omrane Guedhami & Raluca A. Roman, 2017. "Internationalization and Bank Risk," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(7), pages 2283-2301, July.
    16. repec:zbw:bofitp:2010_009 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Berger, Allen N. & Hasan, Iftekhar & Korhonen, Iikka & Zhou, Mingming, 2010. "Does diversification increase or decrease bank risk and performance? Evidence on diversification and the risk-return tradeoff in banking," BOFIT Discussion Papers 9/2010, Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (BOFIT).
    18. Francis, Bill B. & Hasan, Iftekhar & Küllü, A. Melih & Zhou, Mingming, 2018. "Should banks diversify or focus? Know thyself: The role of abilities," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 106-118.
    19. Goetz, Martin R., 2018. "Competition and bank stability," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 35(PA), pages 57-69.
    20. Jiang, Tianjiao & Levine, Ross & Lin, Chen & Wei, Lai, 2020. "Bank deregulation and corporate risk," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    21. Viral V. Acharya & Jean Imbs & Jason Sturgess, 2011. "Finance and Efficiency: Do Bank Branching Regulations Matter?," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 15(1), pages 135-172.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation

    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:nbr:nberwo:20758. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.