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Australian Banking Risk: The Stock Market’s Assessment and the Relationship Between Capital and Asset Volatility

Author

Listed:
  • Marianne Gizycki

    (Reserve Bank of Australia)

  • Brenton Goldsworthy

    (Australian Prudential Regulation Authority)

Abstract

The likelihood of a bank failing, within a given period of time, is a function of the variability in its income and its ability to withstand losses. These determinants depend, in turn, on the volatility of the return on bank assets and the bank’s level of capital. Although accounting measures of the volatility of the rate of return on bank assets and bank capital-asset ratios are published on a regular basis, market prices provide alternative risk measures. This paper uses share prices to estimate these risks measures for 15 Australian banks that were listed on the Australian Stock Exchange for all, or part of, the period 1983 to 1998. Option prices are also used to generate alternative estimates of these risk measures, the results of which corroborate those obtained from share prices. We find that the market’s assessment of the capital-asset ratio for the Australian banking sector has risen considerably over the sample period. There has also been a slight upward trend in the volatility of asset returns. These two trends have opposite effects on the market’s assessment of total bank risk: rising capital-asset ratios reduce bank risk, but rising asset volatility increases it. To uncover which trend has dominated, we examine a couple of measures of total bank risk, which summarises the net impact of movements in both the capital-asset ratio and asset volatility. These additional risk measures suggest that the riskiness of the sector has declined. In investigating the relationship between banks’ capital-asset ratio and asset volatility over time, we find that increases in the growth of the capital-asset ratio precede increases in asset volatility which, in turn, cause a slowdown in capital growth.

Suggested Citation

  • Marianne Gizycki & Brenton Goldsworthy, 1999. "Australian Banking Risk: The Stock Market’s Assessment and the Relationship Between Capital and Asset Volatility," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp1999-09, Reserve Bank of Australia.
  • Handle: RePEc:rba:rbardp:rdp1999-09
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marianne Gizycki & Mark Levonian, 1993. "A Decade of Australian Banking Risk: Evidence from Share Prices," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp9302, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    2. Merton, Robert C, 1974. "On the Pricing of Corporate Debt: The Risk Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 29(2), pages 449-470, May.
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    4. Day, Theodore E. & Lewis, Craig M., 1988. "The behavior of the volatility implicit in the prices of stock index options," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 103-122, October.
    5. Keeley, Michael C. & Furlong, Frederick T., 1990. "A reexamination of mean-variance analysis of bank capital regulation," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 69-84, March.
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    7. Gennotte, Gerard & Pyle, David, 1991. "Capital controls and bank risk," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 15(4-5), pages 805-824, September.
    8. Furlong, Frederick T. & Keeley, Michael C., 1989. "Capital regulation and bank risk-taking: A note," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 13(6), pages 883-891, December.
    9. Lawrence R. Cordell & Kathleen Kuester King, 1992. "A market evaluation of the risk-based capital standards for the U.S. financial system," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 189, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    10. Marcus, Alan J & Shaked, Israel, 1984. "The Valuation of FDIC Deposit Insurance Using Option-pricing Estimates," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 16(4), pages 446-460, November.
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    Cited by:

    1. Michael Robson, 2015. "Default Risk Among Australian Listed Corporations," RBA Bulletin (Print copy discontinued), Reserve Bank of Australia, pages 47-54, September.
    2. Neil Esho & Paul Kofman & Ian Sharpe, 2005. "Diversification, Fee Income, and Credit Union Risk," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 27(3), pages 259-281, September.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    solvency; capital; banking;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G13 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Contingent Pricing; Futures Pricing
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages

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