Why did bank stocks crash during COVID-19?

Viral Acharya, Robert Engle and Sascha Steffen

No 15901, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We study the crash of bank stock prices during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find evidence consistent with a “credit line drawdown channel†. Stock prices of banks with large ex-ante exposures to undrawn credit lines as well as large ex-post gross drawdowns decline more. The effect is attenuated for banks with higher capital buffers. These banks reduce term loan lending, even after policy measures were implemented. We conclude that bank provision of credit lines appears akin to writing deep out-of-the-money put options on aggregate risk; we show how the resulting contingent leverage and stock return exposure can be incorporated tractably into bank capital stress tests.

Keywords: Credit lines; Liquidity risk; Bank capital; Loan supply; Stress tests; Pandemic; Covid-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G01 G21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-cwa and nep-rmg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (40)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15901 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Why Did Bank Stocks Crash during COVID-19? (2024)
Working Paper: Why Did Bank Stocks Crash During COVID-19? (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:15901

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15901

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().