Bank Governance, Regulation, and Risk Taking

Luc Laeven and Ross Levine ()

No 14113, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper conducts the first empirical assessment of theories concerning relationships among risk taking by banks, their ownership structures, and national bank regulations. We focus on conflicts between bank managers and owners over risk, and show that bank risk taking varies positively with the comparative power of shareholders within the corporate governance structure of each bank. Moreover, we show that the relation between bank risk and capital regulations, deposit insurance policies, and restrictions on bank activities depends critically on each bank's ownership structure, such that the actual sign of the marginal effect of regulation on risk varies with ownership concentration. These findings have important policy implications as they imply that the same regulation will have different effects on bank risk taking depending on the bank's corporate governance structure.

JEL-codes: G18 G2 G3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-bec, nep-cfn and nep-reg
Note: CF IFM
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (39)

Published as Laeven, Luc & Levine, Ross, 2009. "Bank governance, regulation and risk taking," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(2), pages 259-275, August.

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Journal Article: Bank governance, regulation and risk taking (2009)
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