Supervisory stringency, payout restrictions, and bank equity prices

W. Blake Marsh

Journal of Banking & Finance, 2023, vol. 154, issue C

Abstract: I study investor responses to the 2020 bank stress tests that included restrictions on shareholder payouts. I find that banks subject to the stress tests and payout restrictions experienced both immediate and persistently lower excess stock price returns. In the cross-section, I find that excess stock returns declined with bank size but cannot otherwise be explained by pre-pandemic bank or payout characteristics, suggesting that investors penalized banks likely to experience greater regulatory scrutiny. However, the excess stock return penalties are smaller than those previously estimated in the literature examining voluntary payout reductions that signal bank distress. The results show that using supervisory discretion to take preventative actions in a crisis can be less costly than actions taken once banks are distressed.

Keywords: Bank payout policy; Stress testing; Bank supervision (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378426623001413
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:jbfina:v:154:y:2023:i:c:s0378426623001413

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2023.106936

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Banking & Finance is currently edited by Ike Mathur

More articles in Journal of Banking & Finance from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().