Franklin Allen's blog

Charlie and Nachiket Mor raise very good points about the problems posed by public banks. India illustrates many of these difficulties—there is much too much political interference, regulations are designed to help state banks, and so forth. But India’s mix of banks is about four-fifths state-owned and only one-fifth privately owned. I’m suggesting precisely the inverse: about one-fifth of the banking sector would be state-owned and four-fifths would be privately owned. Reducing the share of state-owned banks to this minimal level should help alleviate many of the political economy issues. The state-owned commercial banks would need to compete with private banks in normal times as discussed in the blog and this should also act as a constraint on the problems.

The real advantage would come when there is a crisis. Rather than having central banks intervene in commercial credit markets where they have little expertise, the state-owned commercial bank can temporarily expand its role both in terms of assets and loans. This should considerably improve the functioning of the economy and overcome some of the credit crunch problems that Charlie has identified in his research and discusses in his post. The government should also find it easier to avoid bailouts and allow private banks to fail, which is an issue that recurs with every financial crisis. The most recent crisis is a clear case in point: at the moment large banks are not really privately owned. Large banks are privately owned until they get into trouble, at which point the state takes over ownership.

Editor's Note: The following post was submitted by Franklin Allen, the Nippon Life Professor of Finance and Economics at the Wharton School, as part of the AAF Virtual Debates. In this opening statement, Professor Allen gives an affirmative answer to the question: "Can state-owned banks play an important role in promoting financial stability and access?"

The prevailing view in the academic literature holds that private banks are much superior to state-owned or public banks. In many emerging-market countries public banks have been corrupt and inefficient. In contrast private banks have performed much better in terms of efficiently allocating resources over the long run.

However, the crisis has underlined the fact that public banks enjoy several advantages over private banks, and their merits may need to be reevaluated. At the height of the crisis in the fall of 2009, the three largest banks by market capitalization in the world were all state-owned:  the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, and Bank of China. Although they are publicly listed, the Chinese government owns the majority of their shares. Their structure provides an interesting governance model. Perhaps more importantly, most large privately owned banks in Europe and the U.S. received government funds and guarantees during the crisis. Without this government intervention, many would have failed. The governments bore the downside risk but without full control, generating a significant moral hazard problem in these banks’ future operations.

Editor's Note: Professor Franklin Allen came to the World Bank on October 27 to give an FPD Chief Economist Talk on the topic of Reforming Global Finance: What is the G20 Missing? Please see the FPD Chief Economist Talk page to download a copy of his presentation and watch a video of his Talk.

The recent financial crisis clearly had more than one cause. My view is that the most important one was a bubble in real estate prices, not only in the US but also in a number of other countries such as Spain and Ireland. It was the bursting of this bubble that has led to so many problems in the world economy. A significant part of this is a direct effect on the real economy rather than an effect transmitted through the financial system. For example, Spain had one of the best regulated banking systems and its banks did much better than in other countries. Yet with a doubling of its unemployment rate to 20 percent, its real economy has been devastated. In contrast countries like Germany that did not have a real estate bubble but had much larger drops in GDP have not suffered nearly as much. Germany's unemployment rate is now lower than at the start of the crisis.