East Asia & the Pacific

The financial system, measured by assets, profits, contribution to GDP, stock market capitalization, employment etc, has expanded rapidly since 1990. For example, global financial assets were about 50 trillion in 1989 and increased to about 200 trillion by 2007, during the same period financial depth increased from 200% of world GDP to 400% in 2007. The financial crisis has raised a plethora of issues, many of which are inter-twined. There have been failures on all fronts – market failures in the form of financial firms innovating new instruments while neglecting risk management practices, credit rating agencies failing in rating assets without much thought to risk, private auditors not checking Lehman Brothers’ assets and liabilities, government failures in the form of central bank keeping interest rates low in the run up to the crisis, and government entities such as Fannie and Freddie involved in mortgage lending and making enormous losses, and failure by regulators for not checking the books of financial firms such as Lehman Brothers that were moving toxic assets of the balance sheets, and last but least the financial economists who failed to foresee to crisis. There is plenty of blame to go around but one thing is clear: State ownership of financial firms is back. After decades of rising foreign ownership of banks (shrinking state ownership) in almost all regions, except the Middle East and South Asia, the trend could be reversed especially in the developed countries.

The crisis has shifted focus from foreign private ownership to some state ownership, from micro to macro prudential regulations, to re-assessment of deposit insurance, lender of last resort, and implicit guarantees, to consumer protection and taxpayer protection, from mark to market accounting to mark to funding, to revamping of credit rating agencies, to crisis in corporate governance and questioning of remuneration in financial firms, and to strengthening of supervision. These and a number of related issues of interest to policy makers are discussed below.

Given the large set of issues arising from the crisis, the major challenges facing countries are essentially two: (i) Government entities which are subsidizing directed credit (e.g. Frannie and Freddie in USA; similar type of ‘chaebol’ lending to industrial firms triggered the Asian crisis of 1997); and (ii) universality of too big to fail entities, where systemic important firms, often politically powerful conglomerates that are controlled by elites, have to be bailed out, which in turn leads to the moral hazard problem, where the large entity is considered worthy saving at all costs, including use of lender of last resort facilities from the Central Bank and tax payers money from the Treasury. The too big to fail entities also then knowingly max-out on leveraged lending (40 to one in case of USA) and ‘gamble’ on financially innovative instruments (e.g. mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps in case of USA). The large entities also have the political clout to suppress regulations and/or evade regulations. Successful regulation requires that the regulator should have information on exposure to systemic risks. Too big to fail institutions were exposed to CD swaps (e.g. AIG in USA) and we knew little about its exposure. The reason is that there is data on a firm by firm but there is no agency that can put it all together. But policy makers and politicians are reluctant to address these two problems head on. Instead the focus on a large set of problems, as detailed below, and obfuscate the issues.

Proponents of state intervention argue that ‘market failures’ in information, coordination, credit and others necessitate ‘infant-industry protection’ and therefore an activist role for the government. For example, information about success or failure of new industries or technological adoption may be only available to investors and innovators and not shared with other entrepreneurs. Also, new industries and technologies require complementary human capital, and basic infrastructure among other things. In addition, credit market imperfections in developing countries and inequality in access to finance impedes the formation of high-skilled workers and large entrepreneurial class needed for industrialization.

Yes, according to Martin Ravallion's recent paper.

More resources here.

"While acknowledging that Africa faces constraints that China did not, and that context matters, two lessons stand out. The first is the importance of productivity growth in smallholder agriculture, which will require both market-based incentives and public support. The second is the role played by strong leadership and a capable public administration at all levels of government."

Weijian Shan recently ignited a debate over the profitability of Chinese companies with his essay in the Far Eastern Economic Review “The World Bank’s China Delusion”, which had a reply in World Bank economists Bert Hofman and Louis Kuijs’ “Profits Drive China's Boom."

FEER’s blog told the full story.

To vastly oversimplify the positions, the World Bankers believe that the corporate sector is making healthy returns on its investments, and this is fuelling the high savings rate and fast growth in investment. Therefore Beijing can afford to be sanguine about the investment level, although the central government could improve efficiency by forcing state-owned companies to pay dividends back into state coffers.

Mr. Shan argues that while profits may have been growing in recent years, they are not nearly as high as some official statistics would have one believe, and it is bank credit which is fuelling the investment boom. The implication is that a large proportion of savings is going into unproductive investments, which will eventually cause more problems in the already precarious banking system.

Thank you Yan Wang for the heads up.