Are Banks Passive Liquidity Backstops? Deposit Rates and Flows During the 2007-2009 Crisis

64 Pages Posted: 22 Dec 2011

See all articles by Viral V. Acharya

Viral V. Acharya

New York University (NYU) - Leonard N. Stern School of Business; New York University (NYU) - Department of Finance; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI); National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Nada Mora

Lebanese University

Multiple version iconThere are 4 versions of this paper

Date Written: December 2011

Abstract

Can banks maintain their advantage as liquidity providers when they are heavily exposed to a financial crisis? The standard argument - that banks can - hinges on deposit inflows that are seeking a safe haven and provide banks with a natural hedge to fund drawn credit lines and other commitments. We shed new light on this issue by studying the behavior of bank deposit rates and inflows during the 2007-09 crisis. Our results indicate that the role of the banking system as a stabilizing liquidity insurer is not one of the passive recipient, but of an active seeker, of deposits. We find that banks facing a funding squeeze sought to attract deposits by offering higher rates. Banks offering higher rates were also those most exposed to liquidity demand shocks (as measured by their unused commitments, wholesale funding dependence, and limited liquid assets), as well as with fundamentally weak balance-sheets (as measured by their non-performing loans or by subsequent failure). Such rate increases have a competitive effect in that they lead other banks to offer higher rates as well. Overall, the results present a nuanced view of deposit rates and flows to banks in a crisis, one that reflects banks not just as safety havens but also as stressed entities scrambling for deposits.

Keywords: financial crisis, flight to safety, liquidity, liquidity risk, solvency risk

JEL Classification: E4, G01, G11, G21, G28

Suggested Citation

Acharya, Viral V. and Acharya, Viral V. and Mora, Nada, Are Banks Passive Liquidity Backstops? Deposit Rates and Flows During the 2007-2009 Crisis (December 2011). CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP8706, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1976048

Viral V. Acharya (Contact Author)

New York University (NYU) - Leonard N. Stern School of Business ( email )

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HOME PAGE: http://www.stern.nyu.edu/~vacharya

New York University (NYU) - Department of Finance ( email )

Stern School of Business
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Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) ( email )

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National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) ( email )

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Nada Mora

Lebanese University ( email )

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Lebanon

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