European Stress Tests and Banks' Risk-Taking

Abstract

I investigate how the 2011 and 2014 EU stress tests affect the risk-taking of European banks. I document a non-monotonic relationship between banks' risk-shifting resulting from regulatory arbitrage and the tightness of their capital constraint (i.e., the distance between their ex-ante capital ratio and the regulatory level): banks with capital ratios marginally above the regulatory level do more regulatory arbitrage than banks with a level of capital ratio significantly below or above the regulatory level. I also study the indirect effect of the tests on the financing costs of banks which are excluded from the tests: their financing costs on the corporate bond market increase with the level of negative information released in the country in which they are located.

Keywords: Bank, Stress Test, Risk-Shifting, Regulatory Arbitrage, Sovereign Bonds, Corporate Bonds

JEL Classification: G21, G18, E58