Bank Charter Value, Systemic Risk and Credit Reporting Systems: Evidence from the Asia-Pacific Region

From a sample of publicly-traded banks in the Asia-Pacific region over the 1998-2012 period, we document that banks with higher charter value are able to insulate themselves from systemic risk by acquiring more capital. Nevertheless, we find that the self-disciplining role of bank charter value is more pronounced for countries with lower depth of credit information sharing. Our results also show that in countries with lower quality of private credit bureaus, higher charter value enhances capitalization, and alleviates systemic risk in banking. Overall, these findings suggest that higher bank charter value might be detrimental to systemic stability for countries where the credit reporting system is of better quality.