IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iee/wpaper/wp0113.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Evergreening in the Euro Area: Facts and Explanation

Author

Listed:
  • Sven Steinkamp

    () (Osnabrueck University)

  • Aaron Tornell

    () (University of California, Los Angeles)

  • Frank Westermann

    () (Osnabrueck University)

Abstract

Since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2007/8, new lending in the Euro-Area has slowed sharply and the old loans experienced “evergreening,” i.e. bad loans have been rolled over rather than being liquidated. Even though ameliorating evergreening is key to promote lending for new investment projects and growth, no systematic evergreening measures exist. In this paper, we propose a new cross-country evergreening index and develop a model to explain why evergreening may reflect the incentives of regulators to forebear. Our evergreening index is based on a survey we designed, and was administered by the ifo institute to about 1,000 experts in over 80 countries. We bring the model to the data using a heteroscedastic probit model and find that evergreening is higher in: (i) Euro-Area countries than in the rest of the world; (ii) in countries facing bank distress; and (iii) is highest in countries which experience banking distress and are members of the Euro Area. These results are consistent with our theoretical model.

Suggested Citation

  • Sven Steinkamp & Aaron Tornell & Frank Westermann, 2018. "Evergreening in the Euro Area: Facts and Explanation," Working Papers 113, Institute of Empirical Economic Research, Osnabrueck University.
    • Handle: RePEc:iee:wpaper:wp0113
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://web.fb9.uni-osnabrueck.de/repec/iee/wpaper/15314129_WP_113.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joe Peek & Eric S. Rosengren, 2005. "Unnatural Selection: Perverse Incentives and the Misallocation of Credit in Japan," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1144-1166, September.
    2. Acharya, Viral V & Eisert, Tim & Eufinger, Christian & Hirsch, Christian, 2017. "Whatever it takes: The Real Effects of Unconventional Monetary Policy," CEPR Discussion Papers 12005, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Acharya, Viral & Eisert, Tim & Eufinger, Christian & Hirsch, Christian, 2017. "Whatever it takes: The real effects of unconventional monetary policy," SAFE Working Paper Series 152, Research Center SAFE - Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe, Goethe University Frankfurt.
    4. Sven Steinkamp & Aaron Tornell & Frank Westermann, 2017. "The Euro Area’s Common Pool Problem Revisited: Has the Single Supervisory Mechanism Ameliorated Forbearance and Evergreening?," Working Papers 107, Institute of Empirical Economic Research, Osnabrueck University, revised 06 Oct 2017.
    5. Eichengreen, Barry, 1990. "One Money for Europe? Lessons from the US Currency Union," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt6ks1k831, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    6. Casella, Alessandra, 1992. "Participation in a Currency Union," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(4), pages 847-863, September.
    7. Sinn, Hans-Werner, 2017. "The Euro Trap: On Bursting Bubbles, Budgets, and Beliefs," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198791447.
    8. Ricardo J. Caballero & Takeo Hoshi & Anil K. Kashyap, 2008. "Zombie Lending and Depressed Restructuring in Japan," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 1943-1977, December.
    9. Aizenman, Joshua, 1992. "Competitive Externalities and the Optimal Seigniorage," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 24(1), pages 61-71, February.
    10. Sumit Agarwal & David Lucca & Amit Seru & Francesco Trebbi, 2014. "Inconsistent Regulators: Evidence from Banking," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 129(2), pages 889-938.
    11. Milton Friedman & Anna J. Schwartz, 1963. "A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number frie63-1.
    12. von Hagen, Jurgen & Suppel, Ralph, 1994. "Central bank constitutions for federal monetary unions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(3-4), pages 774-782, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Evergreening; Central bank credit; Survey data; Forbearance;

    JEL classification:

    • F33 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - International Monetary Arrangements and Institutions
    • F55 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - International Institutional Arrangements
    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iee:wpaper:wp0113. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Karin Wessler-Rensmann). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/ieosnde.html .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.