This paper investigates the effects of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak and government capital injections on the bank’s optimal interest margin and the efficiency gain/loss from the shadow banking operations. The down-and-out call option approach is adapted to model the structural break in volatility to capture the COVID-19 outbreak. Results show that the COVID-19 outbreak reduces the optimal bank interest margin, government capital injections enhance the margin, and both the outbreak and capital injections harm the efficiency gain from shadow banking. COVID-19, as such, makes the bank more prone to risk-taking, thereby adversely affecting banking stability.

In this paper, we develop a contingent claim model to evaluate a bank’s equity and liabilities that integrates the premature default risk conditions with loan rate-setting behavioral mode and multiple shadow banking activities under capital regulation. The barrier options theory of corporate security valuation is applied to the contingent claims of a bank. The barrier reports that default can occur at any time before the maturity date. We focus on a type of earning-asset portfolio, consisting of balance-sheet banking activities of loans and liquid assets and shadow banking activities of wealth management products (WMPs) and entrusted loans (ELs). The optimal bank interest margin, i.e., the spread between the loan rate and the deposit rate, is derived and analyzed. The results provide an alternative explanation for the decline in bank interest margins, which better fits the narrative evidence on bank spread behavior under capital regulation in particular during a financial crisis. Raising either WMPs or ELs leads to a transfer of wealth from equity holders to the debt holders, and hence increases the deposit insurance liabilities. We also show that the multiple shadow banking activities of WMPs and ELs captured by scope equities may produce superior return performance for the bank. Tightened capital requirements may reinforce the superior return performance by a surge in shadow banking activities that makes the bank less prudent and more prone to risk-taking at a reduced margin, thereby adversely affecting banking stability. We demonstrate that financial disturbance may be created because of the potential for shadow banking activities to spill over to regular banking activities and damage the real economy.

Sunflower management is a type of management style in which a chief executive officer (CEO) ignores information and attempts to confirm the board’s prior beliefs. The CEO’s accommodating behavior may reduce incentive conflicts but also stimulate diligent board monitoring. The present article aims to develop a contingent claim utility model to investigate the effect of green lending on bank spread behavior and board monitoring under sunflower management. The principal advantage of the contingent claim utility approach is the explicit treatment of uncertainty and diligent board monitoring, which play a prominent role in discussions of intermediary behavior. Additionally, banks may earn goodwill from a green lending policy, thus yielding environmental improvements. In this study, we explore the goodwill effect on the bank’s interest margin determination and board monitoring. We use the comparative statistics method to analyze the result of changes in the theoretical model’s exogenous parameters. Moreover, we use empirical data as a baseline for numerical simulations to explain the comparative statistics. Our main findings are that increasing green lending reduces interest margins and enforces diligent board monitoring. The increase in goodwill garnered from improvements to the bank’s green lending reputation was found to enhance the interest margins but ease active board monitoring. From these results, we outline implications such as implementing intangible goodwill asset accumulation from bank customers’ green awareness via green lending publicity that increases the bank interest margin under sunflower management, thereby affecting banking stability.

We develop a two-stage contingent claim model to evaluate a life insurer’s equity. The model sequentially determines the optimal guaranteed rate and the optimal technology choice for strategic asset-liability matching management. We show that increases in policy loans decrease the insurance businesses at a reduced guaranteed rate. The shrinking life insurance businesses discourage the insurer from using advanced technology. However, we find that an increase in advanced technology involvement enhances insurance businesses at an increased guaranteed rate. An increase in the policy loan also increases the policyholder protection when considering the optimal guaranteed rate and technology choice strategies.