Financial Openness, Bank Systematic Risk, and Macroprudential Supervision

Abstract

International experiences have underscored the dual implications of financial openness. Given China’s unique circumstances and its escalating level of financial openness, it is crucial to assess potential impacts on the country’s bank systemic risk. This paper uses the quarterly data of 37 listed banks in China from 2010 to 2022 to explore the relationship between financial openness and systemic risk of the banking system, the mechanism of action, and the moderating effect of macroprudential policy on the two. The findings indicate an inverted “U”-shaped correlation between financial openness and bank systemic risk. On one side of this shape, financial openness primarily exacerbates funding mismatch, thereby increasing the systemic risk of banks. Conversely, on the other side, it primarily alleviates systemic risk by optimizing capital management. Moreover, with the help of macroprudential supervision, the inverted “U”-shaped relationship between financial openness and bank systemic risk leads to a lower level of systemic risk and, at the same time, promotes the early arrival of the inverted “U”-shaped inflection point between financial openness and bank systemic risk. Notably, the impact of financial openness on the systemic risk of joint-stock commercial banks, urban commercial banks, and rural commercial banks is more significant. The above research results provide a regulatory reference for effectively preventing and resolving systemic risk while achieving high-quality openness to the outside world. In deepening financial openness, the banking industry needs to pay attention to the funding mismatch and the efficiency of capital management and implement differential risk supervision and prevention mechanisms for banks with different ownership, which is conducive to the reduction of bank systematic risk.