Affiliation:
1. Bank for International Settlements (Switzerland) and CEPR (UK)
2. University of Naples Federico II (Italy) and CSEF (Italy)
Abstract
Abstract
Banks with a low price-to-book ratio (PBR) have a greater propensity to pay out dividends. This propensity is especially marked for banks with a PBR below a threshold of 0.7, a situation that characterizes many banks in recent years, especially in the euro area. We demonstrate these features using data for 271 advanced economy banks in 29 jurisdictions. Dividend payouts as a proportion of profits rise in a non-linear way as the PBR falls below 0.7. In a hypothetical exercise with fixed balance sheet ratios, we find that a suspension of bank dividends in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic would have added, under different stress scenarios and parametrizations, an additional US$0.2–1.1 trillion of bank lending capacity in our sample, equivalent to 0.3–1.6% of total GDP.
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Subject
Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law,Economics and Econometrics
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