This version: October 5, 2010

Preliminary: do not quote

Financial innovation: Economic growth versus

instability in bank-based versus financial
market driven economies‡
by

Arnoud W.A. Boot*

University of Amsterdam, ACLE and CEPR
and
Matej Marinč**
University of Ljubljana and ACLE

Abstract
A fundamental feature of recent financial innovations is their focus on augmenting
marketability. We point at the potential dark side of marketability. The paper casts its analysis
of the pros and cons of financial innovation within the financial development and economic
growth debate. The innovations are largely spurred by developments in information
technology which may have caused excessive ‘changeability’ in the economy.
We also ask the question whether the proliferation of financial innovations might impact
bank-based versus financial market driven economies differently. We argue that the enhanced
marketability of bank assets has implications for stability.
_______________________
*
University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam Center for Law & Economics (ACLE), Roetersstraat 11, 1018 WB
Amsterdam, The Netherlands, e-mail: a.w.a.boot@uva.nl.
** Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana, Kardeljeva ploščad 17, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia, email:
matej.marinc@ef.uni-lj.si, and Amsterdam Center for Law & Economics (ACLE), Faculty of Economics and
Business, University of Amsterdam, Roetersstraat 11, 1018WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands, email:
m.marinc@uva.nl.

‡
We thank participants at the FinLawMetrics 2010 meeting at Bocconi (Italy), the June 2010 Banking In Light
of the Global Crisis meeting in Akko (Acre, Israel), and particularly the discussant Lev Ratnovski, and
participants in the The Hague AWT meeting on Finance and Innovation (February 2010) for comments.
Particular thanks go to Paul van Diederen, Carlota Perez, Luc Soete, Rens van Tilburg and Paul Tang.

1
Financial innovation: Economic growth versus instability in bank-based
versus financial market driven economies

1. Introduction
The impact of financial development on economic growth is an important public policy issue.
A key issue is whether financial development spurs economic growth, or even is a
prerequisite for economic growth? As is by now well established, financial development is an
important facilitator of economic growth. Having well functioning financial institutions (and
markets) is considered important for the economy at large and the financing of corporations in
particular. Also financial instruments – as manifestations of financial development – can be of
considerable importance. In particular, some financial instruments are explicitly designed to
facilitate underlying real transactions. For example, commercial letters of credit are an
indispensable part of import-export transactions. These instruments effectively guarantee
payment upon delivery of goods which make exporting companies willing to let go of their
goods. The dramatic contraction in world trade during the financial crisis1 may have been
fuelled by the collapse of banks and hence their ability to provide credible guarantees.2

The question to this paper is therefore not whether financial development is important for
economic growth. It obviously plays a role. The question is what this role exactly is, and
particularly how to look at the proliferation of financial innovations which appear to have
become the most visible manifestation of financial development in recent times. Financial
innovations seem an inherent part of financial development, but has the unprecedented level
of financial innovation in the last decades been good for economic growth? No readily
available answers come to mind. Obviously, when looking at the last few years with the
economic crisis at the center of our attention, it seems hard to argue that recent innovations
like subprime mortgages and their repackaging in marketable securities has been good for
economic growth. But also this is not carved in stone.

What appears to be true is that the financial sector operates as a business in itself rather than
just a facilitator for the ‘real’ economy. Stiglitz puts it succinctly: “the financial sector has
become an end in itself rather than a means to an end” (Stiglitz, 2010). This might not be

1
The recent economic crisis led to a 12.2% contraction in the volume of global trade — the largest in more than
70 years (see WTO, 2010).
2
During the Japanese financial crises of the 1990s, bank instability caused a decline in trade finance contributing
to a drop of one-third of Japanese exports (see Amiti and Weinstein, 2010).

1
surprising, and is hardly new. The financial sector is a commercial profit-seeking activity
driven by high-powered individuals. As we know from agency-theory, individuals (at least in
part) are driven by self-interest and that may deviate from the collective interests of society.
Hence, financial institutions look for profitable opportunities, and those may not coincide
with choices that optimally facilitate the real economy. We will argue that particularly the
proliferation of information technology has spurred much more rapid changes in strategies
and actions of financial institutions adding friction between their privately optimal actions and
the interests of society. The severe disruption in the 2007-2009 financial crisis clearly points
at such behavior.

Equally important, the financial sector at large might gain true power and influence in society,
and even some crowding-out of other economic activities may occur. OECD statistics are in
this context interesting. They show a substantial increase in direct contribution to GDP
coming from financial services in recent decades (OECD, 2009). If crowding-out plays a role,
the direct contribution of financial services could be at the expense of their facilitating role. A
manifestation of this is that banks give less priority to their relationship-oriented business (e.g.
SME lending) and more to transaction-oriented banking.3 But also more indirect types of
crowding-out are possible. An example of the latter is that the most talented students in period
2003-2007 increasingly chose for careers in banking, and often pure transaction banking
(predominantly present in investment banking).4 This could be interpreted as a crowding-out
of talent at the expense of the real economy. Similarly, the boom in the financial sector during
those years diverted massive resources to this sector. For example, many countries came to
see the financial sector as a growth engine of their economies and chose to allocate scarce
public resources to subsidizing this sector. The Netherlands, for example, as did several other
countries, invested substantial public resources to improve the attractiveness of the country as
location for financial services firms. To the extent that these investments were at the expense
of other sectors, a true crowding out has occurred.5 In this respect, also the enormous
lobbying power of the financial services sector is noteworthy.6

3
Crowding out could also manifests itself during a crisis. For example, Puri, Rocholl and Steffen (2009) analyze
the retail lending behavior of German Lander banks in the current financial crisis to find out that banks exposed
to subprime securities rejected more loan applications than other banks. Jiménez et al. (2010) find evidence that
in recessions weak banks reject loan applicants more often than strong banks.
4
The Graduate Management Admission Council (2008) reports that the greatest percentage of MBA graduates in
period 2003-2007 intended to get employed in finance/accounting industries. See also Beaverstock and Smith
(1996).
5
This could also lead to insights on the severity of the effects of the financial crisis across less and more

2
Nevertheless, the literature rationalizing the role of financial markets and financial institutions
essentially has the financial sector serve as facilitator. It facilitates businesses in their funding
needs, allows for diversification, and serves as liquidity provider. The financial sector either
acts as broker (e.g. passing through money by bringing together buyers and sellers of
securities, or helping firms raise money in the financial markets), or as asset transformer (e.g.
intermediating liquidity risk by transforming (more) liquid liabilities in term loans). The latter
distinction is particularly relevant because financial systems are often characterized as either
being bank-based (continental Europe) or financial market driven (US, UK). In the former,
bank financing is dominant while direct funding from the financial market plays a more
important role in the latter. The distinction is not as sharp as the dichotomy might suggest,
e.g. more than half of US businesses is bank-financed; hence no system is fully market or
bank-driven. But the distinction is relevant, and an important question is whether the more
recent proliferation of financial innovations might impact those systems differently. In
particular, financial innovations have intertwined banks and financial markets and this, as we
will argue, might have impacted bank-based and financial market driven economies
differently, and could have implications for stability.

We have not yet been very specific on what we mean by financial innovations. While one
could think of a truly novel product, typically this is not the case. Financial innovations are
more like variations on (or combinations of) existing products, e.g. rights issues, convertible
debt and asset backed securities, CDS and CDOs. Alternatively innovation may come in the
form of different business practices. For example, securitization appears more like a process
innovation: an alternative way of selling assets to investors in the financial market. Innovation
may also spur the creation of new organizational structures, e.g. ATM’s, SPVs, ABCP
conduits and Internet only banks.

A fundamental feature of recent financial innovations is that they are often aimed at
augmenting marketability, see for eample securitization and related products like CDS and

developed economies. E.g., the deepening of financial systems was more pronounced in high-income countries
and much more limited in middle- and low income countries (Beck, Demirgüç-Kunt and Levine, 2010)
suggesting possibly a more pronounced effect in the former.
6
Financial institutions may go for self-preservation. For example, any player in the financial sector might seek to
become a power bastion by itself, try to be indispensable and become self-serving. Banks may also organize
themselves in groups and lobby for favorable regulatory change at the expense of less organized competitors; see
Kroszner and Strahan (1999).

3
CDOs. Such marketability can augment diversification opportunities, yet can also create
instability. Facilitating marketability is a core element of the most noteworthy innovations
that have become infamous during the 2007-09 financial crisis (securitization resulting in
securities like CDOs, ABCP, and CDS). An important observation is that marketability is not
always good. The mere fact that something becomes tradable can undermine commitment.
For example, mortgages that become tradable might undermine the incentives of the
originator to monitor the quality of borrowers. Or, more fundamentally, when markets exist
for all kinds of real assets of a firm, a firm can more easily change direction of strategy. This
might be good, but could also lead to lack of commitment (and staying power), more
impulsive decisions and possible herding. The latter refers to the tendency to follow current
fads.7

The organization of the paper is as follows. In section 2, we first add some further thoughts to
the link between financial development and economic growth. Section 3 focuses on bank-
based versus financial market driven economies. Part of the discussion here is to uncover the
role that banks play in the economy. How does this relate to the role that financial markets
play? That is, how to compare bank-based to financial market focused economies? These
questions are important from the perspective of analyzing the link between financial
development and economic growth, and more specifically for the role that more recent
financial innovations play.

The dichotomy between a bank-based system and a financial market-driven economy appears
to have been weakened. In particular, recent innovations like securitization have made banks’
assets more marketable and increased the sensitivity of banks to financial market
developments. Banks have thus become a more integral part of financial markets. This
observation will turn out to be important because the stronger links between banks and
financial markets might well have destabilized banks. Securitization is at the root of this. This
brings us to the question what impact financial innovations – as manifestation of a more

7
In banking herding is particularly worrisome because it could create systemic risk. Meaning, when all
institutions make the same bets, risk exposures become more highly correlated and a simultaneous failure of
institutions might become more likely. Risk taking might also become more cyclical. For example, the demand
for senior tranches in securitized structures was high despite their high sensitivity to bad economic states (Coval,
Jurek and Stafford, 2009). Investors were either lured by high ratings of such instruments or, alternatively, they
were eager to upload systemic risk. And this was an industry wide phenomenon. Haensel and Krahnen (2007)
show on adata set of European CDOs that banks that issued CDOs raised their systematic risk.

4
advanced financial development – have. This might challenge the largely positive view of
financial development.

Nevertheless, as we will first show in section 4, there is a core literature that convincingly
argues that financial innovations can – in principle – contribute to economic growth. An
important element of this is the discussion in the modern finance literature on the ‘spanning’
that innovations can facilitate. That is, financial innovations can help complete markets, and
this could augment social welfare. However, more recently, a more negative image has come
up. Financial innovations could have a destabilizing impact; the financial crisis of 2007-09 is
arguably a manifestation of this.

Section 5 asks the question what causes innovations to be potentially value destructive. This
asks for an understanding how innovations come about. What drives the creation of new
financial innovations? A fundamental feature that comes up here is the marketability that
recent financial innovations typically aim for. As already eluded to, this marketability may
have a dark side and create instability.
Section 6 seeks to put these insights together particularly by comparing the implications of
financial development and innovation for the more bank-based economies of continental
Europe to those for the financial market driven economies of the UK and the US.

2. Financial development and economic growth

An interesting question about the relationship between financial development and economic
growth is one of causality. Arguably, one could say that this is even the key question in much
of the older literature, and one with strong controversies. On the affirmative side, John Hicks
(1969) and Joseph Schumpeter (1912) see a strong causal link from financial development to
economic growth. Yet, other eminent economists, most notably Joan Robinson (1952) and
Robert Lucas (1988), are very much skeptical about this causality and argue that financial
development largely follows economic development. This is not an innocent controversy.

In recent discussions (see for example Buiter, 2009) it is argued that modern macro
economics – e.g. the Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) type of models – do
not give much of a role to the financial sector. Since Robert Lucas is one of the founders of
these class of models, this might not be surprising. What it means is that these models largely
ignore the financial sector and issues related to financial development cannot readily be

5
analyzed in such models (let alone things related to financial innovations). As a caveat, one
should not take the critique on the DSGE models to the extreme; some efforts have been made
to include financial mechanisms like the financial accelerator (Bernanke and Gertler, 1990;
Kiyotaki, N. and J. Moore, 1997; Christensen and Dib, 2008; Christiano, Trabandt and
Walentin, 2007).
Nevertheless, in light of the recent financial crisis, questions are raised about the desirability
to enrich these models by giving a distinct role to the financial sector. It might help add
understanding to the functioning of the economy, and possibly affect policy implications that
would follow from such models.8 The lack of importance of the financial sector in macro-
economic research (not surprisingly) also shows up in recent textbooks.9

A more fundamental view at the importance of financial development could help. In a

frictionless (perfect) world financial development is not important. In such world no
impediments to an optimal resource allocation exist. What that really means is that
information and transaction costs are non-existent. That is, firms have a frictionless access to
finance, diversification can be accomplished at no cost, so can the enforcement of contracts
and the behavior of firms being financed. Financial development matters because all these
things are not automatically satisfied, or rather never satisfied; improvements are always
possible and this is what financial development could add to.

The lack of focus on financial development in macro-economics is therefore a direct artifact

of the lack of frictions that it perceives. This has created a dichotomy with micro economics
that has very much focused on imperfections. In terms of being relevant for policy this has
made macro economists somewhat ineffective. In particular, they may have not given enough

8
There have been several recent attempts. For example, Angeletos, Lorenzoni and Pavan (2010) study the
interaction between financial and real activity within a neoclassical framework extended for dispersed
information. They show that the arrival of a new technology often produces excessive movements in asset prices
and real economic activity due to reinforcing informational spillovers between financial markets and the real
sector. Goldstein, Ozdenoren and Yuan (2009) show that information spillovers from the financial markets may
trigger trading frenzies, see also Angeletos and La’O (2010). Farhi and Tirole (2010) and Martin and Ventura
(2010) use financial frictions to study the macroeconomic effects of asset price bubbles.
9
Central to much of the work in macro economics are the real business cycle theories and new-Keynesian
theories. Following recent textbooks like Gali (2008) and Mankiw (newest edition of his macroeconomics
textbook just now being published, 2009) one notices that the financial sector does not play a role in their
treatment of business cycles and new-Keynesian theories. Apparently insights developed by Greenwald and
Stiglitz (1987 and 1993) on the real world implications of asymmetric information in financial markets, and
insights coming from Bernanke and Gertler (1990) on the effect of capital market imperfections on the monetary
transmission mechanisms (and the banks’ role in the allocation of credit) have not reached main stream
textbooks.

6
support for an institutional design (including regulation) that can contain the imperfections
(i.e. incentive problems) that micro economists did focus on.

In any case, the suggestion that financial development plays a secondary role is surprising in
light of the strong links between economic and financial development that were already
observed many years ago. Goldsmith (1969), for example, concludes based on data over the
period 1860-1963 that periods of more rapid economic growth go hand in hand with an above
average rate of economic development. Strictly speaking, this says nothing about causality,
but neither does it refute a potentially important (leading) role for financial development. In
an extensive review of all relevant pre-1995 work Ross Levine concludes that “A growing
body of work would push even most skeptics towards the belief that the development of
financial markets and institutions is a critical and inextricable part of the growth process and
[would push those skeptics] away from the view that the financial system is an
inconsequential side show, responding passively to economic growth and industrialization”
(Levine, 1997; see also Levine 2005).

In more practical terms, the consensus that has formed views financial development as an
important facilitator of economic growth. What has emerged is that economic growth may
need simultaneous financial development. This conclusion has translated into the
understanding that lack of speed of adjustment in the financial sector might hinder economic
growth. The concern is then that sudden real economy needs may not be met because the
financial sector might only slowly adjust to the needs of the real economy. This is an
interesting conclusion because it bypasses the discussion about causality. That is, even if real
economic developments are leading, the degree of development of the financial sector
determines whether the real economy can continue its growth path. A sequentially (over time)
shifting causality between economic growth and financial sector development then follows.
From this perspective, it would seem obvious that financial development is good. As we will
see, this is not always the case.

An issue that is not, or barely discussed in the financial development and economic growth
literature is the type of financial development, i.e., institution-based (say, banks) versus
market based (financial markets) financial development. This issue, we will address next.

7
3. Fundamentals of bank versus capital market dominated economies
The standard view is that banks and markets compete, so that growth in one is at the expense of
the other (e.g. Allen and Gale (1995, 1997), and Boot and Thakor (1997)). In this context
Deidda and Fattouh (2008) show theoretically that both bank and stock market development
have a positive effect on growth, but the growth impact of bank development is lower when
there is a higher level of stock market development. What this shows is that dynamics of the
interaction between banks and markets can have real effects. How banks and markets interact is
therefore of great interest.

There is evidence that banks and financial markets do not just compete, but also are
complementary. For example, the close monitoring role of banks might facilitate timely
intervention. This feature of bank lending is valuable to the firm’s bondholders as well. They
might find it optimal to efficiently delegate the timely intervention task to the bank.10

Another manifestation of potential complementarities between bank lending and capital market
activities is the increasing importance of securitization. Securitization is an example of
unbundling of financial services and a more recent example of financial development. It is a
process whereby assets are removed from a bank’s balance sheet, so a bank no longer
permanently fund assets when they are securitized; instead, the investors buying asset-backed
securities provide the funding. Asset-backed securities rather than deposits thus end up funding
dedicated pools of bank-originated assets. Securitization decomposes the lending function such
that banks no longer fully fund the assets, but continue to be involved in other primal lending
activities, e.g. monitoring and servicing the borrowers. A potential benefit of securitization is
better risk sharing. The proliferation of securitization may however also be induced by
regulatory arbitrage, e.g. as vehicle to mitigate capital regulation, see later.

Central to the extensive academic work on securitization is the idea that it is not efficient for
originators to completely offload the risks in the originated assets. The originating bank needs
to maintain an economic interest in the assets to alleviate moral hazard concerns and induce

10
To play this role well, banks may need senior status. Seniority makes them willing to act tougher. To see this,
observe first that the unsecured other debtholders need to be compensated for their subordinated status. This is
directly related to the work on bargaining power and seniority, see the work of Gorton and Kahn (1993) and
Berglöf and Von Thadden (1994). The complementarity between bank lending and capital market funding is further
highlighted in Diamond (1991), Hoshi, Kashyap and Scharfstein (1993) and Chemmanur and Fulghieri (1994). See
Petersen and Rajan (1994) and Houston and James (1996) for empirical evidence, and Freixas and Rochet (2008)
for a recent overview.

8
sufficient effort on the originating bank’s part in screening and monitoring. What this implies is
that even with securitization, banks should not become disengaged from the assets they
originate. Banks still continue to provide the services involved in screening and monitoring
borrowers, designing and pricing financial claims, and providing risk management and loan
servicing support. As such, securitization preserves those functions that are at the core of the
raison d’être for banks. This militates against the notion that securitization effectively lessens
the importance of banks.

As the sub-prime crisis of 2007 has shown, this development was not without problems. The
structure of real world securitization transactions appeared to have taken a rather fragile form.
In particular, it is important to note that much of the securitization leading up to the crisis
involved the financing of long-term assets with short term funding, which induced substantial
liquidity risk; e.g. as in asset-backed commercial paper – ABCP conduits. While this liquidity
risk was sometimes mitigated by liquidity guarantees (e.g. stand-by letters of credit and other
refinancing commitments), the underwriting institutions often underestimated the risks involved
and overstretched themselves.11

Recent events clearly point at the suboptimality of such strategies. Originating institutions
behaved as if they retained minimal residual risk. As a consequence, monitoring incentives may
have been compromised (see Mian and Sufi, 2007).12 The eagerness of banks to securitize
claims – and keep the “repackaging machine” rolling – may have also adversely impacted the
quality of loans that were originated through a dilution of banks’ screening incentives due to
lower retained residual risks (e.g. sub-prime lending). Credit rating agencies have played an
important role in this process as well. Their willingness to provide favorable ratings clearly
helped in growing this market, see Box 1.

11
Most noteworthy are the bankruptcies among German Lander banks that were involved in providing liquidity
guarantees. Risks were further elevated by enormous leverage in the securitization process.
12
Securitization is facilitated in part by credit enhancement, including partial guarantees by the arranger of a
securitization transaction (and/or he holds on to the most risky layer of the transaction). In the recent credit
crisis, this disciplining mechanism broke down; residual risk with the arranger appeared minimal, and were often
framed as liquidity guarantees to off-balance street vehicles without appropriately realizing the inherent risks.
That is, banks, while they might have believed that risk was off-loaded, often had been underwriting the liquidity
risk in securitization transactions by, for example, guaranteeing the refinancing of commercial paper in ABCP
transactions via standby letters of credit. Such guarantees have generated profits for banks, but also created risks,
as illustrated by the losses incurred by banks in the recent sub-prime crisis. The marketability of securitized
claims has also been facilitated by accreditation by credit rating agencies (see Boot, Milbourn and Schmeits
(2006)). The role of rating agencies has been called into question with the 2007-2009 subprime lending crisis.

9
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Box 1: Gatekeepers, de role of credit rating agencies
A positive view of credit rating agencies is that they play a similar certification role (in the financial
market) as banks do with bank loans.13 As rating agencies become more sophisticated and reliable, the
certification role of banks diminishes in importance, causing bank borrowers to migrate to the capital
market. In this sense, rating agencies intensify the competition between banks and markets. But they
also pull banks into the capital market. For example, banks originate loans that they securitize, and
then seek ratings for the securitized pools from rating agencies. The ratings, in turn, facilitate the
ability of banks to sell (securitized) asset-backed securities in the capital market. Rating agencies then
play a role as gatekeeper (Coffee, 2002).
This rather positive interpretation of rating agencies, and does by the way not really address the
question about stability. Rating agencies are clouded somewhat by recent negative publicity. In the
2001 crisis surrounding Enron, rating agencies were accused of being strategically sluggish in
downgrading. More recently, they have been blamed (in part) for the sub-prime crisis in which they
were allegedly too lenient in rating the senior tranches in securitization transactions. Allegations have
been made about conflicts of interest for rating agencies arising from the fact that structured finance is
(was) a source of ever-increasing income for them, which then corrupts their incentives for accurately
rating the issuers involved in structured finance (Cantor, 2004; Partnoy, 1999). In this context, Coffee
and Sale (2008) point at the naiveté to think that reputation building incentives alone would keep
credit rating agencies in check (see also Mathis, McAndrews and Rochet, 2009).
Of particular concern are the so-called “rating triggers.” For example, some debt contracts
may dictate accelerated debt repayments when the rating falls. The consequences of such accelerated
debt repayments might, however, be so severe as to cause rating agencies to become reluctant to lower
the ratings of those borrowers in a timely manner. Complications also arise from the role played by the
so-called “monoliners.” These are insurers who traditionally guaranteed municipal bonds but now also
guarantee the lowest-risk (best) tranches in securitization transactions. These insurers became virtually
indispensible in the sense that the viability of many forms of securitization was predicated on this type
of “reinsurance.” However, the ability of the monoliners to issue credible guarantees (and hence their
role in securitization) depends on these institutions themselves having AAA ratings. This potentially
generates an indirect chain-reaction mechanism for rating agencies. In rating (and monitoring) the
monoliners, rating agencies affect the viability of the securitization market. Thus, the impact of rating
agencies is both direct (rating securitization tranches) and indirect (rating the monoliners). The
potential failure of such monoliners has (had) a significant effect on the value of various structured
finance products and induces an additional chain reaction among players active in the structured
finance market, including investors. This further underscores the increasing interlinkages in the
financial markets. Rating agencies appear to have provided little stability, and might even have
elevated instability.14
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The 2007-2009 financial crisis brought securitization almost to a grinding halt. However, the
risk-diversification that securitization can accomplish appears to be of more than just ephemeral
importance. Thus, we expect securitization to reemerge, albeit possibly in a form that entails
13
Datta, Iskandar-Datta and Patel (1999) show that the monitoring associated with bank loans facilitates
borrowers’ access to the public debt market. This certification role of banks therefore complements what rating
agencies do.
14
Other concerns are related to the oligopolistic nature of the industry, and the importance that ratings have due
to regulation (White, 2010). The latter includes the exclusivity given to a few rating agencies via the “Nationally
Recognized Statistical Rating Organization” (NRSRO) classification, somewhat weakened in the 2006 Credit
Rating Agency Reform Act, but also via the inclusion of external ratings in the new Basle II capital regulation
framework. See also U.S. Senate (2002).

10
lower levels of liquidity risk, as well as lesser moral hazard in screening (loan underwriting
standards) and monitoring. A caveat is that some of the activity in securitization may have
been induced merely by capital arbitrage,15 in which case its social value may be rather
limited; the new Basel II capital requirements – and also the so-called Basel III amendments –
might diminish such regulatory arbitrage.

Another effect of the interaction between banks and markets is that as markets evolve and entice
bank borrowers away, banks have an incentive to create new products and services that combine
services provided by markets with those provided by banks. This allows banks to “follow their
customers” to the market rather than losing them. There are numerous examples. For instance,
when a borrower goes to the market to issue commercial paper, its bank can provide a back-up
line of credit in order to guarantee refinancing. Securitization of various sorts is another
example in that banks not only originate the loans that are pooled and securitized, but they also
buy various securitized tranches as investment securities. The impetus for such market-based
activities grows stronger as interbank competition puts pressure on profit margins from
traditional banking products and the capital market provides access to greater liquidity and
lower cost of capital for the bank’s traditional borrowers. As a consequence, there is a natural
propensity for banks to become increasingly integrated with markets, and a sort of
unprecedented “co-dependence” emerges that makes banking and capital market risks become
increasingly intertwined. This could make banks more willing to engage in lending and hence
improve access to financing, but also points at potentially a higher level of instability. One
conclusion that we will draw is that this improves access to finance under ‘normal’
circumstances, yet makes access more volatile and subject to the boom-and-bust nature of
financial markets. This comes back in the next section.

4. Understanding the pros of financial innovation

The notion that financial innovation is good for economic growth is based on the idea that
such innovations will improve the allocation of capital. In the words of Fed Chairman Ben
Bernanke, “The increasing sophistication and depth of financial markets promote economic
growth by allocating capital where it can be most productive” (Bernanke, 2007). This sounds
politically correct, and by its very generality difficult to refute. However, more specificity is
needed. What can precisely be good about financial innovations? In a first best world where
15
Jones (2000) reviews principal techniques for regulatory capital arbitrage invoked by Basel I standards.
Calomiris and Mason (2004) provide evidence on regulatory arbitrage in the case of credit card securitization.

11
information is available to all and everybody is capable of fully discerning all relevant
attributes, financial innovations could help complete the market, i.e., facilitate a complete set
of Arrow-Debreu securities. This is the typical ‘spanning’ argument; financial innovations are
good because they help complete the market.16

As a more or less immediate corollary, financial development (and financial innovations)

might help improve the allocation of capital. In more simple terms, a complete market allows
individuals to optimally hedge, cq smooth, their income over time. Given this higher level of
predictability that results, they can abscond of their money for longer periods of time
facilitating more long-term investments.

Similarly, the tradability of debt and equity in financial markets allows investors to liquefy
their holdings at any point in time (i.e. by selling their holdings to other investors) and helps
in diversifying risks. In doing so firms might have an easier access to long(er) term financing.
The wish to liquefy claims also helps explain the introduction of limited liability in equity-
type contracts – an innovation by itself. It facilitates trading, and in doing so allows investors
to liquefy claims on otherwise long-term investments (Michalopoulos, Laeven and Levine,
2009). Liquidity therefore is valuable, yet, as we will see, can simultaneously have some
negative repercussions. More specifically, in a world with imperfections, agency and
information problems lead to potential distortions that can create a dark side of liquidity.17

Financial innovations also valuable for other reasons…

New securities are sometimes introduced to help overcome information asymmetries. For
example, in the costly-state-verification literature it is shown that firms may have access to
loans because these can be provided at relatively low cost. The idea is that an equity type
claim would suffer from a lemon problem: outsiders would not be able to assess the value and
hence refuse to provide funding since the firm could try to exploit a too optimistic view

16
A complete market means that investors or consumers can ‘contract’ on any conceivable future state of the
world, and in doing so create an optimal allocation. In the context of hedging for example such complete market
allows investors to neutralize whatever state-contingent risk they may face. What this means is that investors can
tailor the state-dependent pay-offs to their precise preferences. Please note that one cannot automatically assume
that introducing new securities in incomplete markets that give investors greater ‘spanning’ opportunities is by
definition value enhancing. Elul (1995) shows that adding a new security could have “almost arbitrary effects on
agent’s utilities”.
17
We are not focusing here on innovations in trading platforms and trading practices in general (e.g. flash
trading). Hendershott, Jones and Menkveld (2010) argue that financial innovations in algorithmic trading (e.g,
smart order routing, direct market access, crossing, co-location, global capacities) increase liquidity.

12
among potential investors about the firm. As put forward in Akerlof’s (1970) famous paper,
investors would be naive to buy a firm’s equity at an average price because only the below
average firms would happily be willing to sell the equity at that price. Investors thus face a
problem of adverse selection and the market may break down.

Note that things might not be that bad if there is a very low cost in verifying the true state of
nature which would help enforce the ensuing obligations. That is, if the lemon problem can be
easily overcome by verifying the true state at relatively low cost equity financing might be
available. However, if the verification cost is high this may not work. A debt claim may now
help since with debt (contrary to equity) verification is not always needed. That is, if debt is
repaid (interest plus principal) there is no need to verify. If it is not repaid (or only in part) one
needs to verify whether there is indeed a lack of resources. Having a debt contract in
conjunction with a third party (bankruptcy court?) that can impose a stiff penalty on the firm
if it falsely claims insufficiency of funds can solve the misrepresentation problem. Unless the
debt is issued by a very risky firm the anticipated costs of verification are limited since in
most cases the firm can and will repay (and no verification is needed). Note that in the case of
external equity there is no fixed payment and verification is always needed. The upshot of this
is that a debt security can be seen as a value enhancing innovation to help facilitate access to
funding (see the earlier contribution of Gale and Hellwig, 1984; and also Tirole, 2006).

The literature on financial innovation – also referred to as the security design literature – has
come up with various approaches to mitigate problems of information asymmetry. One that
also rationalizes debt as a valuable security is Boot and Thakor (1993). They show that if
information production costs are not excessive, introducing debt in the capital structure of
firms could encourage information production in equity financial markets. This would then
via trading in the financial market get prices closer to the underlying true value. The idea is
with debt in a firm’s capital structure, the equity becomes riskier, but importantly more
information sensitive. Hence, the value of producing information about the firm goes up,
more information is produced as a result, and prices are pushed towards their real value (see
also Fulghieri and Lukin, 2001). All this would be good for resource allocation because
mispricing is mitigated.18

18
Hennessy (2009) shows that firms may issue securities that are less information sensitive if the Akerlof (1970)
lemon problem is very severe. In that case, risk and information problems are overwhelming and trying to carve
out a relatively safe claim might be the only hope for obtaining external finance.

13
Others have argued that a rights issue – again a financial innovation – could help solve the
lemon problem (Heinkel and Schwartz, 1986; Balachandran, Faff and Theobald, 2008). With
a rights issue existing shareholders get the right to buy the newly issued shares. In essence, if
only existing shareholders buy the new shares that a firm wants to issue, the pricing is not that
important. Why? Observe that when shares are issued at a price that is too low, new
shareholders get a windfall gain at the expense of existing shareholders. With a rights issue
(in principle) the new shares go pro rata to the existing shareholders; gains and losses are now
in one and the same hand, i.e. internalized by the same group of investors. A right issue may
therefore allow the firm to raise new equity while a ‘normal’ equity issue would have been
infeasible because of a lemon problem. This is important because it highlights that existing
shareholders might be prepared to continue to provide financing. In a different context this is
also what happens with venture capital financed firms; this typically involves a small group of
investors.19

The security design literature provides several other examples of financial innovations that
could resolve particular agency- and asymmetric information problems. For example,
convertible bonds could give bondholders protection against risk-seeking behavior by
shareholders. The idea is that in a situation where a lot of debt already exists, new debt
financing might not be available because it might induce shareholders to favor excessive risk.
That is, their leveraged claim gives shareholders an enormous upside potential if risks work
out, while the down side is born by the debtholders. With convertible debt, debtholders will
share in the upside if risks work out (i.e. conversion will then occur). This will make matters
somewhat more balanced because shareholders no longer exclusively get the upside which
discourages risk taking. Thus equity-like financing might possibly be available.

In all these theories financial innovation is something good; it tries to mitigate or resolve a
particular friction and (ultimately) benefits the underlying real activity. Other motivations for
introducing financial innovations include regulatory arbitrage and minimizing transaction

19
Note that this may not work in the presence of (too much) debt. With, what is called, debt overhang new
equity even from existing shareholders may not be forthcoming because it would give debtholders a windfall
gain. This is the case particularly when the coupon on existing debt is fixed. It is also quite prevalent in banking
where a government guarantee effectively makes debt available at low cost, while the guarantee is not priced.
This induces risk taking behavior and could make banks averse to raising new equity because it would benefit
the government (i.e. lower the value of the guarantee).

14
costs. Whether this is good or bad depends on the particular context. For example, innovations
designed to bypass regulations (regulatory arbitrage) could be good if one considers those
regulations not desirable.20 But assuming that the regulation in question has merit, say capital
requirements imposed on banks, innovations that are only aimed at bypassing them should
probably be viewed negatively. Reducing transaction costs as rationale for financial
innovations can often be viewed more positively. If certain frictions – transaction costs –
impede the optimal allocation of capital then innovations that reduce these seem optimal.21 In
this positive interpretation, innovations like credit default swaps (CDS) and collateralized
debt obligations (CDO) would promote an optimal allocation of capital by reducing the cost
of diversifying and reallocating risk. However, as Posen and Hinterschweiger (2009) note
during the period 2003-2008 the growth in OTC derivatives outpaced that of real investment
by a factor of twelve (300 versus 25 percent). And after 2006 real investments stagnated while
OTC derivatives grew arguably faster than ever. While this does not preclude that the
proliferation of these financial instruments provided benefits also later in the boom, the
negative effects on the robustness of the financial system – as observed in 2007-2009 – tend
to refute this.
So far we have not emphasized that many of these recent developments in innovation have
been facilitated by developments in information technology. In a sense, the marketability has
really been spurred by these IT developments.22

20
Also tax evasion should be mentioned. Tax efficiency, to say it more neutrally, is central to many financial
innovations. For example, the practice of financial engineering in order to design a security that has properties of
equity but qualifies for interest deductibility for tax purposes; e.g. Trust preferred securities that were mainly
issued by bank holding companies for their favorable tax and regulatory treatment.
21
Tufano (2003) summarizes other motivations for introducing financial innovations along these lines.
22
For a discussion of the impact of the IT advances on innovations and the so induced benefits both for banks
and for financial markets, see Frame and White (2009). Banks basically faced the major revolution in IT
technology that consisted of innovation both in front office and in back office. In front office IT technology
enabled new channels of access to banking such as internet banking. In addition, several new products have been
created for borrowers such as factoring, leasing, asset based lending (Berger and Udell, 2006). In back office, the
IT technology has led to better assessment of risk also for more opaque small business lending. The example
includes small businesses credit scoring techniques that were developed in 90s (see Berger, Frame and Miller,
2005). In addition, substantial changes occurred in payment technologies. Paper payments such as cash and
checks were increasingly replaced by electronic payments such as debit and credit cards. Studies identify
substantial cost reduction in processing of electronic payments from 1990 to 2000 (see Berger, 2003) and
economies of scale (see Hancock, Humphrey and Wilcox, 1999). Petersen and Rajan (2002) show that distances
between banks and borrowers started to increase from 1993 onwards due to increased bank employees’
productivity that development and the greater usage of tools such as computers and communication equipment
brought. For markets, IT developments have led to fast and largely automated electronic trading. On one side
this has probably increased the frequency of trading and liquidity however much about its stability impact is yet
unknown, see for example the events on the 6th of May, 2010 (within a few minutes the US equity and futures
markets fell by more than 5% and then quickly recovered) that led to investigation of SEC.
http://www.sec.gov/sec-cftc-prelimreport.pdf.

15
We now turn to the dark side of financial innovation.

5. Innovations might be problematic…

Johnson and Kwak (2009) state that a financial innovation is only good if it “enables an
economically productive use of money that would not otherwise occur”. This statement makes
it clear that financial innovations do not necessarily add value. This might particularly be the
case when information asymmetries are present.

When information asymmetries are present and particular contingencies are not contractible,
having complete markets is infeasible. This happens when contingencies are not verifiable,
and/or too costly to verify. Introducing a financial innovation might now have a much darker
motivation. Financial innovations might be intended to fool market participants. An example
might be the Dutch or UK market for life insurance products. On several occasions structural
misselling has occurred with as common denominator: the presence of an excessive variety of
product innovations that shares one characteristic: complexity in conjunction with obscurity
of costs relative to potential benefits.23

Financial innovations would then tend to worsen the allocation of capital. The more recent
advances in securitization could be interpreted that way too. Initially securitization could have
allowed for a wider access to investors, reduced funding costs and hence improved lending
opportunities for banks. As stated earlier, this may well have been value enhancing. There is a
logic in fulfilling the demand for high investment grade securities by packaging mortgages,
and selling the low risk portion to (distant) investors. As long as the originators of the loans
keep the more risky layer, they would still have a strong incentive to screen loan applicants
and monitor them. What happened subsequently is less benign. It is clear that lending
standards weakened (Keys et al., 2010).24 In part this had little to do with securitization. The

23
Gabaix and Laibson (2006) analyze how producers (e.g. financial services firms) can exploit uniformed
consumers by misrepresenting attributes. In Carlin (2009) complexity is added to discourage information
production, intended to facilitate expropriation of investors.
24
Parlour and Plantin (2008) analyze loan sales. In their view banks weight the benefits of loan sales in the form
of additional flexibility to quickly redeploy bank capital with the drawbacks in the form of lower monitoring
incentives. They show that loan sales would lead to excessive trading of highly rated securities but to insufficient
liquidity in low rated securities. Risk weighted capital requirements may help in bringing liquidity to low rated
securities.

16
housing boom in the US seduced lenders in granting higher mortgages. As long as prices kept
rising, loans could always be refinanced and/or sales of underlying houses would cover the
outstanding mortgages. Where securitization did come into the picture is that the insatiable
appetite for triple-A paper in the market pushed financial institutions into a high gear
repacking mode, ultimately lowering standards even further. Also, in a desire to issue as much
triple-A paper as possible, the more risky tranches of securitization structures were
repackaged again, and more triple-A paper was squeezed out. All this packaging and
repackaging led to very complicated securities. When the market finally started questioning
the sustainability of the housing boom, the arcane securities were suddenly out of favor.25

Financial innovations often cause harm by reducing transparency, and this might be
deliberate. The earlier example about life insurance – as stated – might be a good example
about that. While securitization did create arcane products (the sequentially repacked claims),
the objective of securitization might not have been to create this lack of transparency. The
arcane nature of the end product might have been a side effect of the sequential repackaging
that was driven to ‘squeeze out’ as much triple-A paper as possible. In practice this may still
have had the same effect: some market participants got fooled in trusting the quality of this
highly rated paper (and the willingness of rating agencies to grant such high ratings did help,
see also Box 1).

The more fundamental observation – and the one already mentioned in the previous section –
is that securitization is a financial innovation that intertwines banks with financial markets.
Financial markets are however subject to booms and busts, or better heavily momentum
driven. As long as momentum was there, the market’s appetite could not be saturated, and
much money could be made by putting the ‘repackaging machines’ in higher and higher gear.
The important observation is that recent financial innovations are rather ways to augment
marketability and this is typically linked to financial markets, and those are subject to boom
and busts.

Marketability and excessive ‘changeability’ key…

25
DeMarzo (2005) show that pooling of securities is valuable due to diversification especially if the originator
has limited information about the assets’ quality. However, the informed financial institutions buy pooled assets
and tranch them. By tranching the assets financial institutions make liquid and low-risk debt less sensitive to
their private information.

17
Securitization has opened up the bank balance sheet.
Many bank assets have potentially become marketable. This marketability is typically seen as
something positive, but the links with the financial markets that this has created has made banks
potentially more vulnerable vis-à-vis the volatility and momentum in financial markets.
Moreover, marketability means that existing activities and risks can be changed almost
instantaneously. Since financial markets go through cycles and are subjected to hypes and
investor sentiments, the banks’ decisions might become more momentum driven; see also
Shleifer and Vishny (2010). This adds further instability.26

Elsewhere (Boot, 2009), we frame this ability to change things almost instantaneously as a
move to more ‘footloose corporations’. What we mean by this is that corporations (or banks for
that matter) due to the proliferation of financial markets and the increased marketability of their
operations (creating a transaction orientation) become uprooted, meaning lose a degree of fixity
and stability. This discussion is also related to the general corporate governance question on the
rights of shareholders and the role of private equity investors in particular. While different
opinions exist, typically it is considered important that management has some mandate (i.e.
elbow room) vis-à-vis shareholders. In related work by Boot, Gopalan and Thakor (2008), the
emphasis is on the need of having some stable shareholders. The liquidity stock markets provide
may cause ownership to be changing all the time such that no stable and lasting link with
shareholders comes about. This could make firms even more sensitive to financial market
pressures. In Box 2 we provide a brief summary of the key insights of the Boot (2009) study.27
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Box 2: Footloose corporations: the instability coming from financial markets
The uprooting of firms – footloose corporations – is a reinforcing process. The financial market
perspective tends to result in excessive volatility and instability within firms, which damage the social
fabric. Companies have accentuated this by giving in to the pressures from those same financial
markets. They are tempted to organize themselves in such a way that they become divisible; instead of
striving for internal synergies, they have created separate, easily accountable units. And yes, that
further erodes the social fabric and so leads to even more transactions, which in turn continue to fuel
the process of decomposition. And so a kind of vicious circle forms.

26
Also replacing deposit funding by wholesale funding exposed banks to additional liquidity risk. Huang and
Ratnovski (2009) show that the dark side of liquidity comes in the form of reduced incentives of whole-sale
funds providers to monitor their banks and this may trigger inefficient liquidation; see also Acharya, Gale and
Yorulmazer (2010). The main threat of bank run may no longer come from demand deposits as in Diamond and
Dybvig (1983) but rather from wholesale financiers or from bank borrowers that deplete their loan commitments
(Ivashina and Scharfstein, 2010; Gatev, Schuermann and Strahan, 2009).
27
The dark side of liquidity and possibility for quick changes in asset allocation is related to the work of Myers
and Rajan (1998) who emphasize that the illiquidity of bank assets serves a useful purpose in that it reduces asset
substitution moral hazard.

18
 At the same time, such a process can be seen affecting the behavior of both senior
management and employees. As soon as the CEO lets his position be dictated by the fickleness of the
financial markets, he becomes like a (temporary) mercenary of the financial market. He either has
momentum or he does not. It is all or nothing, with the concomitant increase in the turnover of senior
executives. This results in the boardroom’s effective alienation from the rest of the organization,
undoubtedly accompanied by numerous transactions, and again it is the social fabric of the
organization which suffers. All those transactions, plus the alienation – whether real or only perceived
– of those supposed to be running the company, encourages the rest of the workforce to give in to
calculating self-interest. “What’s in it for me?,” they ask themselves. Their ties to the organization
more or less collapse to solely their financial remuneration contract. Self-serving behavior then
becomes the norm. For instance, they start to overly invest in developing marketable skills – those of
use to any employer – rather than abilities specific to the company itself. And so another vicious circle
is created.
The key challenge facing businesses is to recognize these self-reinforcing processes and to
counter those effectively. Leadership requires vision, and it is essential that management creates elbow
room to maneuver. A mandate is key. The reality is that management can claim this mandate. For
shareholders, notwithstanding everything that has been said, it is very difficult to intervene. It is
management’s own fixation with highly visible share prices and with the circus of analysts and
consultants which underlies its capitulation to the financial markets.

From: Boot (2009).

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

More on the dark side of marketability

Creating liquidity and opening up markets, i.e., trading possibilities, is typically seen as
something positive. But this is not always the case as follows from the previous section. One
application is the context first investigated by Amar Bhide (1993). His insight was that the
liquidity of stock markets is typically considered a virtue, yet may have a dark side in that
fully liquid stock markets encourage diffuse ownership, and this may undermine monitoring
incentives. Hence corporate control over managers might be lax inducing inefficiencies. In
other words, monitoring incentives typically require a larger and enduring stake in a company,
yet this is at odds with liquidity. This suggests a trade-off between liquidity and a more
enduring presence by committing not to sell. In subsequent research Bolton and von Thadden
(1998) have shown that stock market liquidity may benefit from the simultaneous presence of
a few block holders. That is, having some proportion of shares freely traded but not all, may
help create liquidity in the freely traded shares in part because the market knows that some
investors have a more sizable and permanent (minority) stake that gives them an incentive to
monitor. In this way some agency problems at the level of the firm might be mitigated. This is
in line with the earlier discussed work of Boot, Gopalan and Thakor (2008) who focus on the
pros and cons of (lack of) stability in the shareholder base particularly in the context of
exchange listed firms.

19
The costs of liquidity and/or marketability can be further emphasized in the context of
financial sector stability. This can be linked to securitization (see earlier), but also to the
stability of investment banks versus commercial (relationship oriented) banks. Traditional
relationship oriented banks seem incentivized to build up institutional franchise value.
Individuals are part of the organization as an entity, and not readily identifiable as individual
stars. In other words, the value created is fixed to the organizational entity and not portable as
part of individuals.

Investment bank on the other hand, particularly the trading side of it,28 seems more based on
the individual star concept with high marketability of individuals. As a consequence, less
institutional franchise value is build up; individual franchise values dominate. If this is the
only difference then the relationship banking institution has implied value, while the
investment bank has little implied value, and hence Keeley (1990) analysis would suggest that
an investment bank would take lots of risk, while the franchise value of a commercial bank
would help curtail its risk taking.29

Historically investment banks have solved this marketability problem (and potential lack of
institutional franchise value) by having partnerships. The partnership structure has two
dimensions that jointly resolve the risk taking problem and marketability (and star
phenomenon):
- a partnership means that bankers have their personal wealth tied up in the business –
they own the equity claim themselves.
- Simultaneously, the partnership structure means that the equity is not (optimally)
marketable.

The latter implies that ‘stars’ cannot take their money out, or only at a reduced value.
Implicitly, this also means that non-portable franchise value is created, and this value is
transferred over time (to future partners). Interesting examples exist where institutions have

28
This is important. Many of the activities in an investment bank are relationship based, trading is typically not.
In recent times, traders appear to have gained power in investment banks, e.g. more recent leaders of Goldman
Sachs came from the trading side. In any case, do not see the distinction between commercial banking and
investment banking as an absolute dichotomy.
29
It is the multitude of connections that are combined in the investment bank that make an investment bank as a
whole valuable, but this is pointing at externalities of failure (see Duffie, 2009).

20
made changes that have destroyed this structure.30 For example, in an initial public offering
(converting a partnership in a listed shareholder owned company) the current partners
effectively expropriate all franchise value that has been build up over time. Even worse, once
the partnership is gone, stars are no longer ‘under control’. Their financial interest is no longer
tied to the firm. This elevates risk and reduces stability.

One way of interpreting the developments in banking is that even in commercial banking
more of the business has become marketable, and the ‘star’ phenomenon may also come up
there. In any case partnerships among major financial institutions are no longer common.
Changes, whether in the form of financial innovations (products), processes (securitization) or
institutional changes (the demise of a partnership in lieu of an exchange listing with
marketable equity) all work in the same direction. They make things footloose and in doing so
could undermine stability. These links between marketability and financial sector stability
(and the real economy) are important in the context of evaluating financial development and
financial innovations.31

6. Putting it together: what to conclude?

What has been shown is that financial innovations can be good from the perspective of
completing markets, as well as from a perspective that focuses on overcoming asymmetric
information and agency problems. Nevertheless, a much more negative picture can be drawn.
Innovations might be designed to fool market participants, and in doing so cause serious harm
(see Henderson and Pearson, 2009). The instability that they might cause is arguable even
more worrisome. This red flag is related to the earlier observation that financial innovations
often make things (e.g. banks!) intertwined with financial markets, and that those financial
markets are subject to booms and busts, or better heavily momentum driven. The question

30
Morrison and Wilhelm (2008) analyze the decision of major US investment banks to go public. Investment
banks were initially organized as partnerships. The opacity of partnerships and illiquidity of their shares allowed
for successful mentoring and training in tacit uncontractible human skills, such as building relationships,
negotiating M&A deals and advising clients. They have argued that IT technology necessitated heavy
investments and that that necessitated investment banks to go public. Potentially confirming this is that
wholesale-oriented investment banks such as Morgan Stanley for which tacit human capital was more important
than IT technology went public later than retail oriented investment banks such as Merrill Lynch.
31
Another important link is to the work in economics that emphasizes that creating markets and trading
opportunities might not necessarily be good. It could for example create time-inconsistency problems and
complicate the feasibility of otherwise (ex ante) optimal commitments. In this context, the work of Jacklin
(1987) is noteworthy. He showed that introducing trading opportunities at the intermediate point in time could
destroy the liquidity insurance feature of demand deposit contracts in the Diamond-Dybvig (1983) framework.

21
then is when financial innovations destabilize things, as securitization might have done to
banks.

It is very difficult to come up with conditions that help us distinguish between value
enhancing and value destroying innovations. Our discussion on the value of partnerships
points at the need for some ‘fixed points’, not everything can be fluid. Marketability definitely
has a dark side; it potentially causes severe instability.32

When we take a bigger picture and focus on innovation in the financial sector not just in the
product sense but also in processes and institutional structure more can be said. Recall that the
type of innovations encompass products (financial innovations in the strict sense), processes
(securitization) and institutional changes (e.g. the demise of a partnership in lieu of an
exchange listing with marketable equity). The institutional structure at the most aggregate
level was discussed in section 3 where bank-dominated versus capital market dominated
economies were discussed. As we emphasized, financial innovations in the product sense are
often linked to financial markets, and effectively bring bank-dominated intermediation closer
to the financial market.

What has not been discussed is that bank-based systems versus market-driven systems might
also deviate in terms of their openness to real innovations. There is a body of work (e.g. Rajan
and Zingales, 2001; Boot and Thakor, 1997) that argues that being bank-based gives too much
power to existing institutions and businesses at the expense of new activities and initiatives.
This could retard real innovation and renewal.33 A bank-based system is more conservative,
particularly more incumbent oriented, and hence less able to take advantage of new
opportunities. This suggests a trade-off between a more volatile market-based system and a
less innovative, yet possibly more stable banking system.

In work by Allen (1993), Carlin and Mayer (2002), and more recently Herrera and Minetti
(2007), the message is that truly path breaking innovations are better facilitated in financial
market dominated economies (like the US), while bank-dominated economies could possibly

32
Other thoughts on instability and financial innovation are provided in Shiller (2008), Loayza and Ranciere
(2005) and Brunnermeier et al. (2009). See also Frame and White (2002) on the difficulty of evaluating the
added value of financial innovations.
33
See also Bekaert, Harvey and Lundblad (2005), and Levine and Zervos (1998).

22
be better in accommodating more gradual innovations. In Allen (1993) this is linked to the
information aggregation role of financial markets that might be crucial for assessing unknown
path breaking innovations. In Herrera and Minetti (2007), the arguments are more linked to
the reasoning in Rajan and Zingales (2001) in that a bank may want to obstruct path breaking
innovations that may render its information about the firm obsolete (i.e. the bank may seek to
preserve its hold-up power over the borrower).34

A bank-dominated nature of the financial sector would then translate into difficulty of
financing more radical innovations. The focus on incumbents that a highly concentrated bank-
dominated system can induce would be most detrimental for (newer) high growth firms.

The level of product (e.g. CDS) and process financial innovation (securitization) observed in
the recent past have definitely affected the institutional landscape. The long-term implications
for the structure of the banking industry are not yet clear. More concentration is definitely a
possibility. Whether the financial sector becomes more or less bank-dominated is not clear
either. What the new equilibrium looks like and what the implications are for potential
financing frictions are (e.g. the ones mentioned just above) is therefore an open issue.

We have emphasized potential complementarities between banks and financial markets. On

the positive side one could say that financial innovations have possibly strengthened these
complementarities. One could however easily draw a more negative conclusion. In the 2007-
09 financial crisis European banks have arguably been hit most. One interpretation is that the
European financial sector started combining the worst of both worlds: it continued to be bank-
driven with its negative effects on renewal and entrepreneurship, yet these very same banks
became intertwined with financial markets and as a consequence volatility increased and the
benefits of stability disappeared.

This is clearly linked to the observation that financial innovations are to some extent
opportunistic. They are part of a more open financial system. This gives potentially more
instability but also allows for more immediate possibilities to take advantage of opportunities.
What comes out of this paper is that we need to (learn to) deal with the instability that
marketability brings. The institutional framework needs to adapt to this new reality. The
34
Carlin and Mayer’s (2002) empirical results seem to support these observations Van Tilburg (2009) includes
further references and observations.

23
proliferation of marketability clearly has a dark side. Particularly the continental European
bank-dominated financial sectors need to find a new equilibrium in this fluid world.

24
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