Organization Structure and Credibility: Evidence from Commercial Bank Securities Activities Before the Glass-Steagall Act
Organization Structure and Credibility: Evidence from Commercial Bank Securities Activities Before the Glass-Steagall Act
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组织结构与可信度：《格拉斯-斯蒂格尔法案》之前商业银行证券活动的证据
DOI：
10.2139/ssrn.45322
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发表时间：
1995
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
R. Rajan
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
R. Kroszner;R. Rajan
本文研究了组织结构如何影响企业的竞争能力。我们特别研究了在 1933 年《格拉斯-斯蒂格尔法案》迫使银行退出证券业务之前美国商业银行组织投资银行业务的两种方式：作为银行内部的证券部门和作为独立注册并资本化的证券附属机构。我们记录了 20 年代使用附属结构的强烈趋势，而监管似乎并没有解释这种演变。虽然各部门承销的公司和证券的质量似乎比同类附属公司高，但这些部门所承销的证券的价格却较低。这一证据与以下假设一致：当贷款和承保在部门结构中紧密结合时，存在潜在利益冲突的看法。我们发现有证据表明，这一时期的银行经理对这种看法感到担忧。然后，我们开发进一步的测试来支持这样的观点：通过将承销活动与贷款业务分开，银行可以更可信地证明其承销的问题的质量，从而获得更高的价格。我们的结果表明，内部组织确实可能影响公司的活动和有效性。他们还表示，银行监管机构对商业银行和投资银行业务之间“防火墙”的兴趣可能是合理的，但市场可能会推动银行采用内部结构来解决监管机构的担忧。
This paper investigates how organizational structure can affect a firm's ability to compete. In particular, we examine the two ways in which U.S. commercial banks organized their investment banking operations before the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act forced the banks to leave the securities business: as an internal securities department within the bank and as a separately incorporated and capitalized securities affiliate. We document a strong movement toward the use of the affiliate structure during the 1920s, and regulation does not appear to explain this evolution. While departments underwrote seemingly higher quality firms and securities than did comparable affiliates, the departments obtained lower prices for the issues they underwrote. This evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that there was a perception of potential conflicts of interest when lending and underwriting were closely combined in the departmental structure. We find evidence that bank managers during this period were concerned about such perceptions. We then develop further tests to support the view that by distancing underwriting activities from lending operations, banks could more credibly certify the quality of the issues they underwrote, thereby obtaining higher prices for them. Our results suggest that internal organization may indeed affect the activities and effectiveness of a firm. They also suggest that bank regulators' interest in 'firewalls' between commercial and investment banking may be reasonable, but that the market may propel banks to adopt an internal structure that would address regulators' concerns.