"The intensity of recent turbulence in financial markets has surprised nearly everyone. This paper searches out the root causes of the crisis, distinguishing them from scapegoating explanations that have been used in policy circles to divert attention from the underlying breakdown of incentives....

"Considered as a social contract, a financial safety net imposes duties and confers rights on different sectors of the economy. Within a nation, elements of incompleteness inherent in this contract generate principal-agent conflicts that are mitigated by formal agreements, norms, laws, and the...

Cross-border banking is currently not stable in Europe. Cross-border banks need a European safety net. Moreover, a truly integrated European-level banking system may help to break the diabolical loop between the solvency of the domestic banking system and the fiscal standing of the national...

Since the European Council of June 2012, ‘Banking Union' is a key item for the EU's policy agenda. This contribution outlines the state of the policy debate – identifying the elements that are missing but important from a theoretical viewpoint. We make concrete proposals as to how the...

Financial safety nets are incomplete social contracts that assign responsibility to various economic sectors for preventing, detecting, and paying for potentially crippling losses at financial institutions. This paper uses the theories of incomplete contracts and sequential bargaining to...

As financial institutions and markets transact more and more cross-border business, gaps and flaws in national safety nets become more consequential. Because citizens of host (home) countries may be made to pay for mistakes made in the home (host) country, Basel's lead-regulator paradigm...