For an international sample of banks, we construct measures of a bank's absolute size and its systemic size defined as size relative to the national economy. We then examine how a bank's risk and return, its activity mix and funding strategy, and the extent to which it faces market discipline...

Deteriorating public finances around the world raise doubts about countries' abilities to bail out their largest banks. For an international sample of banks, this paper investigates the impact of government indebtedness and deficits on bank stock prices and CDS spreads. Overall, bank stock...