The recent crisis has spurred the use of bank stress tests as a crisis management and early warning tool. However, a weakness is that current stress tests are based on consolidated balance sheets, and thus omit potential risks embedded in banking groups’ geographical structures by assuming...

We examine the international transmission of liquidity shocks from multinational bank holding companies to their subsidiaries during the financial crisis of 2008. Our results demonstrate that a subsidiary's reduction in lending is strongly related to its parent bank's lending via the interbank...

The recent financial crisis has clearly shown that the relationship between bank internationalization and risk is complex. Multinational banks can benefit from portfolio diversification, reducing their overall riskiness, but this effect can be offset by incentives going in the opposite...

This paper analyzes the channels through which financial liberalization affects bank risk-taking in an international sample of 4333 banks in 83 countries. Our results indicate that financial liberalization increases bank risk-taking in both developed and developing countries but through...

In the aftermath of the 2007–2009 crisis, banks claiming positive diversification benefits are being met with skepticism. Nevertheless, diversification might be important and sizable for some large internationally active banking groups. We use a universally applicable correlation matrix...

This paper analyzes the interactions between government's indebtedness, sovereign default risk and the size of the informal sector. We test an underlying theory that suggests that in societies with limited tax enforcement, the presence of informality constrains the set of pledgeable fiscal...

We examine the evolution of credit risk co-dependence in the banking sectors of over 65 countries. We find that there has been a significant increase in default risk co-dependence over the 3-year period leading up to the financial crisis. We also find that countries that are more integrated with...

This paper measures fragmentation in the European interbank market. We document that, during the recent crisis, fragmentation in the interbank market has been, on average, higher in the peripheral countries than in the core ones and it has increased particularly during periods of financial...

We analyze the global banking network using data on cross-border banking flows for 184 countries during 1978–2010. We find that the density of the global banking network defined by these flows is pro-cyclical, expanding and contracting with the global cycle of capital flows. We also find that...

Using data for 48 advanced and emerging market economies during 1985–2008, this paper examines the impact of measures of financial integration and globalization on several dimensions of real activity. We find that both advances in financial integration and globalization are associated with...