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 credit default swap spreads. Overall,...

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

This paper examines the evolving importance of banks and securities markets during the process of economic development. As economies develop, they increase their demand for the services provided by securities markets relative to those provided by banks, such that securities markets become...