This Paper examines how international depositors respond to national deposit insurance policies. Countries with explicit deposit insurance are found to be relatively attractive to international non-bank depositors. Schemes characterized by co-insurance, a private administration, and a low...

This paper considers the optimal frequency of central bank decision making. This frequency affects the central bank’s flexibility to respond to economic shocks in a timely fashion, and also its credibility to maintain low inflation. Generally, the central bank resets monetary policy less often...

A bank’s interest expenses are found to increase with its degree of internationalization as proxied by its share of foreign liabilities in total liabilities or a Herfindahl index of international liability concentration, especially if the bank is performing badly. Our benchmark estimation...

On May 9, 2010 euro zone countries announced the creation of the European Financial Stability Facility as a response to the sovereign debt crisis. This paper investigates the impact of this announcement on bank share prices, bank CDS spreads and sovereign CDS spreads. The main private...

The EU deposit insurance directive requires member states to maintain deposit insurance with a minimum insured amount of 20,000 euros. This paper reviews the rationale for international coordination of deposit insurance policies. For international externalities of deposit insurance policies to...

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...

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...

This paper examines the implications of bank activity and short-term funding strategies for bank risk and return using an international sample of 1334 banks in 101 countries leading up to the 2007 financial crisis. Expansion into non-interest income generating activities such as trading...

An important question is whether the financial safety net reduces market discipline on bank risk taking. For countries with varying deposit insurance schemes, we find that deposit rates continue to reflect bank riskiness. Cross-country evidence suggests that explicit deposit insurance reduces...