The recent financial crisis has revived the debate on deposit insurance. Public awareness of its existence is essential in order to prevent a bank run. Analysing the results of three questions on this topic introduced in the last Survey on Household Income and Wealth, this paper investigates...

This paper tests the role of different banks� liquidity funding structures in explaining the bank failures that occurred in the United States between 2007 and 2009. The results highlight that funding is indeed a significant factor in explaining banks� probability of default. By...

Many studies have questioned the reliability of banks� calculations of risk-weighted assets (RWA) for prudential purposes. The significant divergences found at international level are taken as indicating excessive subjectivity in the current rules governing banks� risk measurement and...

More than three years since the outbreak of the sovereign debt crisis in the euro area the banking systems of several countries remain exposed to the vagaries of government bond markets. The paper analyzes the different channels through which sovereign risk affects banking risk (and vice versa),...

Using 11 years of monthly Italian bank-by-bank data, this paper correlates the bilateral amounts and the identity of each interbank borrower and lender with a long list of explanatory variables. The results show that interbank customer relationships, i.e. stable and strong relationships between...

We examine the effects of the government guarantee schemes for bank bonds adopted in the aftermath of the Lehman Brothers demise to help banks retain access to wholesale funding. We describe the evolution and the pattern of bond issuance across countries to assess the effect of the schemes. Then...

The Basel Committee for Banking Supervision designed a system of risk weights (the so called standardised approach) to measure the riskiness of banks� loan portfolios. Its ability to adequately reflect risk is empirically investigated in this paper, through an analysis of the economic...

This paper studies the provision of incentives in a universal bank. This is regarded as a (common) agent serving different clients with potentially conflicting interests; for example, it may buy assets on behalf of investors and sell assets on behalf of issuing firms. The clients offer incentive...