We examine the pricing of financial crash insurance during the 2007-2009 financial crisis in U.S. option markets. A large amount of aggregate tail risk is missing from the price of financial sector crash insurance during the financial crisis. The difference in costs of out-of-the-money put...

We present a simple model of systemic risk and we show that each financial institution's contribution to systemic risk can be measured as its systemic expected shortfall (SES), i.e., its propensity to be undercapitalized when the system as a whole is undercapitalized. SES increases with the...

As the number of bank failures increases, the set of assets available for acquisition by the surviving banks enlarges but the total amount of available liquidity within the surviving banks falls. This results in ‘cash-in-the-market’ pricing for liquidation of banking assets. At a...

This paper develops the building blocks for a legal theory of finance. LTF holds that financial markets are legally constructed and as such occupy an essentially hybrid place between state and market, public and private. At the same time, financial markets exhibit dynamics that frequently put...

With banking sectors worldwide still suffering from the effects of the financial crisis, public discussion of plans to place toxic assets in one or more bad banks has gained steam in recent weeks. The following paper presents a plan how governments can efficiently relieve ailing banks from toxic...

This paper argues that the U.S. financial crisis is a new type of crisis: a "financial black hole." Financial black holes are characterized by the breaking-up of credit market discipline and the large-scale financing of negative NPV projects. In a theoretical model, we explain how the...

This paper presents evidence of banks using accounting discretion to overstate the value of distressed assets. In particular, we show that the stock market applies far greater discounts to a bank’s real estate loans and mortgage-backed securities than are implicit in the book values of these...