Following the financial crisis of 2008/9, there has been renewed interest in what Greenwald and Stiglitz dubbed ‘pecuniary externalities’. Two that affect borrowers and lenders balance sheets in pro-cyclical fashion are described, along with measures that might help curb their destabilising...

China’s economic reforms have resulted in spectacular growth and poverty reduction. However, China’s institutions look ill-suited to achieve such a result, and they indeed suffer from serious shortcomings. To solve "China puzzle" this paper analyses China’s institution - a regionally...

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...

We investigate the pricing implications of the parallel trading of loans and bonds of the same firm. We show that loan, by making lenders share sensitive information about the borrower with the loan market participants, lower the information advantage of the asset managers affiliated to the...

Because sell-side analysts are dependent on institutional investors for performance ratings and trading commissions, we argue that analysts are less likely to succumb to investment banking or brokerage pressure in stocks highly visible to institutional investors. Examining a comprehensive sample...

In this Paper we study the impact of credit risk transfer (CRT) on the stability and the efficiency of a financial system in a model with endogenous intermediation and production. Our analysis suggests that with respect to CRT, the individual incentives of the agents in the economy are generally...

We investigate the optimal regulation of financial conglomerates that combine a bank and a non-bank financial institution. The conglomerate’s risk-taking incentives depend upon the level of market discipline it faces, which in turn is determined by the conglomerate’s liability structure. We...

The recent crisis has shown that banks in distress can often expect to benefit from (implicit) government guarantees. This paper analyzes a panel of 781 banks from 90 countries to test whether the expectation of individual and systemic government support induces moral hazard. It shows that banks...

In this paper, we examine the relationship between banks’ approval for the internal ratings-based (IRB) approaches of Basel II and the ratio of risk-weighted over total assets. Analysing a panel of 115 banks from 21 OECD countries that were eventually approved for applying the IRB to their...

The paper studies the causes of the current financial crisis and considers proposals for mitigation and prevention of future crises. The crisis is was the product of a ‘perfect storm’ bringing together a number of microeconomic and macroeconomic pathologies. Among the microeconomic systemic...