This paper investigates the governance structure choices of firms when there is competition between legal systems. We study the impact of the allocation of control over choice of governance and reincorporation on firms` technologies and technological specialization of countries in the context of...

The credit derivatives market provides a liquid but opaque forum for secondary market trading of banking assets. I show that when entrepreneurs rely upon the certification value of bank debts to obtain cheap bond market insurance, the existance of a credit derivatives market may cause them to...

This study outlines a new theory linking industrial structure to optimal employment contracts and value reducing risk taking.  Firms hire their executives using optimal contracts derived within a competitive labour market.  To motivate effort firms must use some variable remuneration.  Such...

This paper studies the contracting problem between banks and their bankers, embedded in a competitive labour market for banker talent.  To motivate effort banks must use some variable remuneration.  Such remuneration introduces a risk-shifting problem by creating incentives to inflate early...

This paper studies banker remuneration in a competitive market for banker talent.  I model, and then calibrate, the default risk of the banks generated by investments and remuneration pressures.  Competing banks prefer to pay their banking staff in bonuses and not in wages as risk sharing on...

Where do we stand, five years on from the start of the crisis, on progress towards banking reform? Major advances have been made, but a lot of unfinished business remains, notably on structural reform of banks. Following a stock-take of current reform initiatives, the paper reviews some...

We present a model for Financial fragility in which banks are risk-averse portfolio managers and there is uncertainty over risk management parameters. There is a danger of heightened risk aversion and projects in small economies are assumed to be riskier than those in large economies. In this...

In this paper, we analyse a novel panel data set to compare the relevance of alternative measures of capitalisation for bank failure during the 2007-10 crisis, and to search for evidence of manipulated Basel risk-weights.  Compared with the unweighted leverage ratio, we find the risk-weighted...

Banks create excessive systemic risk through leverage and maturity mismatch, as financial constraints introduce welfare-reducing pecuniary externalities.  Macroprudential regulators can achieve efficiency with simple linear constraints on banks' balance sheets, which require less information...

We model the interaction between two economies where banks exhibit both adverse selection and moral hazard and bank regulators try to resolve these problems. We find that liberalising bank capital flows between economies reduces total welfare by reducing the average size and efficiency of the...