This paper looks at the interrelationship between trade in goods and asset holdings, as brought forward by some contributions to the empirical literature in international economics. These contributions argue that single-equation gravity models suffer from an endogeneity bias, culminating in a...

The global financial crisis has brought to an end a rather unprecedented period of banks’ international expansion. We analyze the effects of the crisis on international banking. Using a detailed dataset on the international assets of all German banks with foreign affiliates for the years...

This paper surveys recent literature on international mergers and acquisitions in banking. We focus on three main questions. First, what are the determinants of cross-border mergers of commercial banks? Second, do cross-border mergers affect the efficiency of banks? Third, what are the risk...

This paper explores the links between macroeconomic conditions and individual bank risk. Using capital adequacy ratios as a broad measure of risk sustainability, a linear mixed effects model for a large international panel of banks for the years 2001-2005 is estimated. In OECD countries, banks...

Macroeconomic risks could magnify individual bank risk. Mitigating the influence of economy-wide risks on banks could therefore be very important to maintain a smooth-running banking system. In this paper, we explore the extent to which macroeconomic risks affect banks. We use a bank-level...

During the last years, gravity equations have leapt from the trade literature over into the literature on financial markets. Martin and Rey (2004) were the first to provide a theoretical model for cross-border asset trade, yielding a structural gravity equation that could be tested empirically....