This paper examines the impact of bank regulations, market structure, and national institutions on bank net interest margins and overhead costs using data on over 1,400 banks across 72 countries while controlling for bank-specific characteristics. The data indicate that tighter regulations on...

The paper provides an overview of cryptocurrencies and decentralized finance. The discussion lays out potential benefits and challenges of the new system and presents a comparison to the traditional system of financial intermediation. Our analysis highlights that while the DeFi architecture...

This paper assesses the potential impact of FinTech on the finance industry, focusing on financial stability and access to services. I document first that financial services remain surprisingly expensive, which explains the emergence of new entrants. I then argue that the current regulatory...

Banks are unique in that they combine the production of liquid claims with loans. They can replicate most of what FinTech firms can do, but FinTech firms benefit from an uneven playing field in that they are less regulated than banks. The uneven playing field enables non-bank FinTech firms to...

Regulators around the world are discussing, or taking action to limit, self-preferencing by large platforms. This paper explores Amazon's search rankings of its own products as the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) was coming into effect. Using data on over 8 million Amazon search...

We analyze the impact of financial globalization on business cycle synchronization utilizing a proprietary database on banks' international exposure for industrialized countries during 1978- 2006. Theory makes ambiguous predictions and identification has been elusive due to lack of bilateral...

Regulatory independence forms a foundation for modern financial systems. To illuminate the value of this ubiquitous institution, we examine a Progressive Era policy experiment in which hitherto independent regulators came under gubernatorial supervision. After this change, failure rates declined...