Tracing the SEC ban on the short selling of financial stocks in September 2008, this paper investigates whether such selling activity before the 2008 short ban reflected financial companies’ risk exposures in the subprime crisis. The evidence suggests that short sellers sold short stocks that...

This publication consists of ten separate studies on payment and settlement systems employing simulation techniques. Most of these were carried out using the payment and settlement system simulator BoF-PSS2 provided by the Bank of Finland. The preliminary versions were presented at the annual...

This publication consists of nine separate studies on payment and settlement systems conducted using simulation techniques. Most have been carried out using the payment and settlement system simulator BoF-PSS2 provided by the Bank of Finland. The preliminary versions were presented at the annual...

There is substantial evidence that new banks and rapidly growing banks are risk prone. We study this problem by designing a relationship-lending model in which a bank operates as a financial intermediary and centralised monitor. In the absence of deposit insurance, the bank’s limited liability...

We consider the joint effect of competition and deposit insurance on risk taking by banks when the riskiness of banks is unobservable to depositors. It turns out that the magnitude of risk taking depends on the type of bank competition. If the bank is a monopoly or banks compete only in the loan...

I propose a financial stress index (FSI) for the Finnish financial system that aims to reflect the functionality of the financial system and provide an aggregate measure of financial stress in the money, bond, equity and foreign exchange markets and the banking sector. The FSI is a composite...

The global financial crisis of 2007–2008 has given rise to new regulatory initiatives to put restrictions on the size and the term of bankers' pay. We revisit both theoretically and empirically the question of whether these regulations are justified. We model bonuses as a series of sequential...

Failure in bank corporate governance has been seen as a contributing factor to excessive risk-taking pre-crisis with devastating implications as risks realised during the financial crisis. Unfortunately, the empirical evidence on the impact of managerial incentives on bank crisis performance is...

We model a banker's future bonuses as a series of call options on the bank's profits and show that bonus caps and deferrals reduce risk-taking. However, the banker's optimal risk-taking also depends on the costs of risk-taking. We calibrate the model to US banking data and show that lengthening...