The 5th joint SUERF/Bank of Finland joint conference was held in Helsinki on 13 June 2013. The general theme of the conference was to focus on the regulatory reforms after the global financial crisis and, in particular, how structural reforms of banking ("Volcker, Vickers and Liikanen") could...

In this paper, by employing a novel approach, we study the relationship between bank type and small-business lending in a post-transition country. Using a unique dataset on bank branches and firm-level data, we find that local cooperative banks lend more to small businesses than do large...

This theoretical paper explores screening with loan collateral when both the collateral value and the probability of project success fluctuate. Some model versions challenge the classic findings of Bester (1985) by showing that high-risk borrowers may in such case be more willing to pledge...

Consider a competitive bank whose illiquid asset portfolio is funded by short-term debt that has to be refinanced before the asset matures. We show that in this setting maximal transparency is not socially optimal, and that the existence of social externalities of bank failures further lowers...

This paper demonstrates that subordinated debt (‘subdebt’ thereafter) regulation can be an effective mechanism for disciplining banks. Under our proposal, investors buy the subdebt of a bank only if they receive favourable information about the bank, and the bank is subject to a regulatory...

We aim to assess how accurately accounting and stock market indicators predict rating changes for Asian banks. We conduct a stepwise process to determine the optimal set of early indicators by tracing upgrades and downgrades from rating agencies, as well as other relevant factors. Our results...

The European banking industry joined forces to achieve a fully integrated market for retail payment services in the euro area: the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). Against this background, the present paper examines the fundamental relationship between retail payment business and overall bank...

In this study, we reinvestigate the question of whether government banks are inferior to private banks. We use cross country data from 1993 to 2007 to trace the different types of government banks. These types comprise banks that acquire distressed banks, normal banks, or no banks at all....

The aim of the Internal Ratings Based Approach (IRBA) of Basel II was that capital suffices for unexpected losses with at least a 99.9% probability. However, because only a fraction of the required regulatory capital (a quarter to a half) had to be loss absorbing capital, the actual solvency...