We investigate the effects of credit ratings-contingent financial regulation on foreign bank lending behavior. We examine the sensitivity of international bank flows to debtor countries’ sovereign credit rating changes before and after the implementation of the Basel 2 risk-based capital...

Sufficient solvency of a pension insurance company responsible for defined-benefit pensions guarantees that the pensions are paid regardless of turbulence in the financial market. In the Finnish occupational pension system TyEL, the required level of solvency capital (solvency limit) and its...

We analyse the determinants of the variation of option-adjusted credit spreads (OASs) on a unique database that enlarges the traditional scope of analysis to more disaggregated indexes (combining industry, grade and maturity levels), new variables (volumes of sales and purchases of institutional...

It has been widely accepted that constraints on the wholesale funding of bank balance sheets amplify the transmission of monetary policy through what is called the ‘bank lending channel’. We show that the effect of such bank balance sheet constraints on monetary transmission is in fact...

In most countries, banks’ equity holdings in firms that borrow from then are rather small. In light of the theoretical literature, this is somewhat surprising. For example, according to agency cost models, allowing banks to hold equity would seem to alleviate firms’ asset substitution moral...

The framework for fiscal policy coordination in EMU has been in effect for three years. The experience gained shows that the rule-based approach provides in principle a feasible solution for policy coordination among a large number of heterogeneous countries whose joint interest is to safeguard...

This study analyses the fiscal sustainability of the Finnish public sector using stochastic projections to describe uncertain future demographic trends and asset yields. While current tax rates are unlikely to yield sufficient tax revenue to finance public expenditure with an ageing population,...

This paper operationalizes early theoretical contributions of Hyman Minsky and applies these in the context of economic sectors and nations. Following the view of boom-bust asset cycles, depicted by the endogenous build-up of risks and their abrupt unraveling, Minsky highlighted the relationship...

The main objective of the study is to evaluate the Finnish central government’s foreign borrowing between the years 1862 and 1938. Most of this period was characterised by deep capital market integration that bears resemblance to the liberal world financial order at the turn of the millennium....