Abstract: We analyze the impact of the countercyclical capital buffers held by banks on the supply of credit to firms and their subsequent performance. Countercyclical ‘dynamic’ provisioning that is unrelated to specific loan losses was introduced in Spain in 2000, and modified in 2005 and...

Abstract: Shocks to bank lending, risk-taking and securitization activities that are orthogonal to real economy and monetary policy innovations account for more than 30 percent of U.S. output variation. The dynamic effects, however, depend on the type of shock. Expansionary securitization shocks...

This paper links the current subprime mortgage crisis to a decline in lending standards associated with the rapid expansion and changes in the structure of this market. We show that lending standards declined more in areas that experienced faster credit growth. We also find that the entry of new...

This paper examines the payout policies of UK firms listed on the London Stock Exchange during the 1990s.It complements the existing literature by analyzing the trends in both dividends and total payouts (including share repurchases).In a dynamic panel data regression setting, we relate target...

Abstract: This paper presents the main reasons why public-private partnerships (PPPs) are adopted as well as the possible disadvantages for the public and private sectors. By means of two case studies on bridge construction and railway infrastructure (Fertagus and Lusoponte), we elucidate how a...

We study wealth effects for a sample of 161 spin-offs from 15 different European countries that were announced between January 1987 and September 2000. The cumulative average abnormal return over the three-day event window is 2.35%. The mean abnormal return is 2.89% for companies that increase...

The paper investigates why the corporate landscapes of Germany and UK are so different in terms of control by analyzing ownership and control evolution in recent IPOs. We report the control evolution of a sample of size- and industry-matched German and UK companies six years subsequent to the...

This paper provides the first empirical evidence on how home-country regulation and supervision affects bank risk-tailing in host-country markets. We analyze lending by 136 banks to 8,253 firms in 1,513 different localities across 13 countries. We find strong evidence that laxer regulatory...