Abstract: This paper documents large cross-country variation in the relationship between bank competition and bank stability and explores market, regulatory and institutional features that can explain this variation. We show that an increase in competition will have a larger impact on banks’...

Credit contracts are non-exclusive. A string of theoretical papers shows that nonexclusivity generates important negative contractual externalities. Employing a unique dataset, we identify how the contractual externality stemming from the non-exclusivity of credit contracts affects credit...

We show that competing firms relax overall competition by lowering future barriers to entry.We illustrate our findings in a two-period model with adverse selection where banks strategically commit to disclose borrower information.By doing this, they invite rivals to enter their market.Disclosure...

Since information asymmetries have been identified as an important source of bank profits, it may seem that the establishment of information sharing arrangements such as credit registers and bureaus will lead to lower investment in acquiring information. However, banks base their decisions on...

The Riegle-Neal Act in the US and the Economic and Monetary Union in Europe are recent initiatives to stimulate financial integration.These initiatives allow new entrants to "poach" the incumbents' clients by offering them attractive loan offers.We show that these deregulations may be...

This paper uses longitudinal data to perform tests of asymmetric information in the French automobile insurance market for the 1995-1997 period.This market is characterized by the presence of a regulated experience-rating scheme (bonusmalus).We demonstrate that the result of the test depends...

We consider a tax competition game between asymmetrically un-informed governments. Two governments simultaneously propose tax arrangements to attract a multinational firm (MNF) which has an ex-ante preference to operate in both countries, and governments anticipate that once the MNF accepts...

Using a novel country-industry level panel database with information on newly incorporated firms in 17 European countries between 1997 and 2004, we study how taxation of corporate income affects the size of entrants at the country-industry level. Our results, that are robust to changes in...

Can tax policy foster the creation of new companies? To answer this question, we assemble a novel country-industry level panel database with data on entry (by incorporation) for 17 European countries between 1997 and 2004. Our analysis is based on recent models of how corporate taxation affects...