A banking union limits international bank default contagion, eliminating inefficient liquidations. For particularly low short term returns, it also stimulates interbank flows. Both effects improve welfare. An undesirable effect arises for moderate moral hazard, as the banking union encourages...

See the article in <I>The North American Journal of Economics and Finance</I> (2013). Volume 26(C), pages 217-226.<P> Research papers in empirical finance and financial econometrics are among the most widely cited, downloaded and viewed articles in the discipline of Finance. The special issue presents...</p></i>

Islamic strictures require investors to share risks with the entrepreneurs they finance. Sukuk (Islamic securities) come mostly in two varieties, musharakah (basically a joint venture agreement) and ijarah (more like an operational lease agreement). Yet defaults did happen, even in the case of...

This paper considers financial, operational, solvency, and performance ratios, in order to detect when there were balance sheets’ variations related to the 1994 Mexican currency crisis. Quarterly results for 88 non-financial Mexican companies that survived the crisis are used, and tests for...

We characterize asset return linkages during periods of stress by an extremal dependence measure. Contrary to correlation analysis, this nonparametric measure is not predisposed toward the normal distribution and can allow for nonlinear relationships. Our estimates for the G-5 countries suggest...

We examine antitrust rules in a two county general equilibrium trade model, contrasting national and multilateral (cooperative) determination of competition policy, exploring the properties of the policy equilibrium. It is not imperfect competition, but variation in competitive stance between...

Can a wealth shift to emerging countries explain instability in developed countries? Investors exposed to political risk seek safety in countries with better property right protection. This induces private intermediaries to offer safety via inexpensive demandable debt, and increase lending into...

The paper studies risk mitigation associated with capital regulation, in a context when banks may choose tail risk assets. We show that this undermines the traditional result that higher capital reduces excess risk-taking driven by limited liability. When capital raising is costly, poorly...

Institutional barriers to entry were removed to a considerable extent in 1996 in the Dutch retail sector. Three years before that the regulator decided to not take legal actions anymore against entrants violating institutional requirements. In the current analysis we investigate the effects of...

We propose a simple network–based methodology for ranking systemically important financial institutions. We view the risks of firms –including both the financial sector and the real economy– as a network with nodes representing the volatility shocks. The metric for the connections of the...