What does the general public know about banking supervision? What objectives does the public think bank supervisors should pursue? We investigate these issues using a survey among Dutch households. First, we find that the public's knowledge about banking supervision is far from perfect. We also...

In the wake of the financial crisis, several countries are to ban commission payments to improve the quality of financial advice. This paper investigates the potential impact of commission bans on the source and quality of financial advice. To this end, we extend Inderst and Ottaviani's (2012)...

A limited understanding of mortgage contracts and the risks involved may have contributed to the origination of the financial crisis. We have designed a special questionnaire to relate mortgage loan decisions to financial literacy and financial advice. Our findings show that homeowners seem well...

In this study we disentangle two dimensions of banks' systemic risk: the level of bank tail risk and the linkage between a bank's tail risk and severe shocks in the financial system. We employ a measure of the systemic risk of financial institutions that can be decomposed into two subcomponents...

This paper reviews studies exploring how higher bank capital requirements affect economic growth. There is little evidence of a direct effect; research focuses on the indirect effects of capital requirements on credit supply, bank asset risk, and cost of bank capital, which in turn can affect...

This report presents an overview of the theory of regulation in general, with special attention for the regulation of banks. Two theories of government regulation are described. The first, normative, theory uses market failures as the justification of government regulation. The second, positive,...

This study aims at assessing empirically the determinants of changes in risk-weighted bank capital ratios in the 1990s in Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, the UK and the US. Both bank-specific characteristics, factors at the banking industry level and the degree of undercapitalization...

Financial conglomerates, combining banking, securities trading, and insurance, have become an important part of the financial landscape in many countries. Cross-sector consolidation has been fostered by trends such as disintermediation, globalization, and deregulation creating new challenges for...

The proposed risk sensitive minimum requirements of the new Basel capital accord have raised concerns about possible (acceleration of) procyclical behaviour of banking, which might threaten macroeconomic stability. This paper analyses the interaction between business cycles and bank behaviour...

The Basel 3 Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) is a micro prudential instrument to strengthen the liquidity position of banks. However if in extreme scenarios the LCR becomes a binding constraint, the interaction of bank behaviour with the regulatory rule can have negative externalities. We simulate...