This paper investigates the determinants of commercial banks' own internal capital targets and potential sensitivity of these levels to the business cycle . World-wide results make clear that banks' own risk is only slightly dependent on the business cycle. Banks tend to hold substantial capital...

We use focused interviews with bank managers to analyse how multinational banks use internal capital markets to control their subsidiaries. It is found that foreign bank affiliates are strongly influenced by the capital allocation and credit steering mechanisms of the parent bank. Parent banks...

The empirical application of the financing constraints paradigm supports the joint hypothesis that con-strained firms can be identified and display a stronger sensitivity of investment to cash flow. This paradigm is increasingly criticized, because some proxy variables used to identify...

When firms find that external finance is costly or rationed, they face financing constraints in their investment decisions. The financing constraints paradigm applies this idea empirically and supports the joint hypothesis that constrained firms can be identified and should display a stronger...

We study the implications of uncertainty for inflation targeting in a dynamic set-up. Using Svensson's inflation forecast targeting model, we compare the Brainard conservative principle to a more active monetary policy rule, derived from a two-step optimisation procedure. Our analysis points to...

In this paper we investigate how expected liquidation costs affect a firm's investment and financing decisions. We hypothesise that comovement of firm and industry sales measures such costs, which create a premium on external finance and make investment more sensitive to the availability of...

In the first part of this article we present a brief description of Dutch retail payment systems in terms of market structure and performance, usage of payment instruments, and corresponding tariff structures. Although it is con-cluded that the Dutch retail payment market as a whole showed...

The current account imbalances that are at the heart of the European sovereign debt crisis are often attributed to differences in price competitiveness. However, recent research suggests that domestic demand booms related to the financial cycle may have been more important. As this would have...

We investigate to what extent the expansion of FDI and the internationalization of production can be related to the recent phenomenon of more synchronized business cycles. We first focus on the relationship between bilateral FDI positions and cross-country output correlations in the period 1982-...

One popular view on the current strength of the US dollar is that the higher growth in the US compared to Europe has stimulated foreigners to buy American assets, thereby driving up the exchange rate. In this paper a modified portfolio balance model is presented, in which it is shown that the...