This paper investigates the ability of the adaptive learning approach to replicate the expectations of professional forecasters. For a range of macroeconomic and financial variables, we compare constant and decreasing gain learning models to simple, yet powerful benchmark models. We find that...

Using an event study approach, we examine the impact of news about Greece and news about a Greek bailout on bank stock prices in 2010 using data for 48 banks included in the European stress tests. We identify the twenty days with extreme returns on Greek sovereign bonds and categorize the news...

The purpose of this Research Memorandum is to assess whether concepts from psychological theory may be useful in explaining herding and crises in financial markets. The conclusion is that the theory of cognitive dissonance, which assumes that the human brain seeks and processes information in a...

The literature has documented a positive effect of foreign ownership on firm performance. But is this effect due to a one-time knowledge transfer or does it rely on continuous injections of knowledge? To shed light on this question we focus on divestments, that is, foreign affiliates that are...

We use panel data on the intra-group ownership structure and balance sheets of 45 of the largest banking groups from 1992 to 2004 to analyse what determines the credit growth of multinational bank subsidiaries. Both home- and host-country conditions and characteristics of the subsidiaries...

We use data on the 48 largest multinational banking groups to compare the lending of their 199 foreign subsidiaries during the Great Recession with lending by a benchmark group of 202 domestic banks. Contrary to earlier, more contained crises, parent banks were not a significant source of...

This paper develops and tests a theoretical model that allows for the endogenous decision of banks to engage in international and global banking. International banking, where banks raise capital in the home market and lend it abroad, is driven by differences in factor endowments across...

This paper provides a critical assessment of the costs and benefits of foreign bank ownership. It reviews the extensive literature on the impact of foreign banks and uses a unique database on bank ownership, covering 129 countries, to (re-)examine a number of the issues discussed. It documents...

There are numerous ways to indicate the degree of banking competition across countries. Antitrust authorities rely on the structure-conduct-performance paradigm while academics prefer price mark-ups (Lerner index) or correlations of input costs with output prices (H-statistic). These measures...