We analyse the development of foreign bank penetration in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and its influence on the stability of bank credit. We measure both cross-border credit and activities of foreign bank subsidiaries within CEE. By combining BIS statistics and BankScope data into a unique...

We model systemic risk in an interbank market. Banks face liquidity needs as consumers are uncertain about where they need to consume. Interbank credit lines allow to cope with these liquidity shocks while reducing the cost of maintaining reserves. However, the interbank market exposes the...

Over the last two decades, communication has become an increasingly importantaspect of monetary policy. These real-world developments have spawned a huge newscholarly literature on central bank communicationmostly empirical, and almost all of it written in this decade. We survey this...

This paper studies the impact of explicit deposit insurance on market discipline in a framework that resembles a natural experiment. We improve upon previous studies by exploiting a unique combination of country-specific circumstances, design features, and data availability that allows us to...

This paper analyses the impact of loan market competition on the interest rates applied by euro area banks to loans and deposits during the 1994-2004 period, using a novel measure of competition called the Boone indicator. We find evidence that stronger competition implies significantly lower...

Familiarity with working in a specific institutional environment compared to its competitors can provide a firm with a competitive advantage, making it invest in specific host countries. We examine whether this notion of institutional competitive advantage drives banks to seek out specific...

This paper develops a game theory model to analyze the optimal structure of the Lender of Last Resort in Europe. When depositors are imperfectly informed, the indifference to international transmission displayed by national authorities has value. A centralized authority, because it internalizes...

This paper investigates whether there has been a structural increase in financial market integration in nine European countries and the US in the period 1980-2003. We employ a GARCH model with a smoothly time-varying correlation to estimate the date of change and the speed of the transition...

We model 19812002 annual default frequencies for a panel of US firms in different rating and age classes from the Standard and Poor's database. The data is decomposed into a systematic and firm-specific risk component, where the systematic component reflects the general economic conditions and...

Against the background of the problem of Non Performing Loans, the lack of data causes banking behaviour in China being wrapped in mystery. By making use of data reported by Shenzhenlisted firms, this paper reveals some stylized facts on loan extension in China. For that purpose both static and...