Using loan-level data, we find that syndicated lending by European banks with sizeable balance sheet exposures to impaired sovereign debt was negatively affected after the start of the euro area sovereign debt crisis. We also observe a reallocation away from foreign (especially US) markets. The...

Do tightenings of bank lending standards permanently reduce bank lending? We construct a measure of a bank's level of lending standards using micro-data from the sample of banks participating in the Eurosystem Bank Lending Survey in The Netherlands and show that this level measure affects...

Surowiecki (2004) argues that collective predictions are better than individual predictions and calls that the Wisdom of the Crowds. We use an analytical information model to demonstrate and explain this. Then we see how these two predictions are affected by better public information and show...

Using the model by Morris and Shin (2002), we distinguish between how people perceive a state and how they act upon it. We show than even for perceptions, where the coordination motive plays no role, improving the quality of public information does not always reduce the forecasting error. The...