Following Eijffinger and Geraats (2006), we construct an index of transparency of banking supervisors that takes political, economic, procedural, policy and operational transparency into account. Based on a survey, we construct the index for 24 banking supervisors. There are large differences...

The model of Stiglitz and Weiss ( American Economic Review , 1981, 71(3)) is the seminal analytical work on credit rationing. However, in a recent paper, Arnold and Riley ( American Economic Review , 2009, 99(5)) claim that the distributional assumption on which that model.s main result depends...

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...

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...

To what extent was the credit contraction during the global financial crisis due to more intense screening and monitoring by banks? We address this question by analyzing changes in the structure of a large number of syndicated loans to private, non-financial corporations. We find an increase in...

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...

This paper considers the effects of imperfectly communicated information about whether a regulator initiates a bailout program for financially distressed banks. The theoretical framework allows for determining whether, and to what extent, it is optimal for a regulator to be imprecise in...

The literature on the effectiveness of macroprudential policy tools is still in its infancy and has so far provided only limited guidance for policy decisions. In recent years, however, increasing efforts have been made to fill this gap. Progress has been made in embedding macroprudential policy...

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...

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)...