Do banks with low capital extend excessive credit to weak firms, and does this matter for aggregate efficiency? Using a unique dataset that covers almost all bank-firm relationships in Italy in the period 2004-2013, we find that during the Eurozone financial crisis (i) undercapitalized banks...

The governance of central banks has two dimensions: corporate governance and public governance. Public governance is an institutional framework whereby the general public governs a central bank by and through the legislative and executive bodies in a country. This paper argues that the...

A large body of literature has shown that small firms experience difficulties in accessing the credit market due to informational asymmetries. Banks can overcome these asymmetries through relationship lending, or at least mitigate their effects by asking for collateral. Small firms, especially...

The paper develops a model of an IMF-like coinsurance arrangement among member countries. First, it shows that a coinsurance arrangement among countries can, in principle, play a useful role in helping countries bear the risks involved in developing their economies and becoming part of the...

Among the policy responses to the global financial crisis, the international provision of US dollars via central bank swap lines stands out. This paper studies the build-up of stresses on banks' balance sheets that led to this coordinated policy response. Using the BIS international banking...

A large body of literature has shown that small firms experience difficulties in accessing the credit market due to informational asymmetries. Banks can overcome these asymmetries through relationship lending, or at least mitigate their effects by asking for collateral. Small firms, especially...

This paper examines the power of different contractual mechanisms to influence an originator’s choice of costly effort to screen borrowers when the originator plans to securitise its loans. The analysis focuses on three potential mechanisms: the originator holds a “vertical slice”, or...

This paper reviews the market reaction to bank rescue packages announced in six countries between October 2008 and January 2009. The study distinguishes the impact on creditors as seen in the change of CDS spreads from the impact on shareholders as seen in the movement of bank stock prices....

In this paper we propose a framework for measuring and stress testing the systemic risk of a group of major financial institutions. The systemic risk is measured by the price of insurance against financial distress, which is based on ex ante measures of default probabilities of individual banks...

Since the mid-1990s, major Japanese banks have sold off a significant portion of their holdings of corporate equity. Using information on the identity of Japanese firms' top 10 shareholders, this paper explores the process of banks' equity disposal. There is some evidence that, after FY2001,...