Academics have proposed hybrid products with equity features for the financing of housing. In spite of their risk-sharing benefits these products have not become mainstream. This paper studies an important exception, a UK government scheme which in the five years since its inception has provided...

The notable increase in international reserve holdings over the past decade and their use during the global financial crisis of 2008/2009 has sparked renewed interest in the analysis of the optimal level of reserve holdings, in particular in countries which are subject to sudden stops. Less...

We study how and to what extent private households are affected by the recent financial crisis and how their financial decisions are inuenced by this shock. Our analysis reveals that individuals with low levels of financial literacy are less likely to have invested in the stock market and thus...

The causes of the 2008 collapse and subsequent surge in global capital flows remain an open and highly controversial issue. Employing a factor model coupled with a dataset of high-frequency portfolio capital flows to 50 economies, the paper finds that common shocks - key crisis events as well as...

We investigate the dynamics of the relationship between returns and extreme downside risk in different states of the market by combining the framework of Bali, Demirtas, and Levy (2009) with a Markov switching mechanism. We show that the risk-return relationship identified by Bali, Demirtas, and...

We investigate asset returns around banking crises in 44 advanced and emerging economies from 1960 to 2018. In contrast to the view that buying assets during banking crises is a profitable long-run strategy, we find returns of equity and other asset classes generally underperform after banking...

In this paper we investigate the price, volatility and micro-level effects of central bank swap lines during the 2020 pandemic. These policies lowered the ceiling on covered interest rate parity violations and reduced volatility following settlement of swap line auctions. We then combine...

The investment fund sector has expanded dramatically since the crisis of 2008-2009. As the sector grows, so do the implications of its risk-taking for the wider financial system and real economy. This paper provides empirical evidence for the existence of widespread risk-taking incentives in the...

Euro area governments have committed to break the doom loop between banks and sovereigns. But policymakers disagree on how to treat sovereign exposures in bank regulation. Our contribution is to model endogenous sovereign portfolio reallocation by banks in response to regulatory reform....

Traditionally, insurers are seen as stabilisers of financial markets that act countercyclically by buying assets whose price falls. Recent studies challenge this view by providing empirical evidence of procyclicality. This paper sheds new light on the underlying reasons for these opposing views....