This paper develops a model to analyse the optimal choice between bank loans and bond finance for a sovereign debtor. We show that if banks have better information about their borrowers compared to bondholders, only the least risky sovereigns issue bonds. But if borrowers can be 'publicly...

Can macroprudential foreign exchange (FX) regulations on banks reduce the financial and macroeconomic vulnerabilities created by borrowing in foreign currency? To evaluate the effectiveness and unintended consequences of macroprudential FX regulations, we develop a parsimonious model of bank and...

This paper investigates the relationship between bank funding costs and solvency for a large sample of euro area banks using two proprietary ECB datasets for both wholesale funding costs and deposit rates. In particular, the paper studies the relationship between bank solvency, on the one hand,...

We use a major new survey of UK firms, the Decision Maker Panel, to assess the impact of the June 2016 Brexit referendum. We identify three key results. First, the UK's decision to leave the EU has generated a large, broad and long-lasting increase in uncertainty. Second, anticipation of Brexit...

This paper uses a data-rich environment to produce direct econometric estimates of macroeconomic and financial uncertainty for 11 advanced nations. These indices exhibit significant independent variation from popular proxies. Using this new data we control for both first and second moment...

This paper uses a data-rich environment to produce direct econometric estimates of macroeconomic and financial uncertainty in the United Kingdom for the period 1991-2016. These indices exhibit significant independent variation from popular proxies for macroeconomic and financial uncertainty. We...

We consider several economic uncertainty indicators for the US and UK before and during the Covid-19 pandemic: implied stock market volatility, newspaper-based economic policy uncertainty, twitter chatter about economic uncertainty, subjective uncertainty about future business growth, and...

The UK's decision to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum created substantial uncertainty for UK businesses. The nature of this uncertainty is different from that of a typical uncertainty shock because of its length, breadth and political complexity. Consequently, a new firm-level survey, the...

Motivated by the traditional business cycle approach of Burns and Mitchell (1946), we explore cyclical similarities in financial conditions over time in order to improve our understanding of financial cycles. Looking back at 120 years of data, we find that financial cycles exhibit behaviour...

In recent years, mergers, acquisitions and organic growth have meant that some of the largest and most complex financial groups have come to transcend national boundaries and traditionally defined business lines. As a result, they have become a potential channel for the cross-border and...