A common practice of banks has been to pool assets of different qualities and then sell a fraction of the newly created portfolios to investors. We extend the signaling model for single sales of risky assets to portfolio sales. We identify conditions under which signaling at the portfolio level...

We study the efficiency of banking regulation under financial integration. Banks freely choose the jurisdiction where to locate their activities and have private information about their efficiency level. Regulators non-cooperatively offer any regulatory contract that satisfies information and...

This paper models the strategic interaction between a rating agency, a bank and a bank regulator who lacks information about bank asset risk. The regulator can either (1) make bank capital requirements contingent on credit ratings; or (2) set rating-independent capital requirements. Truthful...

Why do banks remain passive? In a model of bank-firm relationship we study the trade-off a bank faces when having defaulting firms declared bankrupt. First, the bank receives a payoff if a firm is liquidated. Second, it provides information about a firm's type to its competitors. Thereby,...

This paper models the strategic interaction between a rating agency, a bank and a bank regulator who lacks information about bank asset risk. The regulator can either (1) make bank capital requirements contingent on credit ratings; or (2) set rating-independent capital requirements. Truthful...

The number of firm bankruptcies is surprisingly low in economies with poor institutions. We study a model of bank-firm relationship and show that the bank’s decision to liquidate bad firms has two opposing effects. First, the bank receives a payoff if a firm is liquidated. Second, it loses the...

Why do banks remain passive? In a model of bank-firm relationship we study the trade-off a bank faces when having defaulting firms declared bankrupt. First, the bank receives a payoff if a firm is liquidated. Second, it provides information about a firm’s type to its competitors. Thereby,...

This paper addresses the impact of developments in the credit risk transfer market on the viability of a group of systemically important financial institutions. We propose a bank default risk model, in the vein of the classic Merton-type, which utilizes a multi-equation framework to model...

This paper studies the impact of a financial transactions tax on a financial market where financial institutions trade with each other. Assets are marked to the market and financial institutions with negative equity are forced out of business. There are two main results: First, if all banks have...

We study the welfare properties of a general equilibrium banking model with moral hazard that encompasses incentive mechanisms for bank risk-taking studied in a large partial equilibrium literature. We show that competitive equilibriums maximize welfare and yield an optimal level of banks’...