This paper provides causal evidence on the effect of credit crunches on political polarization. We combine data on bank-firm connections and electoral outcomes at the city-level during the 2008-2014 Spanish Financial Crisis. First, we show that firms in a relationship with weak banks experience...

This paper analyzes the causal relationship between institutional diversity in domestic banking sectors and bank stability. We use a large bank- and country-level unbalanced panel data set covering the EU member states' banking sectors between 1998 and 2014. Constructing two distinct indicators...

Since the 2008 Lehman bankruptcy, it is clearly shown that global economic and financial crises present major challenges to private households, requiring from them, a high level of shock absorption capacity. According to the old adage, “Do not put all the eggs in one basket”, resilience...

We examine whether monetary transmission during the financial and sovereign debt crisis was dominated by the cost channel or by the demand-side channel effect. We use two approaches to track down the potential pass through of changes in the monetary policy rate to those in consumer prices....

The increasing integration of international financial markets means that credit defaults in one country have to be covered by creditors in other countries. If the principle of creditor liability were applied systematically, the financial losses incurred by the financial institution that provided...

This paper provides new evidence on the contribution of local banking to local economic growth (i.e. at county level - the Italian "province") in Italy. A comprehensive dataset is used, which includes control variables for social capital and human capital as well as indicators of the quality of...

We assess the contribution of macroeconomic uncertainty - approximated by the dispersion of the real GDP survey forecasts - to the ex post and ex ante prediction of stock price bubbles. For a panel of six OECD economies covering 24 years, two alternative binary chronologies of bubble periods are...

What began as a financial crisis in the United States in 2007-2008 quickly evolved into a massive crisis of the global real economy. We investigate the importance of the bank lending and firm borrowing channel in the international transmission of bank distress to the real economy — in...

This paper introduces changes in the level of ambiguity as a complementary source of time-varying risk aversion. We show in a consumption-based asset pricing model with simultaneously risky and ambiguous assets that a rise in the level of ambiguity raises investors' risk aversion. The effect is...

We evaluate the informational content of ex post and ex ante predictors of periods of excess stock (market) valuation. For a cross section comprising 10 OECD economies and a time span of at most 40 years alternative binary chronologies of price bubble periods are determined. Using these...