This paper analyzes links between institutional harmonization and bilateral portfolio debt and equity holdings at the sectoral level. Motivated by the action plan for the European Capital Markets Union, we examine the potential for legal harmonization and convergence in institutional quality to...

This paper investigates the effect of reforms of insolvency regulations on cross-border debt and equity investments at a sectoral level. Using disaggregated data from the Securities Holdings Statistics by Sector (SHSS) and OECD-indicators on the efficiency of insolvency regulations, we find that...

We use a life cycle model of consumption and portfolio choice to study the effects of social security on the investment decisions of households for the European case. Our model is mainly based on the one developed by Cocco, Gomes, and Maenhout (2005). We extend it by unemployment risk using...

This study assesses how banking sector integration and especially cross-border lending affect macroeconomic stability. I use a two-country general equilibrium model with heterogeneous banks that are hit by idiosyncratic shocks. According to the concept of granularity, idiosyncratic shocks to...

We study the role of international financial integration in buffering natural disaster shocks, using a large sample of advanced and emerging economies. Conditioning on such exogenous events addresses the endogeneity between financial structures and economic conditions. We document that...

Does the mere presence of big banks affect macroeconomic outcomes? In this paper, we develop a theory of granularity (Gabaix, 2011) for the banking sector, introducing Bertrand competition and heterogeneous banks charging variable markups. Using this framework, we show conditions under which...

We explore the impact of large banks and of financial openness for aggregate growth. Large banks matter because of granular effects: if markets are very concentrated in terms of the size distribution of banks, idiosyncratic shocks at the bank-level do not cancel out in the aggregate but can...

The paper analyzes the effects of changes to regulatory policy and to monetary policy on cross-border bank lending since the global financial crisis. Cross-border bank lending has decreased, and the home bias in the credit portfolio of banks has risen sharply, especially among banks in the euro...

Since the global financial crisis and the related restructuring of banking systems, bank concentration is on the rise in many countries. Consequently, bank size and its role for macroeconomic volatility (or: stability) is the subject of intense debate. This paper analyzes the effects of...

This paper provides evidence for the propagation of idiosyncratic mortgage supply shocks to the macroeconomy. Based on micro-level data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act for the 1990-2016 period, our results suggest that lender-specific mortgage supply shocks affect aggregate mortgage, house...