This paper investigates the determinants of commercial banks' own internal capital targets and potential sensitivity of these levels to the business cycle . World-wide results make clear that banks' own risk is only slightly dependent on the business cycle. Banks tend to hold substantial capital...

Using an event study approach, we examine financial markets' reactions to the publication of the ECB's Comprehensive Assessment of banks in the euro area. Our results suggest that banks' stock market prices and CDS spreads generally did not react to the publication of the results of the...

This paper maps the empirical features of the Loan-to-Deposit (LTD) ratio with an eye on using it in macroprudential policy to mitigate liquidity risk. We inspect the LTD trends and cycles of 11 euro area countries by filtering methods and analyze the interaction between loans and deposits. We...

The two decades prior to the credit crisis witnessed a strategic shift from a traditional, relationships-oriented model (ROM) to a transactions-oriented model (TOM) of financial intermediation in developed countries. A concurrent trend has been a persistent decline in average bank interest...

We investigate whether banks use of loan loss provisions (LLPs) to manage the level and volatility of their earnings and examine the implications for bank risk. We find that banks use LLPs to manage the level and volatility of earnings downward when they are abnormally high and when expected...

Traditional theory suggests that high franchise value limits bank risk-taking incentives. Then why did many banks with exceptionally valuable franchises get exposed to new financial instruments, resulting in significant losses during the crisis? This paper attempts to reconcile theory and...

We investigate the effects of the announcement and the disclosure of the clarification, methodology, and outcomes of the US banking stress tests on banks' equity prices, credit risk, systematic risk, and systemic risk during the 2009-13 period. We find only weak evidence that stress tests after...

In this study we disentangle two dimensions of banks' systemic risk: the level of bank tail risk and the linkage between a bank's tail risk and severe shocks in the financial system. We employ a measure of the systemic risk of financial institutions that can be decomposed into two subcomponents...

How damaging is competition between bank regulators? This paper develops a model in which both banks' risk profile and their access to wholesale funding are endogenous. Regulators weigh not only welfare, but also the number of banks under their supervision. Simulations indicate that the gains...

This paper studies the impact of explicit deposit insurance on market discipline in a framework that resembles a natural experiment. We improve upon previous studies by exploiting a unique combination of country-specific circumstances, design features, and data availability that allows us to...