We study the vulnerability of 130 banks directly supervised by the European Central Bank's Single Supervisory Mechanism. Illustrative stress tests using banks' balance sheet data reveal that significant stress prevails in the euro area's smaller and medium-sized banks, many of them located in...

European Union countries offer a unique experience of financial regulatory and supervisory integration, complementing various other European integration efforts following the second world war. Financial regulatory and supervisory integration was a very slow process before 2008, despite...

Multi-agency financial stability committees (FSCs) have grown dramatically since the global financial crisis. However, most cannot direct actions or recommend to other agencies that they take actions, and most would influence policy actions only through convening and discussing risks. We...

On the occasion of related proposals by the European Commission and the Eurogroup, this paper proposes to entrust the ESM with the hosting of the ESRB in the medium term. The novel proposal aims at strengthening the macro-prudential expertise of the ESM and at enhancing the independence of the...

Under the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) introduced in 2014, the European Central Bank directly supervises significant euro area banks, which hold about 82% of total banking assets. We find that this important supervisory change has positive effects on the return on assets and the return on...

Under the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), introduced in 2014, systemically important euro area banks with combined assets of about 21,000 billion euros are directly supervised by the ECB. We examine from a static and a dynamic perspective how this fundamental shift to unified supervision...