Bank distress can have severe negative consequences for the stability of the financial system, the real economy, and for public finances. Regimes for the restructuring and resolution of banks, financed by bank levies and fiscal backstops, seek to reduce these costs. Bank levies attempt to...

The Eurosystem’s Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP) increased the scarcity of safe assets, which caused significant declines and substantial dispersion in European repo rates. However, banks holding these safe assets benefited from this development: First, using the German security...

We show that the transmission of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) recent monetary policy tightening differs across banks depending on their level of excess reserves. Specifically, the net worth of reserve-rich banks may display a boost when the interest rate paid on reserves increases...

We provide the first empirical tests for financial protectionism, defined as a nationalistic change in bank's lending behaviour, as the result of public intervention, which leads domestic banks either to lend less or at higher interest rates to foreigners. We use a bank-level panel data set...

A personal bankruptcy law that allows for a "fresh start" after bankruptcy reduces the individual risk involved in entrepreneurial activity. On the other hand, as risk shifts to creditors who recover less of their credit after a debtor's bankruptcy, lenders may charge higher interest rates or...

We investigate whether banks actively manage their exposure to interest rate risk in the short run. Using bank-level data of German banks for the period 2011Q4- 2017Q2, we find evidence that banks actively manage their interest rate risk exposure in their banking books: They take account of...

Against the backdrop of a high stock of non-performing loans (NPLs) in several European countries, this paper investigates the role of NPLs for lending rates charged for newly granted loans in the euro area. More precisely, it looks for an effect that extends beyond losses caused by that stock...

Exploiting confidential data on individual German bank balance-sheets, I analyse what characterises a bank that opts to apply negative interest rates to corporate deposits. The results suggest that banks that are highly exposed to the negative interest rate policy (NIRP), i.e. funded by a larger...

This paper shows that the supply side of credit is a major factor for the phenomenonof hampered interest rate pass-through in monopolistic banking markets. Our data,covering all 1,555 small and medium sized banks in Germany, provides a clear wayto partial out demand shocks; we are thus able to...