In general, banks play a growth-enhancing role for the real economy. However, distorted incentives for banks, depositors, and regulators in connection with bank insolvency may corrupt banks' credit allocation and monitoring decisions, leading to suboptimal real economic outcomes. A rules-based...

We analyze the problem of a policy authority (PA) that must decide when to resolve a troubled bank whose underlying solvency is uncertain. Delaying resolution increases the chance that information arrives that reveals the bank's true solvency state. However, delaying resolution also gives...

We model a banking union of two countries whose banking sectors differ in their average probability of failure and externalities between the two countries arise from cross-border bank ownership. The two countries face (i) a regulatory (super- visory) decision of which banks are to be shut down...

Several countries have recently introduced national capital standards exceeding the internationally coordinated Basel III rules, which is inconsistent with the 'race to the bottom' in capital standards found in the literature. We study regulatory competition when banks are heterogeneous and give...

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...

Regulation needs effective supervision; but regulated entities may deviate with unobserved actions. For identification, we analyze banks, exploiting ECB’s asset-quality-review (AQR) and supervisory security and credit registers. After AQR announcement, reviewed banks reduce riskier securities...

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...

We analyze the impact of the announcement of the banking union on stock market returns of euro area banks against the backdrop of three commonly held views of the banking union. We document positive individual abnormal returns for most banks. Abnormal returns are large and positive on average,...