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,...

In Europe, the financial stability mandate generally rests at the national level. But there is an important exception. Since the establishment of the Banking Union in 2014, the European Central Bank (ECB) can impose stricter regulations than the national regulator. The precondition is that the...

Increases in firm default risk raise the default probability of banks while decreasing output and inflation in US data. To rationalize the empirical evidence, we analyse firm risk shocks in a New Keynesian model where entrepreneurs and banks engage in a loan contract and both are subject to...

We operationalize the definition of systemic risk provided by the IMF, BIS, and FSB and derive testable hypotheses to identify indicators of systemic risk. We map these hypotheses into a two-stage hierarchical testing framework, combining insights from the early-warning literature on financial...

Using a unique data set on German banks' loans to the German real economy, we investigate banks' credit risk. This data set includes the volume of loans per bank and industry as well as the corresponding write-downs. Our empirical study for the period 2003-2011 yields the following results: (i)...

We propose an algorithm to model contagion in the interbank market via what we term the credit quality channel. In existing models on contagion via interbank credit, external shocks to banks often spread to other banks only in case of a default. In contrast, shocks are transmitted via asset...