Banks' leverage choices represent a delicate balancing act. Credit discipline argues for more leverage, while balance-sheet opacity and ease of asset substitution argue for less. Meanwhile, regulatory safety nets promote ex post financial stability, but also create perverse incentives for banks...

A fundamental conclusion drawn from the recent financial crisis is that the supervision and regulation of financial firms in isolation - a purely microprudential perspective - are not sufficient to maintain financial stability. Rather, a macroprudential perspective, which evaluates and responds...

This paper examines the common factors that drive the returns of U.S. bank holding companies from 1997 to 2005. We compare a range of market models from a basic one-factor model to a nine-factor model that includes the standard Fama-French factors and additional factors thought to be...