Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) scores are a key tool for asset managers in designing and implementing ESG investment strategies. They, however, amalgamate a broad range of fundamentally different factors, creating ambiguity for investors as to the underlying drivers of higher or...

We study the effects of a bank's engagement in trading. Traditional banking is relationship-based: not scalable, long-term oriented, with high implicit capital, and low risk (thanks to the law of large numbers). Trading is transactions-based: scalable, shortterm, capital constrained, and with...

Consumer protection and financial literacy are essential pillars of a well functioning and stable financial system. As the global financial crisis demonstrated, inadequate attention to consumer protection and financial literacy can lead to financial instability. Though Shari'ah principles...

This paper examines the financial stability implications arising from securitization markets, with one eye on the past and another on the future. The paper begins by deriving a number of “lessons learned” based on an examination of key industry developments in the years before the crisis....

Traditional theory suggests that more profitable banks should have lower risk-taking incentives. Then why did many profitable banks choose to invest in untested financial instruments before the crisis, realizing significant losses? We attempt to reconcile theory and evidence. In our setup, banks...

This study investigates the nonlinear relationship between public debt and sovereign credit ratings, using a wide sample of over one hundred advanced, emerging, and developing economies. It finds that: i) higher public debt lowers the probability of being placed in a higher rating category; ii)...

This paper investigates the behaviour of credit rating agencies using a natural experiment in monetary policy. We exploit the corporate QE of the Eurosystem and its rating-based specific design which generates exogenous variation in the probability for a bond of becoming eligible for outright...

This paper develops a model where large financial intermediaries subject to systemic runs internalize the effect of their leverage on aggregate risk, returns and asset prices. Near the steady-state, they restrict leverage to avoid the risk of a run which gives rise to an accelerator effect. For...