To stabilize and bring down nonperforming loans (NPLs) in the Italian banking system, the Italian authorities have been implementing a number of reforms, aimed among others at speeding up insolvency and enforcement proceedings, strengthening bank corporate governance, cleaning up balance sheets,...

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...

Addressing the buildup of nonperforming loans (NPLs) in Italy since the global financial crisis will remain a challenge for some time and be important for supporting a sustained, robust economic recovery. The buildup reflects both the prolonged recession as well as structural factors that have...

The objective of the paper is to assess ownership and control links in the GCC corporate sector. The analysis focuses on the integrated ownership and network arising from ownership data available in Bloomberg and GCC stock exchanges. The paper finds that ownership is concentrated in GCC public...

This paper describes how behavioral elements are relevant to financial supervision,regulation, and central banking. It focuses on (1) behavioral effects of norms (social, legal,and market); (2) behavior of others (internalization, identification, and compliance); and(3) psychological biases. It...

The correlation bias refers to the fact that claim subordination in the capital structure of the firm influences claim holders' preferred degree of asset correlation in portfolios held by the firm. Using the copula capital structure model, it is shown that the correlation bias shifts shareholder...

This paper analyzes the linkages between governance quality and country stress events. It focuses on two types of events: fiscal and political stress events, for which two innovative stress indicators are introduced. The results suggest that weaker governance quality is associated with a higher...

The crisis in Europe has underscored the vulnerability of European bank funding models compared to international peers. This paper studies the drivers behind this fragility and examines the future of bank funding, primarily wholesale, in Europe. We argue that cyclical and structural factors have...

This paper examines the impact of ongoing cross-border integration of securities market infrastructure in the European Union. In particular, it analyzes the regulatory framework that has evolved to deal with the risks associated with cross-border clearing and settlement and concludes that, due...

This paper examines factors determining the allocation of bank credit to the enterprise sector, and the implications of this allocation for aggregate supply and macro-economic performance, in the former socialist economies. It first develops a model to explain how changes in demand for money by...