We analyze holdings of public bonds by over 20,000 banks in 191 countries, and the role of these bonds in 20 sovereign defaults over 1998-2012. Banks hold many public bonds (on average 9% of their assets), particularly in less financially-developed countries. During sovereign defaults, banks...

Deleveraging has two components--shrinking of balance sheets due to increased haircuts/shedding of assets, and the reduction in the interconnectedness of the financial system. We focus on the second aspect and show that post-Lehman there has been a significant decline in the interconnectedness...

We examine the impact of banks’ exposure to market liquidity shocks through wholesale funding on their supply of credit during the financial crisis in the United States. We focus on mortgage lending to minimize the impact of confounding demand factors that could potentially be large when...

We study how investors account for the riskiness of banks'' risk-weighted assets (RWA) by examining the determinants of stock returns and market measures of risk. We find that banks with higher RWA had lower stock returns over the US and European crises. This relationship is weaker in Europe...

Heavy foreign exchange intervention by central banks of emerging markets have lead to sizeable expansions of their balance sheets in recent years?accumulating foreign assets and non-money domestic liabilities (the latter due to sterilization operations). With domestic liabilities being mostly of...

This paper develops a model to assess how monetary policy rates affect bank risk-taking. In the model, a reduction in the risk-free rate increases lending profitability by reducing funding costs and increasing the surplus the monopolistic bank extracts from borrowers. Under limited liability,...

Banks increasingly use short-term wholesale funds to supplement traditional retail deposits. Existing literature mainly points to the ""bright side"" of wholesale funding: sophisticated financiers can monitor banks, disciplining bad but refinancing good ones. This paper models a ""dark side"" of...

We study how investors account for the riskiness of banks’ risk-weighted assets (RWA) by examining the determinants of stock returns and market measures of risk. We find that banks with higher RWA had lower stock returns over the US and European crises. This relationship is weaker in Europe...

We examine the impact of banks' exposure to market liquidity shocks through wholesale funding on their supply of credit during the financial crisis in the United States. We focus on mortgage lending to minimize the impact of confounding demand factors that could potentially be large when...