This study finds that banks receive more favorable Moody's financial strength ratings in countries with better compliance with Basel Core Principles related to information provision. The results are robust to controlling for broad indexes of institutional quality, macroeconomic variables,...

This paper identifies factors that influence decisions about a country's financial safety net, using a comprehensive data set covering 180 countries during the 1960-2003 period. Our analysis focuses on how private interest-group pressures, outside influences, and political-institutional factors...

For an international sample of banks, we construct measures of a bank’s absolute size and its systemic size defined as size relative to the national economy. We then examine how a bank’s risk and return on equity, its activity mix and funding strategy, and the extent to which it faces market...