financial sector. We show that bank size, purely on strategic grounds, is a key determinant of banks' leverage choices, even …

Banks are optimally opaque institutions. They produce debt for use as a transaction medium (bank money), which requires … that information about the backing assets - loans - not be revealed, so that bank money does not fluctuate in value …-insensitive assets. For the economy as a whole, firms endogenously separate into bank finance and capital market/stock market finance …

We present new stylized facts on bank and firm leverage for 2000-2009 using extensive internationally comparable micro …-financial firm and commercial bank before the crisis, but the picture was quite different for large commercial banks in the United …) banks in emerging markets with tighter bank regulation and stronger investor protection experienced significantly less …

We develop a model of the joint capital structure decisions of banks and their borrowers. Strikingly high bank leverage … emerges naturally from the interplay between two sets of forces. First, seniority and diversification reduce bank asset … underlie our structural model, we can quantify the impact capital regulation and other government interventions have on bank …

We propose a dynamic bank theory with a delayed loss recognition mechanism and a regulatory capital constraint at its … core. The estimated model matches four facts about banks' Tobin's Q that summarize bank leverage dynamics. (1) Book and … market equity values diverge, especially during crises; (2) Tobin's Q predicts future bank profitability; (3) neither book …

, why commercial bank leverage has tended to increase over time and why large banks tend to have relatively less capital …