This paper provides a comprehensive, global database of deposit insurance arrangements as of 2013. We extend our earlier dataset by including recent adopters of deposit insurance and information on the use of government guarantees on banks' assets and liabilities, including during the recent...

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

This paper measures and analyzes two types of hidden capital at Japanese banks: (1) the net undervaluation present in accounting measures of on-balance-sheet assets and liabilities and (2) the net economic value of off-balance-sheet items. A model is constructed that explains changes in both...

Explicit deposit insurance has been spreading rapidly in recent years, even to countries with low levels of financial and institutional development. Economic theory indicates that deposit-insurance design features interact--for good or ill--with country-specific elements of the financial and...

This paper proposes a theoretically sound and easy-to-implement way to measure the systemic risk of financial institutions using publicly available accounting and stock market data. The measure models credit risk of banks as a put option on bank assets, a tradition that originated with Merton...

Risk-shifting occurs when creditors or guarantors are exposed to loss without receiving adequate compensation. This paper seeks to measure and compare how well authorities in 56 countries controlled bank risk shifting during the 1990s. Although significant risk shifting occurs on average,...

This paper examines whether financial development boosts the growth of small firms more than large firms and hence provides information on the mechanisms through which financial development fosters aggregate economic growth. We define an industry's technological firm size as the firm size...

This paper examines the impact of bank regulations, market structure, and national institutions on bank net interest margins and overhead costs using data on over 1,400 banks across 72 countries while controlling for bank-specific characteristics. The data indicate that tighter regulations on...

Financial safety nets are incomplete social contracts that assign responsibility to various economic sectors for preventing, detecting, and paying for potentially crippling losses at financial institutions. This paper uses the theories of incomplete contracts and sequential bargaining to...

Although nation-based systems of financial regulation constitute a second-best approach to global welfare maximization, treacherous accountability problems must be acknowledged and resolved before regulatory cooperation can deal fairly and efficiently with cross-border issues. To track and...