We model the financial cooperative as an optimal institution sharing liquidity risks among agents with social preference and group identity. Stronger social concerns imply objectively better (worse) conditions for borrowers (depositors). Testing the model, we find that, indeed, deposit and loan...

Since information asymmetries have been identified as an important source of bank profits, it may seem that the establishment of information sharing (e.g., introducing credit bureaus or public registers) will lead to lower investment in acquiring information. However, banks base their decisions...

Information sharing and collateral reduce adverse selection costs, but are costly for lenders. When a bank learns more about the types of its rival's borrowers through information sharing (e.g., credit bureaus), it might seem that this information should substitute the role of collateral in...

In this paper we investigate the relationship between changes in risk and changes in leverage for a panel of Swiss banks. Using market data for risk and both accounting and market data for capital for the period between 1990 and 2002, we find a positive correlation between changes in capital and...

Several recent studies have recommended greater reliance on subordinated debt as a tool to discipline bank risk taking. Some of these proposals recommend using sub-debt yield spreads as triggers for supervisory discipline under prompt corrective action (PCA). Currently such action is prompted by...

In recent years there has been a growing realization that there are significant problems with the current bank risk-based capital guidelines. As financial firms have become more sophisticated and complex they have effectively arbitraged the existing capital requirements. They have become so good...

Although financial instruments that, in effect, permit corporations to treat preferred stock dividends as tax-deductible interest have been used by nonfinancial corporations since late 1993, bank holding companies (BHCs) did not issue these trust-preferred securities (TPS) until 1996, when the...

This paper examines how UK banks channel capital inflows to the individual sectors of the domestic economy and to overseas residents. Information on the source country of foreign capital deposited with UK banks allows us to construct a novel Bartik instrument for capital inflows. Our results...

We present a simple model that can account for the main features of recent financial crises in emerging markets. The international illiquidity of the domestic financial system is at the center of the problem. Illiquid banks are a necessary and a sufficient condition for financial crises to...

We explore the link between international stock market comovement and the degree to which firms operate globally. Using stock returns and balance sheet data for companies in twenty countries, we estimate a factor model that decomposes stock returns into global, country- and industry-specific...