In this paper we study the determinants of sovereign debt credit ratings using rating notations from the three main … international rating agencies, for the period 1995-2005. We employ panel estimation and random effects ordered probit approaches to …. Relevant explanatory variables for a country's credit rating are: GDP per capita, GDP growth, government debt, government …

The paper assesses the communication strategies of the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the European Central … Bank and their effectiveness. We find that the effectiveness of communication is not independent from the decisionmaking … strategy amid a collegial approach to decision-making, while the Bank of England is using a collegial communication strategy …

We model the impact of bank mergers on loan competition, banks' reserve holdings and aggregate liquidity. Banks compete … in liquidity risk and expected liquidity needs for each bank and for the banking system. Large mergers tend to increase … expected aggregate liquidity needs, and thus the liquidity provision by the central bank. Comparative statics suggest that a …

A growing body of literature indicates that competition increases bank soundness. Applying an industrial organization … indeed increases bank efficiency. Second, building on these results, we examine the relation between the Boone indicator … bank soundness. We find evidence that competition robustly increases bank soundness, via the efficiency channel …