In summer 2011, elevated sovereign risk in Eurozone peripheral countries increased the solvency risk of Eurozone banks, precipitating a run on their short-term debt. We assess the effectiveness of different European Central Bank (ECB) interventions that followed – lender of last resort vs....

Since the summer of 2007, the financial system has faced two major systemic crises. European banks have been at the center of both crises, particularly of the European sovereign debt crisis. This article analyzes systemic risk of European banks across both crises exploiting the specific...

Using a comprehensive dataset from German banks, we document the usage of sovereign credit default swaps (CDS) during the European sovereign debt crisis of 2008-2013. Banks used the sovereign CDS market to extend, rather than hedge, their long exposures to sovereign risk during this period....

We characterize the optimal banking union with endogenous participation in a two-country economy in which domestic bank failures may be contemporaneous to sovereign crises, giving rise to risk-sharing motives to mutualize the funding of bailouts. Bank bail-ins create disruption costs that are...

This paper characterizes the optimal banking union with endogenous participation in a two-country economy in which domestic bank failures may be contemporaneous to sovereign crises, giving rise to risk-sharing motives to mutualize bail-out funding. Raising public funds to conduct bail-outs...

Using a comprehensive dataset from German banks, we document the usage of sovereign credit default swaps (CDS) during the European sovereign debt crisis of 2008-2013. Banks used the sovereign CDS market to extend, rather than hedge, their long exposures to sovereign risk during this period....

We provide evidence consistent with a “credit-line drawdown channel” to explain the large and persistent crash of bank stock prices during the COVID-19 pandemic. Stock prices of banks with large ex-ante exposures to undrawn credit lines and large ex-post gross drawdowns declined more,...

We quantify the gains from regulating maturity transformation in a model of banks which finance long-term assets with non-tradable debt. Banks choose the amount and maturity of their debt trading off investors’ preference for short maturities with the risk of systemic crises. Pecuniary...

We show that eurozone bank risks during 2007-2013 can be understood as carry trade behavior. Bank equity returns load positively on peripheral (Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, or GIIPS) bond returns and negatively on German government bond returns, which generated carry until the...

Macroprudential stress tests have been employed by regulators in the United States and Europe to assess and address the solvency condition of financial firms in adverse macroeconomic scenarios. Financial institutions are required to maintain a capital cushion against such events and stress tests...