The paper analyzes the financial crisis of through the lens of market failures and regulatory failures. We present a case that there were four primary failures contributing to the crisis: excessive risk-taking in the financial sector due to mispriced government guarantees; regulatory focus on...

The paper analyzes the financial crisis of 2007-2009 through the lens of market failures and regulatory failures and presents a case that there were four primary failures contributing to the crisis: excessive risk-taking in the financial sector due to mispriced government guarantees; regulatory...

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...

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...

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....

We document the mechanism through which the risk of fire sales in the sovereign bond market contributed to the effectiveness of two major central bank interventions designed to restore financial stability during the European sovereign debt crisis. As a lender of last resort via the long-term...

We examine the desirability of granting "safe harbor" provisions to creditors of financial intermediaries in sale-and-repurchase (repo) contracts. Exemption from an automatic stay in bankruptcy enables financial intermediaries to raise greater liquidity and induces entry of intermediaries with...

We present a simple model of systemic risk and show how each financial institution’s contribution to systemic risk can be measured and priced. An institution’s contribution, denoted systemic expected shortfall (SES), is its propensity to be undercapitalized when the system as a whole is...

One of the several regulatory failures behind the global financial crisis that started in 2007 has been the regulatory focus on individual, rather than systemic, risk of financial institutions. Focusing on systemically important assets and liabilities (SIALs) rather than individual financial...