In 2009, the G-20 in London recommended that accounting standard setters, strengthen accounting recognition of loan-loss provisions by incorporating a broader range of credit information (G20 2009). In response, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) issued International Financial...

In recent years, there has been renewed interest in providing countercyclical lending and sustainable development financing through national development financial institutions (NDFIs). While NDFIs are often a feasible solution for addressing development needs and closing financing gaps, they are...

This paper introduces a new global database and a policy classification framework that records the financial sector policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic across 155 jurisdictions and over time. It documents that authorities around the world have taken a diverse array of measures to mitigate...

The paper analyzes the effects of changes to regulatory policy and to monetary policy on cross-border bank lending since the global financial crisis. Cross-border bank lending has decreased, and the home bias in the credit portfolio of banks has risen sharply, especially among banks in the euro...

Does the mere presence of big banks affect macroeconomic outcomes? Gabaix (2011) shows that idosyncratic shocks can have aggregate effects if the distribution of firm sizes in manufacturing follows a power law distribution. Our contribution is two-fold. First, we expand the theory of granularity...

The German economy has veered back on an upward course, after weak growth in the summer semester 2014. In this projection, real GDP is estimated to grow by 1.5 percent in 2014, by 1.4 percent in 2015 and by 1.7 percent in 2016. Inflation is projected to remain low, with 0.9 percent in 2014, 0.7...

The German economy continues to recover, and will grow by 2.2 percent in 2015. With slightly abated increases, the annual growth rate will be 1.9 percent in 2016. Driven by this favorable economic development, the unemployment rate will further decline, to 6.4 percent this year and 6.1 percent...

The German economy continues to recover, and will grow by 2.2 percent in 2015 and by 1.9 percent in 2016. The unemployment rate will further decline, to 6.4 percent this year and 6.1percent in 2016. Inflation, which averages 0.5 percent this year, will be substantially dampened by the slump in...

We explore the impact of large banks and of financial openness for aggregate growth. Large banks matter because of granular effects: if markets are very concentrated in terms of the size distribution of banks, idiosyncratic shocks at the bank-level do not cancel out in the aggregate but can...

Does the mere presence of big banks affect macroeconomic outcomes? In this paper, we develop a theory of granularity (Gabaix, 2011) for the banking sector, introducing Bertrand competition and heterogeneous banks charging variable markups. Using this framework, we show conditions under which...