The privatization of Japan's postal saving system, the world's largest financial institution, has been a politically charged issue since it first started being debated in the late 1980s. Analyzing the pre-election survey of the House of Representatives candidates in 2003 and also the voting...

Keefer proposes a new approach to explain why the costs of crisis are greater in some countries than in others. He begins with the premise that many crises result from the willingness of politicians to cater to special interests at the expense of broad social interests. A parsimonious model...

A paper presented at the June 2000 conference quot;Specialization, Diversification, and the Structure of the Financial System: The Impact of Technological Change and Regulatory Reform,quot; sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Government ownership of banks is very common in countries other than the United States. This paper provides cross-country, bank-level empirical evidence about political influences on these banks. It shows that government-owned banks increase their lending in election years relative to private...

This paper examines political determinants of government banks' lending decisions using the prefecture-level panel data on Japan's government loans from 1975 to 1992. It finds that the size of government loans is positively correlated with two political factors: (1) the electoral vulnerability...

We provide evidence that German savings banks – where local politicians are by law involved in their management – systematically adjust lending policies in response to local electoral cycles. The different timing of county elections across states and the existence of a control group of...

We provide causal evidence that German savings banks where local politicians are by law involved in their management systematically adjust lending policies in response to local electoral cycles. The different timing of county elections across states and the existence of a control group of...

We provide causal evidence that German savings banks – where local politicians are by law involved in their management – systematically adjust lending policies in response to local electoral cycles. The different timing of county elections across states and the existence of a control group...

In this paper, we examine how the institutional design affects the outcome of bank bailout decisions. In the German savings bank sector, distress events can be resolved by local politicians or a state-level association. We show that decisions by local politicians with close links to the bank are...

This paper provides a politive political economy analysis of the most important revision of the U.S. supervision and regulation sustem during the last two decades, the 1991 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Imporovement Act (FDICIA). We analyze the impact of private interest groups as well...