There is a long-standing debate about the special nature of banks. Based on a unique dataset of legislative changes in industrial countries, we identify events that strengthen competition policy, analyze their impact on banks and non-financial firms and explain the reactions observed with...

We examine how U.S. monetary policy affects the international activities of U.S. Banks. We access a rarely studied US bank-level dataset to assess at a quarterly frequency how changes in the U.S. Federal funds rate (before the crisis) and quantitative easing (after the onset of the crisis)...

Excessive credit creation by banks was at the root of the recent financial crisis. Nevertheless, micro-prudential regulation lacks a clear methodology to identify these banks. Combining arguments from banking and auction theory, we show that overoptimism causes excessive lending, subsequently...

We investigate regulatory arbitrage during the G20's global derivatives market reform. Using hand-collected data on staggered reform progress, we find that banks shift their trading towards less regulated jurisdictions. The result is driven by agenda items – such as the promotion of central...

In this paper we gauge the degree of interconnectedness and quantify the linkages between global and other systemically important institutions, and the global financial system. We document that the two groups and the financial system become more interconnected during the global financial crisis...

We assess the cleansing effects of the recent banking crisis. In U.S. regions with higher levels of supervisory forbearance on distressed banks during the crisis, there is less restructuring in the real sector and the banking sector remains less healthy for several years after the crisis....

Does democratization reduce the cost of credit? Using global syndicated loan data from 1984 to 2014, we find that democratization has a sizeable negative effect on loan spreads: a one-point increase in the zero-to-ten Polity IV index of democracy shaves at least 19 basis points off spreads, but...

This paper provides evidence on how the new international regulation on Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs) impacts the market value of large banks. We analyze the stock price reactions for the 300 largest banks from 52 countries across 12 relevant regulatory announcement and...

Do macroprudential regulations on residential lending influence commercial lending behavior too? To answer this question, we identify the compositional changes in banks' supply of credit using the variation in their holdings of residential mortgages on which extra capital requirements were...

How have financial markets reacted to the disclosure of the list of Other Systemically Important Institutions by the European Banking Authority? With an event study of bank stock prices, we document that the immediate reaction of the stock market is negative, suggesting that the included...