Operational risk is being considered as an important risk component for financial institutions as evinced by the large sums of capital that are allocated to mitigate this risk. Therefore, risl measurement is of paramount concern for the purposes of capital allocation, hedging, and new product...

This paper investigates the returns and flows of German money market funds before and during the liquidity crisis of 2007/2008. The main findings of this paper are: In liquid times money market funds enhanced their returns by investing in less liquid papers. By doing so they outperformed other...

This paper investigates the returns and flows of German money market funds before and during the liquidity crisis of 2007/2008. The main findings of this paper are: in liquid times, money market funds enhanced their returns by investing in less liquid papers. By doing so they outperformed other...

In the aftermath of the global financial collapse that began in 2007, governments around the world have responded with reform. The outlines of Basel III have been announced, although some have already dismissed its reform agenda as being too little (and too late!). Like the proposed reforms in...

In this paper I will follow Hyman Minsky in arguing that the postwar period has seen a slow transformation of the economy from a structure that could be characterized as "robust" to one that is "fragile". While many economists and policymakers have argued that "no one saw it coming", Minsky and...

The recent financial crisis has shown that financial innovation can have devastating systemic impacts. International standard setters' and national regulators' response has been a global concerted effort to overhaul and tighten financial regulations. However, at a time of designing stricter...

We find that competition from payday lenders leads depository institutions to raise overdraft fees and reduce the availability of “free” checking accounts. We attribute this rise in prices partly to adverse selection created by banks’ practice of charging a flat fee regardless of the...

A fundamental conclusion drawn from the recent financial crisis is that the supervision and regulation of financial firms in isolation — a purely microprudential perspective — are not sufficient to maintain financial stability. Rather, a macroprudential perspective, which evaluates and...

The General Agreement on Trade in Services (known as the GATS) is an important new element in the international framework that affects the regulation of every WTO Member's financial sector. However, except for a limited number of country-specific case studies, no attempt has been made to compare...

This paper explores the advantages of a new financial charter for large, complex, internationally active financial institutions that would address the corporate governance challenges of such organizations, including incentive problems in risk decisions and the complicated corporate and...