States and their representatives, national governments, play a key role in national telecommunication markets. As lawmakers, they determine the playing field of the agents in the markets and the decision powers of national regulators. Simultaneously, they are involved in appointing presidential...

The interplay of infrastructure supply and demand is of central interest in line with Web 2.0. As the role of customers turns from a service users' role to an information providers' role, the traffic on existing lines increases and, simultaneously, customers' demand for high-quality...

This paper documents that standard cross-sectional determinants of firm leverage also apply to the capital structure of large banks in the United States and Europe. We find a remarkable consistency in sign, significance and economic magnitude. Like non-financial firms, banks appear to have...

Using aggregate balance sheet data from banks across the EU-25 over the period from 1997 to 2005 this paper provides empirical evidence that national banking market concentration has a negative impact on European banks' financial soundness as measured by the Z-score technique while controlling...

The 5th joint SUERF/Bank of Finland joint conference was held in Helsinki on 13 June 2013. The general theme of the conference was to focus on the regulatory reforms after the global financial crisis and, in particular, how structural reforms of banking ("Volcker, Vickers and Liikanen") could...

Although the world of banking and finance is becoming more integrated every day, in most aspects the world of financial regulation continues to be narrowly defined by national boundaries. The main players here are still national governments and governmental agencies. And until recently, they...

Following the adoption by the Basel Committee of new capital rules for banks, a process is now taking place in the EU to transpose the rules into Community law and, ultimately, into national legislation. This paper gives an overview of the main issues that relate to the EU implementation, mainly...

This paper investigates the costs and benefits of liquidity regulation. We find that liquidity tools are beneficial but cannot completely remove the need for Lender of Last Resort (LOLR) interventions by the central bank. Full compliance with current Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) and Net Stable...

We use bank-, loan- and firm-level data together with a quasi-natural experiment to estimate the impact of capital requirement reductions on bank lending and real economic outcomes. We find that capital requirement reductions increase lending both to households and firms at the bank- and...

This paper discusses the institutional changes needed in Europe if prompt corrective action (PCA) is to be effective in supervising and resolving cross-border banking groups. The paper identifies these changes starting with enhancements in the availability of information on banking groups’...