In August 2007 the United Kingdom experienced its first bank run in over 140 years. Although Northern Rock was not a particularly large bank (it was at the time ranked 7th in terms of assets) it was nevertheless a significant retail bank and a substantial mortgage lender. In fact, ten years...

This paper examines procyclicality of the financial system. The introduction describes the natural and regulatory sources of procyclicality, focusing on the potential procyclical effect of the current Basel II regulatory framework for banks. It also mentions the regulatory tools for mitigating...

We examine the impacts of both domestic and international financial market development on R&D intensities in 22 manufacturing industries in 18 OECD countries for the period 1990- 2003. We take account of such industry characteristics as the need for external financing and the amount of tangible...

In this paper, we investigate the claim that German banks are special compared to banks in other industrialised economies. We show that banks are of particular importance to the German economy?as financial intermediary, as lender to the corporate sector, and as part of the corporate governance...

This paper examines common regulation as cause of interbank contagion. Studies based on the correlation of bank assets and the extent of interbank lending may underestimate the likelihood of contagion because they do not incorporate the fact that banks have a common regulator. In our model, the...

Europe’s financial structure has become strongly bank-based – far more so than in other economies. We document that an increase in the size of the banking system relative to equity and private bond markets is associated with more systemic risk and lower economic growth, particularly during...

Following the Hotelling model of spatial competition used by Massoud and Bernhardt (2002) to analyze competition in ATM fees, in this paper we analyze the effects of banning fees on the usage of ATMs by account holders. We find that the prohibition also reduces the fees charged to non-account...