On February 12, 2010, SUERF, the Oesterreichische Nationalbank and the Bankwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft continued their established tradition of jointly organised conferences. As evidenced also by the 115 conference participants, this year's subject of "Contagion and Spillovers – New...

We employ a unique dataset on members of an elite service club in Germany to investigate how social connections in elite networks affect the allocation of resources. Specifically, we investigate credit allocation decisions of banks to firms inside the network. Using a quasi-experimental research...

When granting credit, banks depend on reliable information about the creditworthiness and risk structure of potential borrowers. This information is typically gathered by national credit bureaus. Nationally established banks depend on information from credit bureaus more than ever, particularly...

Banken sind bei der Kreditvergabe auf verlässliche Informationen über die Bonität und Risikostruktur potentieller Kreditnehmer angewiesen. Diese Informationen werden in der Regel von nationalen Kreditauskunfteien gesammelt. Insbesondere beim Eintritt in einen ausländischen Markt sind eher...

We study both theoretically and empirically the inter- dependence of lending decisions in different country branches of a multinational bank. First, we model a bank that delegates the management of its foreign unit to a local manager with non-transferable skills. The bank differs from other...

Macroeconomic risks could magnify individual bank risk. Mitigating the influence of economy-wide risks on banks could therefore be very important to maintain a smooth-running banking system. In this paper, we explore the extent to which macroeconomic risks affect banks. We use a bank-level...

We explore the impact of mortgage securitization on the international diversification of macroeconomic risk. By making mortgage-related risks internationally tradeable, securitization contributes considerably to better international consumption risk sharing: we find that countries with the most...

This paper explores the links between macroeconomic conditions and individual bank risk. Using capital adequacy ratios as a broad measure of risk sustainability, a linear mixed effects model for a large international panel of banks for the years 2001-2005 is estimated. In OECD countries, banks...

Information asymmetries can severely limit cross-border border expansion of banks. When a bank enters a new market, it has incomplete information about potential new clients. Such asymmetries are reduced by credit registers, which distribute financial data on bank clients. We investigate the...

Foreign bank entry is frequently associated with spillover effects for local banks and increasing competition in the local banking market. We study the impact of these effects on host countries. In particular, we ask how these effects interact and how they depend on the competitive environment...