Der vorliegende Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit der Aufarbeitung der Hintergründe der Subprime-Krise sowie der nachfolgenden internationalen Banken- und Finanzkrisen. Auf dieser Basis werden Vor-schläge diskutiert, wie die erkannten Schwachstellen im Finanzsystem repariert bzw. behoben werden...

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...

Should banks be diversified or focused? Does diversification indeed lead to enhanced performance and, therefore, greater safety for banks, as traditional portfolio and banking theory would suggest? This paper investigates the link between banks? profitability (ROA) and their portfolio...

This paper investigates whether there is any consistency between banks' financial strength ratings (bank rating) and their risk-return profiles. It is expected that banks with high ratings tend to earn high expected returns for the risks they assume and thereby have a low probability of...

Accurate measurement of bank risk is a matter of considerable importance for bank regulation and supervision. Current practices in most countries emphasize reliance on financial statement data for assessing banks’ risk. However, the possibility of increased reliance on market-based risk...

European banks are exposed to a substantial amount of risky sovereign debt. The "missing bank capital" resulting from the zero-risk weight exemption for European banks for European sovereign debt amplifies the co-movement between sovereign CDS spreads and facilitates cross-border...

This paper deals with the relation between excessive risk taking and capital structure in banks. Examining a quarterly dataset of U.S. banks between 1993 and 2010, we find that equity is valued higher when more risky portfolios are chosen when leverage is high, and that more risk taking has a...

In this paper, we assess the effects of CEO stock options on three key corporate policies for banks: investment choice, amount of borrowing, and level of capital. Using a sample of 549 bank-years for publicly traded banks from 1992 to 2002, we find that stock option grants lead CEOs to undertake...

We examine the pervasive view that equity is expensive which leads to claims that high capital requirements are costly and would affect credit markets adversely. We find that arguments made to support this view are either fallacious, irrelevant, or very weak. For example, the return on equity...

Should banks be diversified or focused? Does diversification indeed lead to increased performance and therefore greater safety on the part of banks as traditional portfolio and banking theory would suggest? This paper investigates the link between banks' profitability and their portfolio...