The author explains how self-enforcing labour contracts can enhance the performance of macroeconomic models. He exposes the benefits of using these dynamic contracts to account for some puzzling macroeconomic facts regarding the dynamics and persistence of employment, consumption and output. In...

During the last decades, banks off-balance sheet (OBS) activities (e.g. securitization, trading and fee-based activities) have greatly contributed to the increase in bank risk. However, the standard financial indicators such as the Value-at-Risk and the accounting leverage, exclude these...

Following Zhang (Accounting Review, 2007) we cast firm accruals in terms of short-term investment. Since many studies consider accruals as a smoothed measure of cash flows, we first adopt Zhang specification and augment the standard Jones model with a cash-flow variable. Second, if accruals are...

The diversification benefits associated with banks off-balance-sheet activities (OBS), and particularly non- traditional activities, is a question much debated in the literature. These activities, related to the emergence of shadow banking, greatly contribute to the volatility of bank operating...

Since financial institutions are subjected to increasingly tighter requirements regarding the way they conduct their loan business, we could assume that built-in regulatory pressures induce them to adopt collective business strategies, with the unintended consequence of persistently weakening...

In order to complement the macro-prudential framework introduced in Basel III, we propose a new breed of indicators based on the degree of leverage which helps track the time-varying dimension of bank systemic risk—a key aspect of financial stability. Given the new sources of liquidity...

This paper investigates how banks, as a group, react to macroeconomic risk and uncertainty; more specifically, it examines the relationship between bank systemic risk and changes and disruptions in economic conditions. Adopting the methodology of Beaudry et al. (2001), we introduce a new...