We investigate whether and how political systems affect the financial soundness of conventional and Islamic banks. Using factors extracted from principal component analysis, we find that Islamic banks underperform their conventional counterparts in more democratic political systems but...

The purpose of this study is to develop a better understanding of how Islamic development policy making and makers have made meaning of the central issues of development and progress as expressed in the body of theory and practice that makes up the development field. Interestingly, this study...

The German Commercial Code (HGB) allows banks to build visible reserves for general banking risks according to section 340g HGB. These GBR reserves may, in addition to their risk provisioning function, be used to enhance capital endowment, for internal financing, signaling or earnings management...

The General Agreement on Trade in Services (known as the GATS) is an important new element in the international framework that affects the regulation of every WTO Member's financial sector. However, except for a limited number of country-specific case studies, no attempt has been made to compare...

We measure the impact of bank capital requirements on corporate borrowing and investment using loanE level data. The Basel II regulatory framework makes capital requirements vary across both banks and across firms, which allows us to control for firmE level credit demand shocks and bankE level...

Euro area governments have committed to break the doom loop between bank risk and sovereign risk. But policymakers have not reached consensus on whether and how to reform the regulatory treatment of banks' sovereign exposures. To inform policy discussions, this paper simulates portfolio...

The historical development of bank liquidity doctrines is surveyed from the real bills doctrine and its antecedents to the present day. The underlying ideas of the succession of several dominant liquidity doctrines are analysed and compared, with attention to their historical contexts and...

Recent policy discussion includes the introduction of diversification requirements for sovereign bond portfolios of European banks. In this paper, we evaluate the possible effects of these constraints on risk and diversification in the sovereign bond portfolios of the major European banks....

How do banks set their target capital ratio? How do they adjust to reach it? This paper answers these questions using an original dataset of capital ratio targets directly announced to investors by European banks, materially improving data quality compared to usual estimated implicit target. It...

An important question in banking is how strict supervision affects bank lending and in turn local business activity. Supervisors forcing banks to recognize losses could choke off lending and amplify local economic woes. But stricter supervision could also change how banks assess and manage...