This paper presents a new theory that explains why it is beneficial for banks to be highly interconnected and to engage in herding behavior. It shows that these two important causes of systemic risk are interdependent and thus cannot be considered in isolation. The reason is that banks have an...

The bail-in tool as implemented in the European bank resolution framework suffers from severe shortcomings. To some extent, the regulatory framework can remedy the impediments to the desirable incentive effect of private sector involvement (PSI) that emanate from a lack of predictability of...

This paper sets the background for the Special Issue of the Journal of Empirical Finance on the European Sovereign Debt Crisis. It identifies the channel through which risks in the financial industry leaked into the public sector. It discusses the role of the bank rescues in igniting the...

The recent crisis has shown that systemically relevant banks in distress are likely to benefit from governmental support. This reduces their downside risk and leads to moral hazard, i.e. to incentives for these banks to assume excessive risks. In this paper we show empirically that implicit...