The current banking regulatory framework assigns EU government bonds a risk weight of zero. Since the European debt crisis, there has been increasing controversy over eliminating this equity capital privilege, which is viewed as contributing to the close relationship between state and bank...

This paper analyses whether the introduction of capital requirements for bank government bond holdings increases financial stability by making the banking sector more resilient to sovereign debt crises. Using a theoretical model, we show that a sudden increase in sovereign default risk may lead...

We examine the secondary market transactions of senior bonds issued by banks for the periods prior to and after passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (DFA) in 2010. We find the 136 basis points discount on yield spreads because of the too-big-to-fail (TBTF)...

Although banks are required to document their equity capital for loans, corporate bonds, and other receivables, they are currently exempted from the procedure when investing in government bonds: they enjoy an “equity capital privilege.” As part of the Basel III regulatory framework redraft,...

The European sovereign debt crisis illustrated how the stability of the entire financial system suffers when banks and sovereigns become too intertwined. However, there has been seemingly little success in reducing the bank-sovereign nexus in the decade since the crisis. As this Weekly Report...

Business cycles imply liquidity risks for banks. This paper explores how these risks influence bank lending over the cycle. With forward-looking banks, lending cycles, credit booms and busts, or suppressed and highly fragile bank systems can emerge, depending on the magnitude of liquidity risks....

A bank's decision on loan supply and capital structure determines its immediate bankruptcy risk as well as the future availability of internal funds. These internal funds in turn determine a bank's future costs of external finance and future vulnerability to bankruptcy risks. We study these...

We assess the impact on bank bond holdings of regulatory changes in the requirements for bail-inable liabilities designed to facilitate an orderly resolution process, while reducing taxpayers-funded bailouts. Analyzing confidential data on securities holdings by banks, we document that the...

The euro crisis was fueled by the diabolic loop between sovereign risk and bank risk, coupled with cross-border flight-to-safety capital flows. European Safe Bonds (ESBies), a union-wide safe asset without joint liability, would help to resolve these problems. We make three contributions. First,...

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....