Especially structured finance instruments were blamed as main reason for the financial crisis 2007, but the understanding for the motivation to originate securitization products is less discovered. Therefor this paper tries to identify main balance sheet characteristics of structured finance...

This paper documents that standard cross-sectional determinants of firm leverage also apply to the capital structure of large banks in the United States and Europe. We find a remarkable consistency in sign, significance and economic magnitude. Like non-financial firms, banks appear to have...

The extensive public support measures for the financial sector have been key for the management of the current financial crisis. This paper gives a detailed description of the measures taken by central banks and governments and attempts a preliminary assessment of the effectiveness of such...