An important policy goal in European Union has been integration of markets and economic convergence. The aim of this exploratory paper is to study pricing of currency exchange services based on bid-ask spreads in commercial banks and the policy implications of the delayed integration of banking...

We quantify the gains from regulating banks' maturity transformation in an infinite horizon model of banks which finance long-term assets with non-tradable debt. Banks choose the amount and maturity of their debt trading off investors' preference for short maturities with the risk of systemic...

Net trading income is an important but volatile source of income for many euro area banks, highly sensitive to changes in financial market conditions. Using a representative sample of European banks, we study the distribution of net trading income (normalized by total assets) conditional to...

The European banking industry joined forces to achieve a fully integrated market for retail payment services in the euro area: the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). Against this background, the present paper examines the fundamental relationship between retail payment business and overall bank...

There is no substantive harmonization of bank insolvency rules at the EU level with the result that member states apply different rules and procedures to deal with bank failures. Under the current EU bank insolvency regime, the home country substantive law governs the insolvency proceedings of a...

In the post-financial crisis regulatory reforms emphasis has been placed on creating recovery and resolution frameworks for banks, which ensure that the costs of failure are primarily born by shareholders, instead of taxpayers and the wider economy. Supervisors have (or will have) extensive...

We quantify the gains from regulating maturity transformation in a model of banks which finance long-term assets with non-tradable debt. Banks choose the amount and maturity of their debt trading off investors’ preference for short maturities with the risk of systemic crises. Pecuniary...