This paper distils three lessons for bank regulation from the experience of the 2009-12 euro-area financial crisis. First, it highlights the key role that sovereign debt exposures of banks have played in the feedback loop between bank and fiscal distress, and inquires how the regulation of...

The key dynamics of the transatlantic banking crisis are analyzed – with emphasis on the fact that the banking disaster of 2007/08 was not really a surprise –, and the five key requirements for restoring stability and efficiency in the EU/OECD banking sector are highlighted. Most important,...

In this paper we study systemic risk for the US and Europe. We show that banks' exposures to common risk factors are crucial for systemic risk. We come to this conclusion by first showing that relations between US and European banks are smaller than within each region. We then show that European...

Since the onset of the eurozone sovereign debt crisis, credit risk spreads in Europe have diverged. Despite this divergence, credit risk comoves strongly within certain country groups such as the eurozone periphery. We seek to answer what the determinants of the observed pattern of credit risk...

Following the crisis of 2007, regulatory authorities either are or should be engaging in a fundamental reconsideration of how they approach financial regulation and supervision. This paper briefly summarizes the present international consensus on regulation as embodied in the Basel framework,...

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...

This paper presents a new database for financial crises in European countries, which serves as an important step towards establishing a common ground for macroprudential oversight and policymaking in the EU. The database focuses on providing precise chronological definitions of crisis periods to...

To reconcile the mixed empirical results, we develop a theoretical model whose main implication is a concave impact of regulation on the probability of a crisis. We test this relationship by applying a Probit model of a non-linear specification to annual data from 1999 to 2011 drawn from 132...

This paper presents a new database for financial crises in European countries, which serves as an important step towards establishing a common ground for macroprudential oversight and policymaking in the EU. The database focuses on providing precise chronological definitions of crisis periods to...

We analyze how financial crises affect international financial integration, exploiting euro area proprietary interbank data, crisis and monetary policy shocks, and variation in loan terms to the same borrower on the same day by domestic versus foreign lenders. Crisis shocks reduce the supply of...