Central banks have vastly expanded their footprint on capital markets. At a time of extraordinary pressure by many sides, a simple benchmark for the scale and scope of their core mandate of price and financial stability may be useful. We make a case for a narrow mandate to maintain and safeguard...

In this paper, we consider for the first time the impact of fund regulation on the international distribution of investment funds. We study the 2001 UCITS Directive of the European Union, which was put in place to mitigate fraud and promote investor confidence throughout Europe. We examine the...

The Capital Purchase Plan (CPP) is one of the main ingredients of the Paulson Plan. In accordance with CPP, U.S. federal agencies invested more than $200 billion in approximately 700 financial institutions between 2008 and 2009. This article examines whether this major public intervention helped...

We examine the effect of the introduction of the euro on the level of systemic risk for countries that adopted the common currency (euro-zone countries). Our measure of systemic risk is ∆CoVaR, introduced by Adrian and Brunnermeier (2010). We analyze the 1990-2010 period, use a large...

We study a politician's choice for state or private control of banks. The choice trades of lobbying contributions against social welfare, weighted by political accountability.Politicians facing few constraints prefer state control to maximize their rents. As state banks are less efficient, at...

We analyze how a wealth shift to emerging countries may lead to instability in developed countries. Investors exposed to expropriation risk are willing to pay a safety premium to invest in countries with good property rights. Domestic intermediaries compete for such cheap funding by carving out...