Asset encumbrance is a central concept in the context of banks’ liquidity crises, as it is associated with their capacity to obtain secured funding. This occasional paper summarises the work carried out by the task force on asset encumbrance, bringing together analyses by the ECB and those...

I develop an algorithm to approximate the loss rate distribution for fixed income portfolios with obligor concentrations. The approximation requires no advanced mathematics or statistics, only the summation of large exposures and the evaluation of binomial probabilities. The approximation is...

This paper examines banks' disclosures and loss recognition in the financial crisis and identifies several core issues for the link between accounting and financial stability. Our analysis suggests that, going into the financial crisis, banks' disclosures about relevant risk exposures were...

In this paper, we introduce a model to study the interaction between insurance and banking. We build on the Federal Crop Insurance Act of 1980, which significantly expanded and restructured the decades-old federal crop insurance program and adverse weather shocks - over-exposure of crops to heat...

In this paper, we show the benefits of bank asset diversification for the economy. A more diversified stream of earnings enables banks to better absorb negative shocks, leading to increased and more stable lending. This, in turn, provides positive spillovers to the economy. We demonstrate that...

Nonbank lenders have been playing an increasing role in supplying debt, especially after the Great Recession. How important are the distortions in the greater regulation of banks that differentially limit risk-taking across alternative providers of credit? How might the growing role of nonbanks...

The traditional model of bank-led financial intermediation, where banks issue demandable deposits to savers and make informationally sensitive loans to borrowers, has seen a dramatic decline since 1970s. Instead, private credit is increasingly intermediated through arms-length transactions, such...

We propose a model of financial system architecture that highlights the positive interaction between banks and markets in a setting where each agent believes that she can evaluate information better than any other agent. Banks emerge endogenously and their interaction with markets is facilitated...

We find some support for theories predicting that the presence of informed investors adversely affects liquidity: When arrangers retain a share in the loan this impacts negatively liquidity. We find strong evidence that investor diversity is beneficial to liquidity: Loans with larger syndicates;...

This paper shows that higher information technology (IT) adoption by banks led to a larger increase in corporate lending in the months following the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy. Examining banks with heterogeneous degrees of IT adoption, we investigate the dynamics of credit and its allocation...