The author compares the U.S. with other G-10 countries regarding key aspects of permissible banking activities. One conclusion is that banks in the U.S. face greater restrictions, and possibly more intensive supervisory oversight, than do banks in most other G-10 countries. Second, the majority...

Using count data on the number of bank failures in US states during the 1960 to 2006 period, this paper endeavors to establish how far sources of economic risk (recessions, high interest rates, inflation) or differences in solvency and branching regulation can explain some of the fragility in...

Central banks have had an important role in maintaining financial stability through their lender of last resort role. As lender of last resort, the central bank is given enormous power which is normally tempered by a variety of limits. In the most recent crises in both the United States and euro...

The European Union (EU) has been facilitating the growth of cross-border banking groups, but bank supervision remains the responsibility of national supervisors. This mismatch has long been recognized and various proposals have been offered to address this weakness. An alternative that would...

The European Union (EU) has been facilitating the growth of cross-border banking groups, but bank supervision remains the responsibility of national supervisors. This mismatch has long been recognized and various proposals have been offered to address this weakness. An alternative that would...

Using a unique dataset of the Euro area and the U.S. bank lending standards, we find that low (monetary policy) short-term interest rates soften standards, for household and corporate loans. This softening – especially for mortgages – is amplified by securitization activity, weak supervision...

We analyze link between mortgage-related regulatory penalties levied on banks and the level of systemic risk in the U.S. banking industry. We employ a frequency decomposition of volatility spillovers (connectedness) to assess system-wide risk transmission with short-, medium-, and long-term...

This paper offers a simple theory of inefficiently lax financial regulation arising as an outcome of a democratic political process. Lax financial regulation encourages some banks to issue risky residential mortgages. In the event of an adverse aggregate housing shock, these banks fail. When...

We analyze link between mortgage-related regulatory penalties levied on banks and the level of systemic risk in the U.S. banking industry. We employ a frequency decomposition of volatility spillovers to draw conclusions about system-wide risk transmission with short-, medium-, and long-term...