A number of studies have pointed to various mistakes that consumers might make in their consumption-saving and financial decisions. We utilize a unique market experiment conducted by a large U.S. bank to assess how systematic and costly such mistakes are in practice. The bank offered consumers a...

Taking the mean-variance portfolio model as a benchmark, we compute the optimally diversified portfolio for banks located in France, Germany, the U.K., and the U.S. under different assumptions about currency hedging. We compare these optimal portfolios to the actual cross-border assets of banks...

Both changing investors' behaviour and contingent events, such as financial crisis, stimulated a debate around the distribution of financial products for which an active market doesn't exist. Investing in illiquid financial instruments requires a certain degree of financial education in order to...

This paper derives a bank capital allocation model and applies it in the determinants of securitization. According to Bank for International Settlements (BIS), banks are required to prepare regulatory capital for investment and loans, based on the quality and quantity of assets. Hence, the...

Following the financial crisis of 2007, many global financial firms faced difficulties in borrowing U.S. dollars (USD). We estimate the premium global banks paid to obtain USD (the “USD basis”) by the rate banks pay to swap euros into USD in the foreign exchange (FX) market, while fully...

The equity of too-big-to-fail banks could be deemed less risky due to implicit government guarantees. However, such guarantees could also amplify a moral hazard problem that induces large banks to take excessive risk. If such risk is mispriced by the market due to the increased complexity of...

This paper demonstrates that rating-based capital requirements, through their impact on insurers' investment demand, affect corporate bond prices. Consistent with insurers' low demand for investment-grade (IG) bonds with a rating close to non-investment-grade, these bonds are underpriced....

We model the U.S. banking system as a thermodynamic system of interacting elements with individual banking firms representing those elements. Firms with similar asset and liability structures interact in the sense that they pursue similar objectives. These objectives include specialization in...

This study provides an empirical analysis of the impact of the Greek debt crisis on stock returns of U.S. commercial banks. We find that good (bad) news events pertaining to the Greek debt crisis, identified by large changes in the Greek CDS spread, produce insignificant positive (negative)...