The paper analyzes a very stylized model of crises and demonstrates how the degree of strategic complementarity in the actions of investors is a critical determinant of fragility. It is shown how the balance sheet composition of a financial intermediary, parameters of the information structure...

Basel III introduces for the first time an international framework for liquidity risk regulation, reflecting the experience of excessive liquidity risk taking of banks in the run up to the financial crisis that erupted in August 2007, and associated negative externalities. As central banks play...

At the peak of the financial crisis in October 2008, the IASB amended IAS 39 to grant companies the option of abandoning fair value recognition for selected financial assets. Using a comprehensive global sample of publicly listed IFRS banks, we find that banks use the reclassification option to...

This paper investigates whether there is any consistency between banks' financial strength ratings (bank rating) and their risk-return profiles. It is expected that banks with high ratings tend to earn high expected returns for the risks they assume and thereby have a low probability of...

The failure to spot emerging systemic risk and prevent the current global financial crisis warrants a reexamination of the approach taken so far to crisis prevention. The paper argues that financial crises can be prevented, as they build up over time due to policy mistakes and eventually erupt...

The recent financial crisis has shown that financial innovation can have devastating systemic impacts. International standard setters' and national regulators' response has been a global concerted effort to overhaul and tighten financial regulations. However, at a time of designing stricter...

In 2007 the world faced one of the biggest financial crises ever. It was the third important financial crisis in the last 12 years. Spillovers to the real economy and moral hazard behaviour of carpetbaggers resulted in enormous pressure on worldwide political institutions to approve a more...

Especially structured finance instruments were blamed as main reason for the financial crisis 2007, but the understanding for the motivation to originate securitization products is less discovered. Therefor this paper tries to identify main balance sheet characteristics of structured finance...

The paper discusses the reform of capital regulation of banks in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007/2009. Whereas the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision seems to go for marginal changes here and there, the paper calls for a thorough overhaul, moving away from risk calibration and...

The positive relationship between bank CEO compensation and risk taking is a well established empirical fact. The global banking crisis has resulted in a chorus of demands to control banker’s bonuses and thereby curtail their risk taking activities in the hope that the world can avoid a repeat...