The explicit or implicit protection of banks through government bail-out policies is a universal phenomenon. We analyze the competitive effects of such policies in two models with different degrees of transparency in the banking sector. Our main result is that the bail-out policy unambiguously...

We study a competitive banking sector in which banks choose the level of risk of their asset portfolios and, upon the public disclosure of stress test results, raise funding by promising investors a repayment. We show that competition forces banks to choose risky assets so as to promise...

In this paper, I quantify the extent to which financial constraints limit the scope of activity of small firms, influence their labor decisions, and impact their ultimate survival. Using the U.S. branching deregulation from the 1990s, I document that local markets within deregulated states...

In this paper, I quantify the extent to which financial constraints limit the scope of activity of small firms, influence their labor decisions, and impact their ultimate survival. Using the U.S. branching deregulation from the 1990s, I document that local markets within deregulated states...

We examine the effect of competition on banking stability using a new measure of competition based on the reallocation of profits from inefficient banks to efficient ones (Boone, 2008). Examining a sample of European banks, we show that this measure does capture competition, that competition is...

This paper documents large cross-country variation in the relationship between bank competition and bank stability and explores market, regulatory and institutional features that can explain this variation. We show that an increase in competition will have a larger impact on banks' fragility in...

This paper documents large cross-country variation in the relationship between bank competition and bank stability and explores market, regulatory and institutional features that can explain this variation. We show that an increase in competition will have a larger impact on banks' fragility in...

I review the state of the art of the academic theoretical and empirical literature on the potential trade-off between competition and stability in banking. There are two basic channels through which competition may increase instability: by exacerbating the coordination problem of...