This paper explains why crises follow periods of sustained banking profitability in an environment in which there is uncertainty about whether outcomes depend on the risk management skills of banks, or are just based on luck, in the spirit of Piketty's Model (1995) of “left-wing” and...

This paper develops a theory that explains why financial crises follow profitable lending booms. When agents exhibit the "availability heuristic" and there is a long period of banking profitability, all agents — banks, their investors and regulators — end up in an “availability cascade,”...

This note discusses some issues in bank closure policy from a financial stability standpoint and how these issues have evolved since we first raised the question of how a reputation-driven divergence of interests between bank regulators and taxpayers may distort bank closure policy in our 1993...

An extensive review of the evidence related to the 2007-09 crisis reveals that it was an insolvency risk crisis, not a liquidity crisis. The appropriate post-crisis regulatory reform should therefore focus on increasing capital requirements. The Basel III liquidity requirements do not serve a...