Financial institutions are increasingly linked internationally and engaged in cross-border operations. As a result, financial crises and potential bail-outs by governments have important international implications. Extending Allen and Gale (2000), we provide a model of international contagion...

This paper studies spillovers across sovereign debt markets in the wake of sovereign rating changes. To this end, we use an extensive dataset covering all announcements by the three major agencies (Standard & Poor's, Moody's, Fitch) and daily sovereign bond market movements of up to 74 developed...

In this paper we analyze the impact of public export credit guarantees on firms' exports. Earlier studies show that export credit guarantees stimulate exports, employment, and value added. Furthermore, there is evidence at the aggregate level that financial market imperfections are key to...

Does financial sector foreign direct investment (FSFDI) trigger general capital inflows and foreign trade? Do these inflows to New EU Member States (NMS) provide positive signals (Spence, 1973) towards economic development or 'crowd out' investment and trade? While the direct impact of financial...

This paper examines the effects of political agreements on regional financial integration (RFI) on financial market development and access to and cost of finance in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our results suggest that RFI positively affects financial development - measured very broadly as the size of...

This paper builds on a large literature that has exploited the experiment of US bank branching and inter-state banking deregulation since the 1970s as a natural laboratory that allows to study the real effects of liberalization and financial integration. Whereas most of the literature presented...

This paper analyzes the role of corporate culture in the financial industry. Theoretical literature emphasizes the role of corporate culture in the sorting process of workers into firms. We take this argument to the empirics and analyze whether banks that differ in their corporate culture use...

In this paper, we analyse whether bank owners or bank managers were the driving force behind the risks incurred in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007/2008. We show that owner controlled banks had higher profits in the years before the crisis, and incurred larger losses and were more likely...

We investigate the trade-off between financial stability and competition policy by focusing on the merger of ABN AMRO and Fortis Bank NL in the Dutch retail banking market. The financial crisis delayed the completion of the merger giving rise to anti-competitive behavior in the transitory...

We explore empirically how capital inflows into the US and financial deregulation within the United States interacted in driving the run-up (and subsequent decline) in US housing prices over the period 1990-2010. To obtain an ex ante measure of financial liberalization, we focus on the history...