This paper provides evidence for regulatory arbitrage within the class of asset-backed securities (ABS) based on individual asset holding data of German banks. I find that banks operating with tight regulatory constraints exploit the low risk-sensitivity of rating-contingent capital requirements...

Aggregate investment has declined markedly over the crisis and has yet to recover. Reviving domestic and foreign investment is crucial to supporting the economic recovery, deepen Greece’s integration into global value chains and raising living standards. This will hinge primarily on improving...

Boosting investment is key to supporting the nascent recovery and reviving stagnant productivity. Aggregate investment has declined markedly since the start of the global financial crisis, especially in services. Italy’s investment is so low that the capital stock is now declining, hurting...

We analyse micro and macro drivers of coverage ratios in a cross–country sample of euro area banks. Among the former, we find that coverage ratios increase with the reliance on deposit funding and when asset quality is very poor. Among the latter, coverage ratios increase with GDP growth and...

Spain has chronically low productivity growth, which undermines its ability to generate higher living standards. Important contributors to low productivity growth are the misallocation of capital to low productivity firms and under-investment in knowledge-based capital. To foster a better...

Policy efforts to revitalise entrepreneurship and investment in Spain are key to generating growth and new jobs. The government has a substantial reform program to make it easier to do business in Spain, which should in some cases be deepened. Boosting economic growth requires a new generation...

Cash pooling is a bank service that allows corporates to externalise the intra-group cash management, and thus manage their global liquidity effectively with lower costs. Although there is little quantitative information on the significance of the phenomenon, cash pooling appears to have become...

Regulatory bank levies set incentives for banks to reduce leverage. At the same time, corporate income taxation makes funding through debt more attractive. In this paper, we explore how regulatory levies affect bank capital structure, depending on corporate income taxation. Based on bank balance...

I study the relation between shadow banking and financial stability in an economy in which banks are susceptible to self-fulfilling runs and in which government-backed deposit insurance is limited. Shadow banks issue only uninsured deposits while commercial banks issue both insured and uninsured...

Do politics matter for macroprudential policy? I show that changes to macroprudential regulation exhibit a predictable electoral cycle in the run-up to 221 elections across 58 countries from 2000 through 2014. Policies restricting mortgages and consumer credit are systematically less likely to...