We analyze the relationship between firm-specific shocks and aggregate fluctuations. In particular, profitability of firms affected by a negative shock worsens. To the extent that the banks cannot distinguish between aggregate and firm-specific profitability shocks, they will adjust interest...

Business cycles imply liquidity risks for banks. This paper explores how these risks influence bank lending over the cycle. With forward-looking banks, lending cycles, credit booms and busts, or suppressed and highly fragile bank systems can emerge, depending on the magnitude of liquidity risks....

This paper investigates the risk-taking channel of monetary policy on the asset side of banks' balance sheets. We use a factor-augmented vector autoregression (FAVAR) model to show that aggregate lending standards of U.S. banks, e.g. their collateral requirements for firms, are significantly...

Is the reputation of a firm tradeable when the previous owner has to retire even though ownership change is observable? We consider a competitive market in which a share of owners must retire in each period. New owners, observing only recent profits, bid for the firms on sale. Customers are...

We investigate how the lending activities of a multinational bank s affiliates located abroad are affected by funding difficulties in view of the financial crisis. For this, we consider transaction-induced changes in long-term lending to the private sector of 40 countries by the affiliates of...

This paper studies regulatory competition in the banking sector in a model where banks are heterogeneous and taxpayers come up for the losses of failing banks. Capital requirements force the weakest banks to exit the market. This gives rise to a signalling effect of capital standards, as...

Model-based capital regulation is considered to be one of the key innovations of Basel II. The objective of this innovation was to make capital charges more sensitive to risk. Using data from the German credit register, and employing a difference-indifference identification strategy, we...