We develop an analysis of ex ante monitoring of risky projects in banking. If protected from competition, banks are more concerned about not catching good risk projects when the perceived state of the economy improves, while they are more concerned about being induced to finance bad risk...

The last few decades have produced many inconsistent estimates of the social costs of payment methods. This paper demonstrates that there is significant disagreement in the theoretical underpinnings of the studies, and that the methodologies used are not robust. Together, these factors make it...

This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature dealing with the current topic of rating quality. Due to the close interrelation of ratings with the financial system, it is crucial to understand what exactly determines their accuracy. To provide a unique and holistic overview on...