<DIV><DIV><P>Until about twenty years ago, the consensus view on the cause of financial-system distress was fairly simple: a run on one bank could easily turn to a panic involving runs on all banks, destroying some and disrupting the financial system.  Since then, however, a series of events—such as...</p></div></div>

This book highlights the achievements and challenges of the ongoing process of financial integration in Europe.   This unique collection will be of great interest to economists and experts in the fields of financial markets and European integration from central, commercial and investment...

Using theories from the behavioral finance literature to predict that investors are attracted to industries with more salient outcomes and that therefore firms in such industries have higher valuations, we find that firms in industries that have high industry-level dispersion of profitability...

The Chief Risk Officer of Nationwide Insurance teams up with a distinguished academic to discuss the benefits and challenges associated with the design and implementation of an enterprise risk management program. The authors begin by arguing that a carefully designed ERM program-one in which all...

This paper examines whether analysts resident in a country make more precise earnings forecasts for firms in that country than non-resident analysts. Using a sample of 32 countries, we find an economically and statistically significant local analyst advantage even after controlling for firm and...

This article proposes a new approach to evaluate contagion in financial markets. Our measure of contagion captures the coincidence of extreme return shocks across countries within a region and across regions. We characterize the extent of contagion, its economic significance, and its...