Over the last twenty years, the consensus view of systemic risk in the financial system that emerged in response to the banking crises of the 1930s and before has lost much of its relevance. This view held that the main systemic problem is runs on solvent banks leading to bank panics. But...

The story of the one-hundredth monkey has generated new ways of thinking about cultural transformation. Different experiences and new understandings of justice have emerged in a variety of cultural contexts and led to a rather sudden multi-national shift in thinking about the collective response...

Default, loss severity, and average loss rates for a large sample of privately placed bonds are presented and compared with loss experience for publicly issued bonds. The chance of very large portfolio losses is estimated and some determinants of such losses are analyzed. Results show ex ante...

We offer evidence that interest rate spreads on syndicated loans to corporate borrowers are economically significantly smaller in Europe than in the United States, other things equal. Differences in borrower, loan, and lender characteristics do not appear to explain this phenomenon. Borrowers...

<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>