In this article we first document the evidence showing how an efficient retail payment infrastructure enhances economic performance. We then review the policy tools available to promote efficient retail payments in Europe. We argue that while SEPA is an important policy initiative that...

We study the value of innovation in a case study of one of the most visible innovative products in recent years, Apple’s iPhone. The value effects of news announcements, patent publications, and trademarks relating to iPhone are taken into account. Our estimate of the lower bound on the value...

The welfare cost of random consumption fluctuations is known from De Santis (2007) to be increasing in the level of individual consumption risk in the economy. It is also known from Barillas et al. (2009) to increase if agents in the economy care about robustness to model misspecification. In...

It has been proposed that the potential procyclicality of Basel II could be alleviated by using through-the-cycle (TTC) ratings in IRBA models. A TTC rating would be based on the structural component of the debtor’s credit risk ignoring cyclical fluctuations. This paper tests for the existence...

We model a banker's future bonuses as a series of call options on the bank's profits and show that bonus caps and deferrals reduce risk-taking. However, the banker's optimal risk-taking also depends on the costs of risk-taking. We calibrate the model to US banking data and show that lengthening...

We model banks’ loan losses with a panel of European countries for the period 1982–2012 using three country-specific macro variables: output growth shocks, real interest rates, and a measure of excessive private sector indebtedness. We find that a drop in output has an intensified impact on...

This paper studies the impact of uncertainty on the investors' reactions to news on macroeconomic statistics. With daily data on realized volatility and trading volume, we show that the investors in the US Treasury bond futures market react significantly stronger to US macroeconomic news in...