In this paper, we have highlighted the potential implications of a move in the U.S. to T+1 on European financial institutions. We explain that while many European institutions feel that they are sheltered from this move, those that undertake trading activities in the U.S. will find that they...

The Italian and German banking systems shared similar characteristics early in the 1990s but have evolved in different directions since then: Italy privatized its publicly-owned banks while Germany has maintained a large share of state-owned savings banks. Contemporaneously, banks in both...

The financial turmoil, which began in the summer of 2007, has developed into one of the most disruptive financial and economic crisis experienced by the world in many decades. At the root of the crisis we find a combination of macroeconomic imbalances and microeconomic factors, including market...

In this paper we analyze the impact of government and private ownership of banks on firms’ probability to innovate. We estimate firms’ decision to innovate and their selection of a main lender for a sample of 9000 German manufacturing companies. Since these two decisions may be...

This paper examines the power of different contractual mechanisms to influence an originator's choice of costly effort to screen borrowers when the originator plans to securitise its loans. The analysis focuses on three potential mechanisms: the originator holds a "vertical slice", or share of...

The solutions of the financial crisis in Europe must necessarily involve the support to banks by governments and the coordinated action among supervisory authorities. But an important role can be played by a stronger cooperation between a small number of European countries who have common...

Banks have a key role to overcome the crisis, conciliating profitability with support of healthy companies, strengthening capital, improving corporate governance, remuneration systems and transparency towards clients. The reform of global supervision, with the role of Fsb, will allow to obtain...

This paper reviews recent theoretical and empirical studies investigating how both bank technology and organization shape bank-borrower interactions. We refer to two related concepts for bank technology. First, the technologies banks employ in loan granting decisions and second, the advances in...

The financial sector is heavily regulated in order to prevent financial crises. The recent crisis showed how ineffective this regulation and other types of government intervention were in achieving this aim. We argue that the crisis was primarily caused by housing price bubbles. These occurred...

Starting from October 2009, redemption of government securities was transferred to the real-time gross settlement system (VIBER) developed for the settlement of time-critical transfers and operated by MNB. This step ensures that the settlement of redemption is performed in the clearing system...