How can industrial policies lead to bank distress? In the 1890s, when undergoing rapid state-led industrialisation, the Russian Empire grew by foreign capital inflows into national debt and by state procurement of industrial output. Concurrently, state policies incentivised, but did not compel,...

Why do some banks fail in financial crises while others survive? This article answers this question by analysing the effect of the Dutch financial crisis of the 1920s on 142 banks, of which 33 failed. We find that choices of balance sheet composition and product market strategy made in the...

For well over a decade many observers had warned that the European Union was ill-prepared in case of a financial storm because its market integration far outpaced its policy integration. This situation was well known to policy-makers but it was hoped that financial crises would wait until policy...

This paper develops a simple model of an international lender of last resort (ILOLR). The world economy consists of many open economies, each with a banking system and a central bank operating under a pegged exchange rate regime. The fragility of the banking system and the limited ability of a...

This paper analyzes the evolution of bank funding structures in the run up to the global financial crisis and studies the implications for financial stability, exploiting a bank-level dataset that covers about 11,000 banks in the U.S. and Europe during 2001?09. The results show that banks with...

"In the words of Milton, I would say that regulation should be designed to enable financial institutions to be 'sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.'" ; Remarks before the Cato Institute's 27th Annual Monetary Conference, Washington, D.C., November 19, 2009

Remarks at the SW Graduate School of Banking 53rd Annual Keynote Address and Banquet, Dallas, Texas, June 3, 2010 ; "Let me make my sentiments clear: It is my view that, by propping up deeply troubled big banks, authorities have eroded market discipline in the financial system."