Has economic research been helpful in dealing with the financial crises of the early 2000s? On the whole, the answer is negative, although there are bright spots. Economists have largely failed to predict both crises, largely because most of them were not analytically equipped to understand...

Rapid development of the domestic private sector in communist China and Vietnam has been offered as evidence against a large literature that claims a solid legal infrastructure is required for the financial sector to contribute to economic development. One component of the counterargument holds...

This study analyses the impact of political factors on commercial banks' behaviour and performance in 11 CEE countries between 1992 and 2008. Using a unique dataset of commercial banks and electoral factors, we find that state-owned banks show significantly smaller net interest income ratios...

Has economic research been helpful in dealing with the financial crises of the early 2000s? On the whole, the answer is negative, although there are bright spots. Economists have largely failed to predict both crises, largely because most of them were not analytically equipped to understand...

Has economic research been helpful in dealing with the financial crises of the early 2000s? On the whole, the answer is negative, although there are bright spots. Economists have largely failed to predict both crises, largely because most of them were not analytically equipped to understand...

This study examines the impact of political factors on the behaviour and performance of commercial banks in 11 Central European countries from 1995 to 2008. Using a unique dataset of commercial banks and political factors, we find that state-owned banks report significantly smaller net interest...

Should banks be diversified or focused? Does diversification indeed lead to enhanced performance and, therefore, greater safety for banks, as traditional portfolio and banking theory would suggest? This paper investigates the link between banks? profitability (ROA) and their portfolio...

Ongoing financial innovation and greater information availability increase the tradability of bank assets and reduce banks' dependence on individual bank managers as private information in the lending process declines. In this paper we argue that this has two effects on banks, with opposing...

We argue that contingent convertible capital (CoCo-Bonds) might have perverse risk-taking incentives for banks (asset substitution problem) and discourage them from investing in positive NPV projects and issuing new equity in times of crisis (debt overhang problem). Whenever the conversion price...

In the wake of the recent financial crisis, many governments extended public guarantees to banks. We take advantage of a natural experiment, in which long-standing public guarantees were removed for a set of German banks following a lawsuit, to identify the real effects of these guarantees on...