The paper explores the lending behaviour of financial intermediaries over the business cycle in the light of new theories emphasising agency costs. During a “credit crunch” loans from financial intermediaries are unobtainable at any price, so that credit may have a “causal” role in...

This paper examines the causes of asset price inflation and deflation in the Australian economy, their links with borrowing and recent problems that have arisen for banks’ balance sheets. Implications for the business cycle and monetary policy are drawn out in some detail. The difficulties...

This paper reports estimation and testing of general lag formulations of demand for M1, M3 and broad money (BM) using new data for the own rates of return on money. Own rate effects have become more important in the recently-deregulated financial environment. Own interest rates are found to be...

Since the crisis, even with massive support from governments and central banks, widespread regulatory changes and promises from bank executives to improve the governance of risk, the world continues to see failures of Globally Systemically Important Financial Institutions (G-SIFIs, like Dexia),...

Europe has been beset by an interrelated banking crisis and sovereign debt crisis. Bond spreads faced by Greece and Ireland, and to a lesser extent Portugal followed by Spain, have increased. This paper explores these issues from the perspective of financial markets, focusing mainly on the four...