Using household survey data, we document evidence of a loosening of credit standards in Euro area countries that experienced a property price boom-and-bust cycle. Borrowers in these countries exhibited significantly higher loan-to-value (LTV) and loan-to-income (LTI) ratios in the run up to the...

Boom-bust cycles in real estate markets have been major factors in systemic financial crises and therefore need to be at the forefront of macroprudential policy. The geographically differentiated nature of real estate market fluctuations implies that these policies need to be granular across...

At the peak of the Global Financial Crisis in fall 2008, each of the 27 member states in the European Union (EU) set many of its own banking rules and had its own bank regulators and supervisors. The crisis made the shortcomings of this decentralized approach obvious, and since its formation in...

Lehman’s U.S. broker-dealer, Lehman Brothers Inc. (LBI), was excluded from the parent company’s bankruptcy filing on September 15, 2008, because it was thought that the solvent subsidiary might be able to wind down its affairs in a normal fashion. However, the force of the parent’s demise...

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc., the fourth-largest U.S. investment bank, sought Chapter 11 protection, initiating the largest bankruptcy proceeding in U.S. history. The demise of the 164-year old firm was a seminal event in the global financial crisis. Under the direction...

Ireland went from being the poorest member of the European Economic Community in 1973 to enjoying the second highest per-capita income among European countries by 2007.  Healthy growth in the 1990s eventually gave way to a concentrated boom in property-related lending in the 2000s.  The growth...

All public companies in the European Union, including Ireland’s major banks, were required to adopt IAS 39 for their annual accounting periods beginning on or after January 1, 2005.  Under the “incurred loss” model of IAS 39, banks could set aside reserves for loan losses only when...

Investment banks are in the business of taking calculated risks. Risk management infrastructure facilitates the safe pursuit of profits and the balancing of associated risks. By 2006, Lehman Brothers was thought to have a very respectable risk management system, and even its regulator, the...

In December 2011, the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer of JPMorgan Chase (JPM) instructed the bank’s Chief Investment Office to reduce the size of its Synthetic Credit Portfolio (SCP) during 2012, so that JPM could decrease its Risk-Weighted Assets as the bank prepared to...

From the earliest efforts to mandate the amount of capital banks must maintain, regulators have grappled with how best to accomplish this task. Until the 1980s, regulation had been based largely on discretion and judgment. In the wake of two bank failures, the central bank governors of the G10...