This paper presents evidence of banks using accounting discretion to overstate the value of distressed assets. In particular, we show that the stock market applies far greater discounts to a bank’s real estate loans and mortgage-backed securities than are implicit in the book values of these...

Abstract: We analyze the impact of the countercyclical capital buffers held by banks on the supply of credit to firms and their subsequent performance. Countercyclical ‘dynamic’ provisioning that is unrelated to specific loan losses was introduced in Spain in 2000, and modified in 2005 and...

We study the functioning and possible breakdown of the interbank market due to asymmetric information about counterparty risk. We allow for privately observed shocks to the distribution of asset risk across banks after the initial portfolio of liquid and illiquid investments is chosen. Our model...

This paper outlines some issues regarding the interaction of independent fiscal authorities and one central bank in the European monetary union.It points out the possibilities for coordination failures,ranging everywhere from potentially excessive deficits and free-riding problems to...

This paper studies the actions of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank during the financial crisis from 2007-2012. Whereas the first two parts concentrate on asset bubble theory and the development of the housing bubble, the third part rates the performance of the Federal Reserve during the crisis. The...

This paper analyses financial crises from a theoretical point of view. For this it reviews what different schools of economic thought have to say about financial crises. It examines first the approaches that regard financial crises as a disturbing factor of a generally stable real economy...

This paper tests whether an increase in insured deposits causes banks to become more risky. We use variation introduced by the U.S. Emergency Economic Stabilization Act in October 2008, which increased the deposit insurance coverage from $100,000 to $250,000 per depositor and bank. For some...

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, the ECB has experienced an unprecedented deterioration in the level of trust. This raises the question as to what factors determine trust in central banking. We use a unique cross-country dataset which includes a rich set of socio-economic...

In this study, the main purpose is to analyze the factors that stimulate the probability of financial crises. The period of analysis covers the years of 1970-2008, thereby including the impact of recent global financial crisis. The analysis aims to make a comparison for the developed and...