Over time the financial sector has gained greater relevance in the economy, a phenomenon that some call financialisation. Contrary to the mainstream view, financialisation literature emphasises that risk management by financial corporations will not be socially efficient in a context of...

Since the 80’s, an increasing number of emergent countries have begun in the process of banking deregulation. This policy of liberalization of the financial systems was stimulated by the increase of the national debts and the inconsistency of the restrictions with the new economic and...

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 paper discusses the role of risk management and corporate governance as causal factors in the onset of the financial crisis. The downturn in the housing and mortgage markets precipitated the first phase of the financial crisis in August 2007 when the solvency of a number of large financial...

The economic governance of the Eurozone has been substantially improved in the last two years. However, the Eurozone still exhibits a dramatic coordination failure. Economic growth is being invoked, without anybody acting to make it realise. If a common macroeconomic stabilisation device was in...

Drawing on the recent theoretical literature on credit rating agencies (CRAs), we provide a simple model that nests the following frictions: conflicts of interest between CRAs and in¬vestors, regulatory reliance on ratings, investor naiveté and opacity in the rating process. These frictions...

This paper presents a proposal for a regulatory regime aimed at reducing systemic risk effectively and internationally. Systemic relevance should be internalized with a levy (or tax), the level of which (or tax rate) rises with the systemic relevance of an institution (Pigouvian taxation). The...

Die Vorstellung selbst-stabilisierender, zum Gleichgewicht tendierender Finanzmärkte, lange Zeit als Selbstverständlichkeit angesehen, ist durch die aktuelle Banken- und Kreditkrise in Frage gestellt. Trotz ausgefeilten Risikomanagements der Banken und einer an Basel II orientierten Aufsicht...

Heightened counterparty risk during the recent financial crisis has raised questions about the role clearinghouses play in global financial stability. Empirical identification of the effect of centralized clearing on counterparty risk is challenging because of the co-incidence of macro-economic...

This paper examines the effects of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation's (RFC) loan and preferred stock programs on bank failure rates in Michigan during the period 1932-1934, which includes the important Michigan banking crisis of early 1933 and its aftermath. Using a new database on...