Beginning in 2000, Japan's postal saving system experienced a rapid outflow of funds as a large number of 10-Year Postal Saving Certificates were maturing. This paper exploits this episode as a natural experiment in order to investigate the effects of a government-owned depository institution on...

This paper examines the broader effects of the U.S. financial crisis on global lending to retail customers. In particular we examine retail bank lending in Germany using a unique dataset of German savings banks during the period 2006 through 2008 for which we have the universe of loan...

We study how relationships between firms and banks evolved between during the Twentieth century in Britain. We document and explain a remarkable transition from single to multiple firm-bank relationships during the last twenty years of the sample period. Larger, global, or transparent companies...

In light of recent events, there have been proposals to establish a theory of financial system risk management analogous to portfolio risk management. One important aspect of portfolio risk management is risk attribution, the process of decomposing a risk measure into components that are...

We examine the use of credit default swaps (CDS) in the U.S. mutual fund industry. We find that among the largest 100 corporate bond funds the use of CDS has increased from 20% in 2004 to 60% in 2008. Among CDS users, the average size of CDS positions (measured by their notional values)...

This paper demonstrates that liquidity risk as measured by the covariation of fund returns with unexpected changes in aggregate liquidity is an important determinant in the cross- section of hedge-fund returns. The results show that funds that significantly load on liquidity risk subsequently...

I develop methods that produce consistent estimates of the Vasicek-Basel IRB (VAIRB) credit risk model parameters. I apply these methods to Moody's data on corporate defaults over the period 1920–2008 and assess the model fit and construct hypothesis tests using bootstrap methods. The results...

This paper investigates the effect of bank failures on economic growth using data from 1900 to 1930, a period that predates active government stabilization policies and includes periods of banking system distress that are not coincident with recessions. Using both VAR and a...

We examine how managerial incentives affect acquisition decisions in the banking industry. We find that higher pay-for-performance sensitivity (PPS) leads to value-enhancing acquisitions. Banks whose CEOs have higher PPS have significantly better abnormal stock returns around the acquisition...

We provide causal evidence that adverse capital shocks to banks affect their borrowers' performance negatively. We use an exogenous shock to the U.S. banking system during the Russian crisis of Fall 1998 to separate the effect of borrowers' demand of credit from the supply of credit by the...