What factors cause banks to lend to the private sector in a bank-based financial system like the ones in place in Europe? In this paper we compare a traditional demand oriented model to a non-traditional capital budgeting model of bank lending based on movements in the equity cost of capital for...

Based on a survey among French engineers, I find that employees in the financial sector are highly paid. I also find large pay differences within the sector and that a large share of compensation is variable. I consider three potential models accounting for these facts: a model of superstars...

We study the liquidity allocation among European banks around the Lehman Brothers’ insolvency using a novel dataset of all interbank loans settled via the Eurosystem’s payment system TARGET2. Following the Lehman insolvency, lenders in the overnight segment become sensitive to counterparty...

This paper presents the main features of macroprudential policy with a focus on the French case. We first recall the ultimate objective of this policy, which is to prevent and to mitigate systemic risk, i.e. the risk of “widespread disruptions to the provision of financial services that have...

Using US banks' balance sheet data, this paper examines the responsiveness of net interoffice accounts, that is, the net liabilities of parent offices due to their foreign-related offices, to variations in different types of domestic funding. Furthermore, it investigates whether the relationship...

This paper presents a microstructure model for the unsecured overnight euro money market, similar to that developed for stock markets by Easley and O'Hara (1992). More specifically, this paper studies the role of heterogeneity in the population of banks participating on this market, and the...

This paper studies the scope for cross-border contagion in the European banking sector using true bilateral exposure data. Using a model of sequential solvency and liquidity cascades in networks, we analyze geographical patterns of loss propagation from 2008 to 2012. We study the distribution of...

We exploit the Eurosystem’s longer-term refinancing operations (LTROs) of 2011-2012 to analyze the effects that a large provision of central bank liquidity to banks has on the credit supply to firms. We control for credit demand by examining firms that borrow from several banks, in addition to...

This article analyses the dispersion of risk weights for large corporate portfolios and identifies the sources of dispersion among banks in terms of the Basel risk parameters. The analysis focuses on loans granted by 5 large French banking groups to large corporates operating in France and rated...

We study the real effect on banks’ credit supply after a negative liquidity shock. Controlling for demand effects, we take advantage of the exogenous international interbank market freeze in 2007-2008 to assess the causal relation between French banks’ liquidity risk and their lending. We...