This paper analyses the impact of public disclosure of banks’ risk exposure on banks’ risk taking incentives and its implications in terms of soundness of the banking system. We find that, when banks have a complete control over the volatility of their loan portfolio, public disclosure...

We estimate the structural parameters of a quantitative banking model featuring maturity transformation and endogenous failures in the presence of undiversifiable background risk and regulatory constraints. Pervasive balance sheet cross-sectional heterogeneity can be rationalized with...

We present a model of bank passivity and regulatory failure. Banks with low equity positions have more incentives to be passive in liquidating bad loans. We show that they tend to hide distress from regulatory authorities and are ready to offer a higher rate of interest in order to attract...

This paper uses survey data for 60,000 households from 29 transition economies in 2006 and 2010 to explore how the use of banking services is related to household characteristics, as well as to bank ownership, deposit insurance and creditor protection. At the household level we find that the...

Today’s regulatory rules, especially the easily-manipulated measures of regulatory capital, have led to costly bank failures. We design a robust regulatory system such that (i) bank losses are credibly borne by the private sector (ii) systemically important institutions cannot collapse...

This paper uses survey data for 29,000 households from 29 transition economies to explore how the use of banking services is related to household characteristics, bank ownership structure and the development of the financial infrastructure. At the household level we find that the holding of a...