We track direct public interventions and public holdings in 1,114 financial institutions over the period 2007-17 in 37 countries based on publicly available information. We use aggregate official data to validate this new dataset and estimate the fiscal impact of interventions, including the...

This paper argues that in the European Union (EU) deposit insurance funds are too difficult to use in bank resolution and too easy to use outside resolution. The paper proposes reforms in three areas for the effective management of bank failures of small and medium-sized banks in the European...

This paper examines the international portfolio flows of European Union. Our analysis includes three dimensions: (1) the level of countries' portfolio investment concentration (those who invest evenly among counterparties versus those who invest more heavily in some counterparties); (2) the...

The private non-financial sector in Europe is facing increased challenges in meeting its debt servicing obligation. In response, governments are revisiting legal tools and—in some cases—institutional arrangements to deal with over-indebtedness. For households, where the problem in some...

Large fiscal financing needs, both in advanced and emerging market economies, have often been met by borrowing heavily from domestic banks. As public debt approached sustainability limits in a number of countries, however, high bank exposure to sovereign risk created a fragile inter-dependence...

We use the rise and dispersion of sovereign spreads to tell the story of the emergence and escalation of financial tensions within the eurozone. This process evolved through three stages. Following the onset of the Subprime crisis in July 2007, spreads rose but mainly due to common global...

The financial crisis, originated from the collapse of US housing markets in 2008, reverberates around the world. Its destructive force was felt nowhere more keenly than Western Europe. Indeed, it continues to mire in financial volatility as the debt problem contagiously spreads around the...

This paper investigates the degree of bank competition in the euro area, the U.S. and U.K. before and after the recent financial crisis, and revisits the issue whether the introduction of EMU and the euro have had any impact on bank competition. The results suggest that the level of bank...