Lessons from the evolution of payment systems in Europe, Japan, and the United States provide a useful guide for emerging market economies in improving their own payment arrangements to foster economic growth. Some payment arrangements are more efficient than others in promoting economic growth...

The paper analyses the relationship between deposit insurance, debt-holder monitoring, bank charter values, and risk taking for European banks. Utilising cross-sectional and time series variation in the existence of deposit insurance schemes in the EU, we find that the establishment of explicit...

The paper analyses the relationship between deposit insurance, debt-holder monitoring, and risk taking. In a stylised banking model we show that deposit insurance may reduce moral hazard, if deposit insurance credibly leaves out non-deposit creditors. Testing the model using EU bank level data...

This paper analyses cross-border contagion in a sample of European banks from January 1994 to January 2003. We use a multinomial logit model to estimate the number of banks in a given country that experience a large shock on the same day (coexceedances) as a function of variables measuring...

This paper provides an assessment of the degree of integration in banking services in the euro area. It diverges from the typical analysis on integration in the financial sector by focusing on the main financial products and services provided by banks to corporate and personal clients rather...

A paper presented at the October 2003 conference quot;Beyond Pillar 3 in International Banking Regulation: Disclosure and Market Discipline of Financial Firms,quot; cosponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business at Columbia...

The social cost of a payment system comprises between 1% to 1.5% of GDP. This cost can be reduced if non-cash payments shift from paper to electronics since the cost of an electronic payment is estimated to be from one-third to one-half that of a paper-based transaction. We examine the use of...

We analyse EU banks' equity market-based distances-to-default and subordinated bond spreads in the secondary market in relation to their capability of signalling a material weakening in banks' financial condition. Both indicators are demonstrated to be complete indicators of bank fragility,...

We analyse the ability to the distance-to-default and bond spreads to signal bank fragility. We show that both indicators are complete and unbiased and that spreads are non-linear in the probability of bank default. We empirically test these properties in a sample of EU banks. We find leading...

This paper analyses the impact that firms' financial position has on investment decisions using panel data from a large sample of non-financial corporations (around 120,000 firms) in six euro area countries (Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain). The results indicate that...