This paper contrasts the recent European initiatives on regulating corporate groups with alternative approaches to the phenomenon. In doing so it pays particular regard to the German codified law on corporate groups as the polar opposite to the piecemeal approach favored by E.U. legislation. It...

This essay argues that at least some of the financial stability concerns associated with shadow banking can be addressed by an approach to financial regulation that imports its functional foundations more vigorously into the interpretation and implementation of existing rules. It shows that the...

This paper analyzes the evolving architecture for the prudential supervision of banks in the euro area. It is primarily concerned with the likely effectiveness of the SSM as a regime that intends to bolster financial stability in the steady state. By using insights from the political economy of...

This paper analyzes the effects of different sequences of remedies on the incentives of sellers to invest in product quality and on the probability of contract termination. Despite ambitious efforts by the EU to harmonize national legislation, sales laws still differ significantly in Europe. The...

The European Union has a tradition of national securities laws significantly differing from each other. Regulatory idiosyncrasies largely remain today despite recent efforts aiming at more comprehensive harmonisation. In addition, in important respects, the current conflict of laws rules...

We offer a theory of the "boundary of the firm" that is tailored to banking, as it builds on a single inefficiency arising from risk-shifting and as it takes into account both interbank lending as an alternative to integration and the role of possibly insured deposit funding. Amongst others, it...

In its meeting on 6 September 2012, the Governing Council of the ECB took decisions on a number of technical features regarding the Eurosystem's outright transactions in secondary sovereign bond markets (OMT). This decision was challenged in the German Federal Constitutional Court (GFCC) by a...

The Treaty of Maastricht imposed the strict obligation on the European Union (EU) to establish an economic and monetary union, now Article 3(4) TEU. This economic and monetary union is, however, not designed as a separate entity but as an integral part of the EU. The single currency was to...

Savings accounts are owned by most households, but little is known about the performance of households' investments. We create a unique dataset by matching information on individual savings accounts from the DNB Household Survey with market data on account-specific interest rates and...