"We study the nature of systemic sovereign credit risk using CDS spreads for the U.S. Treasury, individual U.S. states, and major European countries. Using a multifactor affine framework that allows for both systemic and sovereign-specific credit shocks, we find that there is considerable...

The World Financial Crisis has shaken the fundamentals of international banking and triggered a downward spiral of asset prices. To prevent a further meltdown of markets, governments have intervened massively through rescues measures aimed at recapitalizing banks and through liquidity support....

If the technological revolution which has taken place over the past decades has lowered information costs and if information costs increase in distance, distance should - ceteris paribus - become less important in determining international bank lending. We are using a dataset on assets and...

The German financial system is characterized by lower degrees of penetration by foreign commercial banks and of (bank) disintermedation than, for instance, that of the United States. These differences between the two countries could be attributed to the fact that universal banking in Germany...