The last two decades witnessed fundamental changes in the financial sectors ofindustrialized economies. Deregulation, the removal of entry barriers, the developmentof new financial products and services and technological change continue tospur structural changes in the financial industry. This...

Evidence on the interdependency between monetary policy and the state of thebanking system is scarce. We suggest an integrated micro-macro approach with twocore virtues. First, we measure the probability of bank distress directly at the banklevel. Second, we integrate a microeconomic hazard...

Competitive shocks can erode the customer base and thus the information pool of banks. Inferiorinformation quality also reduces the quality of borrowers and may lead to financial instability ofbanks and corporates if risk taking is excessive. Recent theories conjecture that banks can mitigatethe...

Information management is a core process in banking, in particular when lending to small, opaquefirms. But while a more intensive use of information technology (IT) can enhance informationmanagement, it is also costly. Merely increasing IT expenditure may thus not be a panacea tooptimize...