We study the dependence between the downside risk of European banks and insurers. Since the downside risk of banks and insurers differs, an interesting question from a supervisory point of view is the risk reduction that derives from diversification within large banks and financial...

The financial crisis had a major impact on the banking landscape. As troubled banks were rescued by their home country, the question arises what happened to cross-border banking. Our findings indicate that cross-border banking remains strong within Europe; the Single Market in Banking is still in...

In this paper we propose country-specific and systemic metrics that allow quantifying whether cross-border banking in a country (or region) takes a desirable form. Applying these metrics to the EU countries, we find that the countries with the largest banking centers, UK and Germany, are well...

European Union (EU) countries offer a unique experience of financial regulatory and supervisory integration, complementing various other European integration efforts following the Second World War. Financial regulatory and supervisory integration was a very slow process before 2008, despite...

The handling of cross-border banks in difficulties gives rise to coordination problems between home and host countries. Goodhart and Schoenmaker (2006, 2009) have suggested to implement an ex ante burden sharing mechanism to overcome the co-ordination failure of national authorities. While...

The euro is widely believed to be a currency without a sovereign state. To make the euro a stable currency, many commentators recommend a move to a federal fiscal Europe by issuing eurobonds or levying European taxes. By contrast, we argue in this paper that the EU and the euro area member...

To measure the size of the banking system, a country's banking assets divided by the country's gross domestic product (GDP) is commonly applied as a yardstick. But is the banking assets to GDP ratio an appropriate yardstick? This paper shows that comparing a country's banking sector only by...

Since the European Council of June 2012, ‘Banking Union' is a key item for the EU's policy agenda. This contribution outlines the state of the policy debate – identifying the elements that are missing but important from a theoretical viewpoint. We make concrete proposals as to how the...

If the UK cannot secure a ‘Norway' deal and stay within the internal market after Brexit, the UK will lose passporting rights for EU financial services and access to euro clearing and settlement, both of which make London attractive as a financial centre. A substantial part of the UK's...