Analyzing ongoing changes in the design of regulatory and supervisory authorities over the banking and financial industry in Europe, this comprehensive Handbook pays particular attention to the role of national central banks, the new financial supervisory authorities and the European Central...

The systemic risk potential in the European banking market has increased. Hence, the following questions emerge: Is there a need for a truly European supervisory framework? And, how should a potential European supervisor be organised? This paper evaluates the existing supervisory framework as...

This paper attempts to answer the question whether the threat of systemic risk in banking exists only on a national or on a European level. Following De Nicolo and Kwast (2001), mean rolling-window correlations between bank stock returns are used as a measure for interdependencies among European...

Lending and borrowing interest rates are often slow to adjust to changing capital market conditions. This paper argues that national differences of the pass-through speed in the EU can be regarded as a retail-oriented indicator of financial integration. Based on an ECB database the speed of...

With the establishment of the Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht (BaFin) in May 2002 Germany followed the trend towards integrated financial supervision. The main reason for unification of supervision is the growing integration of financial sectors leading to the blurring of...

This paper attempts to assess the Europe-wide systemic risk in banking. We employ a bivariate GARCH model to estimate conditional correlations between European bank stock indices. These correlations are used as an indication for the interdependencies amongst the banking business in Europe and...

With the introduction of the Euro, a single European money market has emerged. Further wholesale financial markets are considered to be highly integrated within the European Union. However, integration in retail financial markets is less advanced. For measuring financial market integration this...

This paper discusses the incentive conflicts that arise in banking supervision in the EU in a principal-agent framework, where the regulator is the agent and the taxpayers is the principal. The regulatory agent in addition to maintaining financial stability (the objective of the principal) may...

The system of banking supervision in Europe is undergoing substantial reforms. According to Stigler?s capture theory regulation often follows the preferences of producers. Therefore, the interests of the financial industry might be a major driving force for the ongoing supervisory reform debate....

The internet revolution is said to foster integration of the market for financial services, since consumers are able to shop around at all companies worldwide and firms can easily offer their services on the internet at a minimum of distribution cost. However, the European market for online...