We investigate bank opaqueness by looking at the frequency of large, negative, market-adjusted returns (crashes). We analyze crashes on a sample of US stocks traded in the 1990-2007 period. Jin and Myers (2006) predict that opaqueness coupled with weak investors' protection generate more...

We evaluate the impact of government ownership on the issuer and individual ratings of a sample of 224 large European banks over the 1999-2004 period. Individual ratings differ from traditional ones in that they focus on banks' economic and financial conditions and do not take into account any...

We use cross-country data on a sample of large European banks to evaluate the impact of government ownership on bank risk. We distinguish between default risk (likelihood of creditors' losses) and operating risk (likelihood of negative equity). Our analysis is based on the joint use of issuer...