The government support of financial firms through direct assistance and programs to improve market liquidity during the worldwide financial crisis of 2007-2008 is unprecedented since the Great Depression. Whether a given firm is ex-ante ‘Too Big To Fail' in the mind of government agents is not...

The “too big to fail” institutions are a widespread concern, especially in the financial world. The author aims to determine if banking markets have a tendency in creating “too big to fail” institutions or if they created randomly, by uncorrelated determinants. The importance of the...

When policy makers have limited commitment power, self-fulfilling bank runs can arise as an equilibrium phenomenon. We study how such banking panics unfold in a version of the Diamond and Dybvig (1983) model. A run in this setting is necessarily partial, with only some depositors participating....

This paper studies how financial intermediation varies across banks. Bank size is a first-order determinant of banks' capital structure in the cross-section. Largest banks have the lowest capital-to-asset ratio and the lowest ratio of Tier-1 capital against risk-weighted assets. These large...

This paper documents how traditional and shadow banks interacted with one another during the 2007 financial crisis, when both assets and liabilities flew from shadow to traditional banks. To rationalize their behavior, we propose a simple model which demonstrates the symbiotic coexistence and...

The purpose of the "counter-cyclical capital buffer" (buffer) is to dampen procyclicality in the financial system, absorb capital losses and prevent a credit crunch during recessions. In this paper, a stylized analytical expression for optimal buffer policy is presented. Results are derived...

In the wake of the global financial crisis that erupted in 2008, there has been extensive commentary and regulatory focus on the 'Too Big to Fail' issue. In this paper, we survey the proposed solutions and regulatory initiatives that have been undertaken. We conduct a longitudinal analysis of...

The present study examines the impact of the current fiscal crisis in the euro area on the Greek banking system and the measures adopted to preserve its stability. It is divided into 3 Sections:(a) Section 1 contains an overview of the causes of the recent (2007-2009) international financial...

The present paper examines the impact of the current fiscal crisis in the euro area on the Greek banking system and the institutional, regulatory and supervisory measures adopted to preserve its stability. It is divided into 2 Sections:(a) Section 1 deals with the differentiated impact of the...