We investigate whether sovereign bond holdings of European banks are determined by a risk-return trade-off. Using data between 2011 and 2018 for 75 European banks, we confirm that banks exhibited risk-taking behavior during the sovereign debt crisis, e.g., due to moral suasion. In the period...

We explore the impact of concentration in the banking markets on the capital structure of publicly quoted non-financial firms in the EU15 over the period 1997- 2005, an era marked by intensive merger activity in the banking sector. Our main finding is a negative and significant relationship...

In this paper we investigate whether or not observed changes in the composition of the sovereign bond portfolios of European banks are determined by a risk-return trade-off. Banks have been shown to disproportionally invest in bonds issued by their domestic sovereign, causing a negative...

In this paper we empirically analyze the determinants of bank default risk (measured by the banks' CDS spreads) for European banks during the period 2008-2018. We examine the effect of (1) bank business model characteristics, (2) sovereign default risk and (3) ECB monetary policy. We disentangle...

This paper investigates the effectiveness of macroprudential policy to contain the systemic risk of European banks between 2000 and 2017. We use a new database (MaPPED) collected by experts at the ECB and national central banks with narrative information on a broad range of instruments which are...