The main purpose of this paper is to investigate macroeconomic variables that are predictive of banking crisis. We focus on selecting variables that have high predictive power to discriminate between two groups of countries: the sound and the distressed. We consider a sample of 50 emerging...

We analyze the main forces affecting financial system pro-cyclicality (the fact that developments in the financial sector can amplify business cycle fluctuations). We first review some major structural developments in financial markets that may influence pro-cyclicality and that have been...

In collateralized lending markets haircuts are used to protect the lender from the risk of loss. An important cross-sectional determinant of haircuts is the systematic risk profile of the collateral, which describes the rate at which the collateral value is expected to decline in adverse market...

Theoretical and empirical research has shown that a sound and effective financial system is critical for economic development and growth. The financial system, however, is also subject to boom and bust cycles and fragility, with negative repercussions for the real economy. Further, the political...

The recent financial turmoil has triggered a credit crunch whereby illiquid, but not necessarily insolvent, banks were not able to borrow money and were forced to be liquidated, bought or bailed out. A response to this problem has been contingent convertible bonds (or CoCo bonds), which are...

This paper documents the existence of primary dealers’ losses in Treasury bond markets and investigates how these losses a¤ect dealers’ market value. Using a novel data set that tracks more than 2,350 primary-to-secondary transactions, we find that bond losses for primary dealers are...

There is a growing consensus that the U.S. government programs of bailing out the large financial institutions is deeply flawed, and that there are much better ones available. The programs of the U.S. for the purchase of toxic assets potentially transfer trillions of dollars from the US taxpayer...

On May 11-12, 2011, SUERF, the Belgian Financial Forum, the Brussels Finance Institute and the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) jointly organised the 29th SUERF Colloquium New paradigms in money and finance? The papers included in this SUERF Study are based on contributions to the...

We analyze the design of bailout regimes when investment is distorted by a toomany-to-fail problem. The first-best allocation equalizes benefits from more banks investing in high-return projects with endogenously higher systemic risk due to more banks failing simultaneously. A standard bailout...