This paper evaluates the impact of the March 2020 European Central Bank recommendation that banks do not pay dividends or buy back shares on their market values. It documents a causal negative impact on bank share prices of around 7% during the two weeks following its announcement. The...

Banking supervisors worldwide recognise the pressing need to harness frontier technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), particularly machine learning (ML), to enhance their efficiency and analytical capabilities. The European Central Bank (ECB) has similarly acknowledged the...

The current economic policy discussion on financial integration in the European Union concentrates on cross-border mergers. We study the impact of cross-border lending in a theoretical model where banks acquire either hard or soft information on borrowing firms and predict that the closer firms...

This policy letter provides an overview of the strengths, weaknesses, risks and opportunities of the upcoming comprehensive risk assessment, a euro area-wide evaluation of bank balance sheets and business models. If carried out properly, the 2014 comprehensive assessment will lead the euro area...