The year-long consultations on Basel II mirror the international popularity of capital requirements as a regulatory instrument. Yet, the impact of capital requirements on banks' behavior is not fully understood. The aim of this study is to contribute to this understanding by answering the...

This paper analyzes the effect of the business cycle on the regulatory capital buffer of German savings and cooperative banks in the period 1993-2003. The capital buffer is found to fluctuate anticyclically over the business cycle. The fluctuation is stronger for savings banks than for...

This paper analyzes the effect of the business cycle on the regulatory capital buffer of German savings and cooperative banks in the period 19932003. The capital buffer is found to fluctuate anticyclically over the business cycle. The fluctuation is stronger for savings banks than for...

This paper analyzes the effect of the business cycle on the regulatory capital buffer of German savings and cooperative banks in the period 1993-2003. The capital buffer is found to fluctuate anticyclically over the business cycle. The fluctuation is stronger for savings banks than for...

The year-long consultations on Basel II mirror the international popularity of capital requirements as a regulatory instrument. Yet, the impact of capital requirements on banks' behavior is not fully understood. The aim of this study is to contribute to this understanding by answering the...

This lecture is a tour d'horizon of the financial crisis aimed at extracting lessons for future financial regulation. It combines normative recommendations based on conventional welfare economics with positive assessments of the kind of measures likely to be adopted based on political economy...

This paper analyzes the effects of different labor market institutions on inflation and output volatility. The eurozone offers an unprecedented experiment for this exercise: since 1999, no national monetary policies have been implemented that could account for volatility differences across...