Measuring bank performance solely on the basis of profitability conveys significant information about past performance, but may provide little information about expectations for future performance. Therefore, this paper relies on a much broader definition of performance and introduces a...

In two-sided markets, one widely observes skewed pricing strategies, in which the price mark-up is much higher on one side of the market than the other. Using a simple model of two-sided markets, we show that, under constant elasticity of demand, skewed pricing is indeed pro?t maximizing. The...

Mullainathan and Shleifer (2002) argue that there are two types of media bias. One bias, called ideology, reflects a news outlet's desire to affect reader opinions in a particular direction. The second bias, referred to as spin, reflects the outlet's attempt to simply create a memorable story....

This paper investigates the determinants of commercial banks' own internal capital targets and potential sensitivity of these levels to the business cycle . World-wide results make clear that banks' own risk is only slightly dependent on the business cycle. Banks tend to hold substantial capital...

This paper studies ECB and Bundesbank communication on monetary policyduring the first years of the European Economic and Monetary Union. We study whether statements by different (groups of) central bankers have been contradictory and whether differences have diminished over time. We find that...

During World War II nazi-Germany looted 145.000 kg of Dutch monetary gold. Eventually the Netherlands recovered nearby half of the stolen gold.