Interest rates in many advanced economies have been low for almost a decade now and are often expected to remain so. This creates challenges for banks. Using a sample of 3,385 banks from 47 countries from 2005 to 2013, we find that a one percentage point interest rate drop implies an 8 basis...

There are lingering concerns about the health of European banks and extensive market commentary about whether post-crisis regulatory reforms in Europe have adequately addressed these concerns. In June 2012, European policymakers released the broad outlines of a proposal for a "European banking...

To test for private information leakages from government to corporate executives, we exploitthe 2008-2010 bank bailouts after Lehman's failure using insider trading and political connections.In politically-connected banks, insider buying during the pre-TARP period is associatedwith increases in...