Intervention has taken different forms in different countries and periods of time. Moreover, recent episodes showed that in front of an imminent crisis, the promise of no interventions made by governments is barely credible. In this paper we address the problem of resolving banking crises from the government perspective, taking into account the fact that preventing banking crises is crucial for the government. In addition, we introduce the moral hazard problem, inherent in the banking system, and consider the interaction between regulation, policy measures and banks’ behavior. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that compares different policy plans to resolve banking crises in an environment where insufficiently capitalized banks have incentives to take risk, and the government has to decide whether to provide public services or impede crises. We show that when individuals highly value public services then the best policy in terms of welfare is to apply the tax on early withdrawals, as the government can transfer those taxes to the whole population by investing in public services (although at some cost). Conversely, when individuals assign a low value to consuming public services, recapitalization is the dominant policy. Finally, when the probability of a crisis is sufficiently high, capital requirements should be used.

Can leaders’ names have an impact on their compensation and firm performance? We reason about how and why certain leaders’ names are related to higher financial compensation, yet unrelated to their ability to lead a company and thus firm performance. Based on a sample of 6132 CEOs working at large, publicly traded (S&P 1500) firms, we find that CEOs who have more “fluent” names—or names associated with feelings of cognitive ease (e.g., shorter length, more common)—obtain greater financial as well as non-financial perks, even though they are no more competent. Therefore, the study looks beyond the influence of sex- and race-typed names to help explain the observed mismatch between top management compensation and firm performance. We discuss the theoretical implication of this study for the cognitive bias and discrimination literature, and managerial implications for strategic human resource management.

Bank capital requirements reduce the probability of bank failure and help mitigate taxpayers’ sharing in the losses that result from bank failures. Under Basel III, direct capital requirements are supplemented with liquidity requirements. Our results suggest that liquidity provisions of banks are connected to bank capital and that changes in liquidity indirectly affect the capital structure of financial institutions. Liquidity appears to be another instrument for adjusting bank capital structure beyond just capital requirements. Consistent with Diamond and Rajan (2005), we find that liquidity and capital should be considered jointly for promoting financial stability.

We investigate the influence of the institutional environment on bank capital ratios. Using a sample of 160 banks operating in the Middle East and North Africa region for the period 2004–2014, we find that, when stock markets have little presence, institutional variables significantly affect risk-weighted regulatory capital ratios but not leverage ratios. Conversely, when stock markets are more developed, only leverage ratios are influenced by institutional factors. Our results also indicate that institutional variables affect non-weighted equity-to-asset ratios of banks that are listed on a stock exchange. Our findings contribute to the bank capital structure literature and have important policy implications for developing countries.

We consider the provision of deposit insurance as the outcome of a non-cooperative policy game between nations. Nations compete for deposits in order to protect their banking systems from the destabilizing impact of potential capital flight. Policies are chosen to attract depositors who optimally respond to the expected return to deposits, which depends on both stability and deposit insurance levels. We identify both defensive and beggar-thy-neighbour policies. The model sheds light on the European banking crisis of 2008 in which individual nations ratcheted up their deposit insurance levels.

A majority of U.S. banks between 1973 and 2012 held equity capital significantly beyond the required minimum. We study the risk-return tradeoff in connection with a bank’s capital structure, and identify several new significant market factors that drive the level of equity capital in banks. During normal growth periods, bank leverage is negatively related to a level of competition and loan portfolio diversification, while high bank leverage is associated with low past liquidity. During recessions and expansions, the roles of those factors change following distortions in risk-return tradeoff. In distress, when banks approach regulatory capital requirements, market determinants of book leverage lose their significance; however, leverage does not decrease until a bank is within 1% of the minimal capital threshold.

We investigate how a change in regulatory oversight affects bank risk, using the passage of the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act of 2018 as a setting. Using a sample of bank holding companies (BHCs) covering the period 2015Q1 through 2020Q1, we find that risk increases for large BHCs affected by a change in regulatory oversight. In addition to increasing bank level risk, affected BHCs increase their respective contribution to the systemic risk. These BHCs also experience higher profitability, increased market valuation and reduced compliance costs.

We explore interconnectedness in the interbank overnight lending market and propose the liquidity network and the urgent borrower network which capture the urgency to trade. The liquidity network connects the initiating party in a trade to the passive party, while the urgent borrower network connects passive sellers (lenders) to urgent buyers (borrowers). Along with the buyer/seller trading network, we show these networks complement each other, revealing valuable information that improves short-term forecasts of soft and hard information and country-specific yield spreads. Connectivity increases in these networks during raises volatility and boosts volume, revealing the dual nature of interconnectedness—too much interconnectedness may increase systemic risk, but too little may impede market functioning.

We study whether floods can affect financial stability through a credit risk channel. Our focus is onthe Netherlands, a country situated partly below sea level, where insurance policies exclude property damages caused by some types of floods. Using geocoded data for close to EUR 650 billion in real estate exposures, we consider possible implications of such floods for bank capital. For a set of 38 adverse scenarios, we estimate that flood-related property damages lead to capital declines that mostly range between 30 and 50 basis points. We highlight how starting-point loan-to-value ratios are one important driver of capital impacts. Our estimates focus on property damages as the main transmission channel and are also subject to a number of assumptions. If climate change continues, more frequent floods or flood-related macrofinancial disruptions may have stronger implications for financial stability than our estimates so far indicate.