We present a model of optimal intervention in a flight to quality episode. The reason for intervention stems from a collective bias in agents' expectations. Agents in the model make risk management decisions with incomplete knowledge. They understand their own shocks, but are uncertain of how correlated their shocks are with systemwide shocks, treating the latter uncertainty as Knightian. We sh...

Why was growth so slow during the British Industrial Revolution? More than a decade ago, Jeff Williamson proposed "crowding-out" as a result of Britain's numerous wars as a key mechanism, but little empirical evidence existed to support it. We argue that examinations of interest rates are fundamentally misguided. The eighteenthand early nineteenth-century private loan market balanced through qu...

I provide a framework for understanding the global financial architecture as an equilibrium outcome of the risk sharing between countries with different levels of financial development. The country that has the most developed financial sector takes on a larger proportion of global fundamental and financial risk because its financial intermediaries are better able to deal with funding problems f...

In this paper, we study credit risk transfer (CRT) in an economy with endogenous financing (by both banks and non-bank institutions). Our analysis suggests that the incentive of banks to transfer credit risk is aligned with the regulatory objective of improving stability, and so the recent development of credit derivative instruments is to be welcomed. Moreover, we find the transfer of credit r...

We examine how the possibility of a bank run affects the deposit contract offered and the investment decisions made by a competitive bank. Cooper and Ross (1998) have shown that when the probability of a run is small, the bank will offer a contract that admits a bank-run equilibrium. We show that, in this case, the bank will chose to hold an amount of liquid reserves exactly equal to what withd...

Drastic changes and turbulence in macro-economic factors have the greatest impact on banks target market attractiveness in Iran. It is assumed that conventional segmentation models at the corporate level are not efficient for banking system. This study aims to develop a new segmentation model at the industry level for banks of Iran. For this purpose, structures and variables at the industry lev...

We construct a time-series model of investment in Israel that incorporates both traditional economic factors derived from a theoretical model of a profit-maximising representative firm and indicators of political instability and unrest. This is used to estimate the extent to which the Intifada has depressed Israeli investment and the size of the corresponding "peace dividend". JEL Classificatio...

Given the expected advantages for individuals and societies, financial literacy is high on policy agenda in many countries. This paper reports results from a unique survey conducted sample of 13–16-year-old students five European countries, aimed at measuring comparing their level skills. The indicate significant differences across countries that are interpreted light countries’ educational pol...