The paper deals with Alternative Risk Transfer (ART) through securitization of longevity and mortality risks in pension plans and commercial life insurance. Various types of such mortality-linked securities are described including methods of their pricing and real examples (e.g. CATM bonds, longevity bonds, mortality forwards and futures, mortality swaps, and others). Hypothetical calculations ...

We study experimental coordination games to examine through which transmission channels, and under which information conditions, a panic-based depositor-run at one bank may trigger a panic-based depositor-run at another bank. We find that withdrawals at one bank trigger withdrawals at another bank by increasing players’ beliefs that other depositors in their own bank will withdraw, making them ...

In this paper, we consider the costs and benefits of transactions privacy. In the environment we consider, privacy is the concealment of potentially useful information, but concealment also potentially bestows benefits. In some versions of the environment, the standard Coasian logic applies: given an unambiguous initial assignment of rights and sufficient flexibility in contracting, efficiency ...

We provide a model of the impact of bank mergers on loan competition, individual reserve management and aggregate liquidity risk. Banks hold reserves against liquidity shocks, refinance in the interbank market and compete in a differentiated loan market. A merger creates an internal money market that induces financial cost advantages and may increase reserve holdings. We assess the liquidity ri...

This paper studies the economic impact of the current global economic downturn on the household sector. Household budgets can be negatively affected by declines in nominal wages and increases in unemployment. We empirically test this effect for the Czech economy. As a result of the lack of individual data on the Czech household finances, micro data are simulated. Our analysis clearly points out...

At the beginning of the transition, advice to Central European countries with respect to how to set up their ®nancial systems was based on models used in western economies. This paper analyzes the experiences to set up a ®nancial system in Central Europe. The experience in the ®rst transition years (1990±1996) with ®nancial system architecture shows that changes are slow but that the Central Eu...

This paper proposes a model in which bank runs are closely related to the state of the business cycle. The benchmark model shows that, in a market economy, there are welfare losses due to the existence of bank runs. Extensions of the model explore the welfare effects of various government policies. The results suggest that an interest-cap deposit insurance scheme is an efficient policy to preve...

We propose a measure of systemic risk, ∆CoVaR, defined as the change in the value at risk of the financial system conditional on an institution being under distress relative to its median state. Our estimates show that characteristics such as leverage, size, maturity mismatch, and asset price booms significantly predict ∆CoVaR. We also provide out-of-sample forecasts of a countercyclical, forwa...

a stochastic frontier cost function indicates that the annual cost of complying with the anti-redlining Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) is $171,000 per thrift institution, roughly 2.3 percent of variable costs. But compliance cost is significantly less than the estimated 21 percent cost inefficiency. Based on published estimates of the incremental number of mortgage loans induced by CRA, the m...

Yes, size actually matters. This paper models the strategic interaction between banks and the government when bailouts are possible. I analyze how imperfect common knowledge about the government’s bailout policy affects the ex-ante leverage choice for each bank. Large banks, by internalizing the effect of their size on the likelihood of being bailed out, are willing to take more leverage. In eq...