We provide estimates of holdings of highly rated securitization tranches of U.S. bank holding companies before the credit crisis and evaluate hypotheses that have been advanced to explain them. Whereas holdings exceeded Tier 1 capital for some large banks, they were economically trivial for the typical bank. Banks with high holdings were not riskier before the crisis using conventional measures…
Printed Journal
Printed Journal
This paper studies the government reaction to large corporate merger attempts in the European Union during 1997-2006 using hand-collected data. It documents widespread economic nationalism in which the government prefers the target companies remain domestically owned rather than foreign-owned. This preference is stronger at times and places with strong far-right parties, weaker governments, and…
We provide estimates of holdings of highly rated securitization tranches of U.S. bank holding companies before the credit crisis and evaluate hypotheses that have been advanced to explain them. Whereas holdings exceeded Tier 1 capital for some large banks, they were economically trivial for the typical bank. Banks with high holdings were not riskier before the crisis using conventional measures…