Mr.Lev Ratnovski

Benefits and Costs of Bank Capital

The appropriate level of bank capital and, more generally, a bank’s capacity to absorb losses, has been at the core of the post-crisis policy debate...

Externalities and Macroprudential Policy

This note overviews macroprudential policy options that have been proposed to address the systemic risks experienced during the recent financial crisi...

Shadow Banking

Economics and Policy

This note outlines the basic economics of the shadow banking system, highlights (systemic) risks related to it, and suggests implications for measurem...

Bank Size and Systemic Risk

The proposed SDN documents the evolution of bank size and activities over the past 20 years. It discusses whether this evolution can be explained by e...

Banking and Trading

We study the effects of a bank's engagement in trading. Traditional banking is relationship-based: not scalable, long-term oriented, with high implici...

The Effects of Higher Bank Capital Requirements on Credit in Peru

This paper offers novel evidence on the impact of raising bank capital requirements in the context of an emerging market: Peru. Using quarterly bank-l...

Benefits and Costs of Bank Capital

The appropriate level of bank capital and, more generally, a bank’s capacity to absorb losses, has been at the core of the post-crisis policy debate...

Bank Profitability and Risk-Taking

Traditional theory suggests that more profitable banks should have lower risk-taking incentives. Then why did many profitable banks choose to invest i...

Bailouts and Systemic Insurance

We revisit the link between bailouts and bank risk taking. The expectation of government support to failing banks creates moral hazard—increases ban...

Monetary Policy Pass-Through to Interest Rates: Stylized Facts from 30 European Countries

The extent to which changes in monetary policy rates lead to changes in loan and deposit rates for households and firms, referred to as ‘pass-throug...

The Dynamics of Non-Performing Loans during Banking Crises: A New Database

This paper presents a new dataset on the dynamics of non-performing loans (NPLs) during 88 banking crises since 1990. The data show similarities acros...

Global Liquidity and Drivers of Cross-Border Bank Flows

This paper provides a definition of global liquidity consistent with its meaning as the “ease of financing” in international financial markets. Us...

Bank Lending in the Knowledge Economy

We study bank portfolio allocations during the transition of the real sector to a knowledge economy in which firms use less tangible capital and inves...

Benefits and Costs of Corporate Debt Restructuring

An Estimation for Korea

The paper offers a method to quantify benefits and costs of corporate debt restructuring, with an application to Korea. We suggest a “persistent ICR...

One Hundred Inflation Shocks: Seven Stylized Facts

This paper identifies over 100 inflation shock episodes in 56 countries since the 1970s, including over 60 episodes linked to the 1973–79 oil crises...

Credit and Fiscal Multipliers in China

We jointly estimate credit and fiscal multipliers in China. We use the tenure of the provincial party secretary, interacted with the type of stimulus ...

Commodity Prices and Inflation Expectations in the United States

U.S. monetary policy can remain extraordinarily accommodative only if longer-term inflation expectations stay well-anchored, including in response to ...

Capital Regulation and Tail Risk

The paper studies risk mitigation associated with capital regulation, in a context where banks may choose tail risk asserts. We show that this undermi...

What is Shadow Banking?

There is much confusion about what shadow banking is. Some equate it with securitization, others with non-traditional bank activities, and yet others ...

Financial Intermediation and Technology: What's Old, What's New?

We study the effects of technological change on financial intermediation, distinguishing between innovations in information (data collection and proce...