Essays in financial stability and public policy

This dissertation is a collection of essays in two areas of financial stability. The first part deals with systemic risk in the banking sector. First, it asks whether countercyclical macroprudential policy tools can be an effective way of reducing cyclicality in bank lending. The main finding is that these policies can be counterproductive and may incentivize more intertwined banks, and hence, endanger financial stability. The next paper investigates, and provides some evidence of, the possibility that banks actively change their portfolios in order to
influence the likelihood of joint bank failure.
The second part of this dissertation studies the connection between public finance and financial stability. Chapter 4 looks into the interaction between bank capital regulation and taxation and finds that banks trade off leverage risk against portfolio risk in response to a higher corporate income tax rates. Finally, Chapter 5 analyses banks’ excessive holdings of domestic government debt as one of the sources of the interrelatedness of public finance and bank stability. Two possible explanations of banks’ home bias are tested: voluntary government
bond hoarding and government induced bond buying.