SCIALOM Laurence

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The crisis of 2007-08 called for a renewal of banking regulation that took the shape of a shift toward macroprudential policy. However, a comprehensive assessment of the current state of financial regulation reveals that this shift is incomplete. In particular, the notion of risk that lies at the heart of the Basel framework is still blind to extreme events. Climate risk and pandemic risk fall into this category. The purpose of this article is twofold. On the one hand, we point out why current banking regulation is not adequate to face risks whose origin is grounded outside financial markets – as is the case for both the pandemic and the climate risks –. on the other hand, we offer avenues for reforming macroprudential regulation in a way that would allow to take those risks into account.

This thesis analyzes the production of financial regulation in the European Union after the 2007-2008 crisis. It is based on a global study of financial reforms introduced in the EU between March 2009 and November 2014 (n=51), as well as two case studies on the proposed Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) and the proposed structural reform of the banking sector. Our thesis shows that the global financial crisis has not led to a rethinking of regulatory liberalism at the European level. However, in the various reforms studied, we observe a shift from the Anglo-Saxon regulatory approach, which favors self-regulation of the financial sector, to an ordoliberal approach based on transparency and governance requirements in order to ensure "healthy" conditions of competition. The crisis has also led to two breakthrough measures being put on the agenda, the FTT and the separation of banking activities. However, our research highlights the structural power mobilized by the large universal banks in order to obtain the abandonment or suspension of the two measures. This structural power is institutionally based at the European and national levels.

The thesis studies the functioning of the "originate-to-distribute" banking activity, associated with the "shadow banking system" and its impacts on households. We use a post-Keynesian and circuitist theoretical framework, applying the endogenous money approach to credit. In order to formalize the "originate-to-distribute" banking activity in an aggregate framework, we analyze, in an accounting framework, the necessities surrounding the acquisition of claims by non-bank financial actors. We highlight the need for bank support to inflate the balance sheets of financial actors involved in the hosting of bank claims outside the banks' balance sheets, prior to the financial closure of these claims through the channeling of household savings. We translate the functioning of the originate-to-distribute banking activity into a theoretical macroeconomic model of growth, stock-flow consistent, in a closed economy. The model is characterized by two subsectors of households, workers and capitalists, differentiated by their sources of income and wealth behavior. We take into account the housing debt of households and a housing market. We analyze the differential impact of debt transfers from the banking sector to a non-banking financial sector on the income, wealth and debt of the household classes.

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In this note, we defend the idea that the Covid-19 pandemic, beyond the human tragedies it brings, is a warning shot and, by the same token, an opportunity to be seized to make our societies more resilient in the face of future shocks and to truly engage in their ecological conversion. This confinement, this enclosure of our economies, proves to us that radical choices can be made when the emergency is perceived and human lives are threatened. At the end of this health crisis, the State will have to renew its anticipatory and planning functions in order to set the course for the reorientation of our economic, financial and social systems on a temporal scale that goes beyond that of electoral cycles.

In a previous note, we put forward some proposals to ensure that the management of the health crisis does not bury the imperative of ecological conversion of our economies, that the short-term emergency does not destroy the desire to preserve a planet that is liveable for the human race in the longer term. One of the measures envisaged, the cancellation of public debts by the ECB, conditional on investments in the ecological transition, may seem iconoclastic, given that questions relating to money sometimes seem to be a matter of religious belief, and the dogma of the non-monetization of public deficits by the central bank is so deeply rooted. This paper proposes to show that not only is this proposal economically efficient, but that it is legally feasible and makes up for the institutional shortcomings of the euro zone, i.e. the absence of a federal budget. Moreover, the conditionality linked to the ecological conversion of economies could even breathe new life into the European project, which is currently undermined by blockages at the intergovernmental level, as to the level of solidarity required to deal with the financial consequences of the health crisis. For European citizens, the ecological project transcends borders and allows them to regain control over a common future. The proposed conditionality supports the project to fight global warming, announced as a priority of the new Commission.

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How to think about the economy differently? For thirty years, researchers from different disciplines have been participating in the development of an economics of conventions that constructs a new representation of the economy. The 75 authors in this book provide an exceptional insight into this approach, based on the work of one of its main architects, Olivier Favereau. More than any other economist, he has worked throughout his career on interdisciplinary exchanges to renew our understanding of economic phenomena. The various entries in this non-standard dictionary discuss, use or extend this work. The reader thus has an unparalleled introduction to contemporary debates on the evolution of economic knowledge: the new representations of the firm, work, finance and more generally of economic behavior and its political dimension.

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The crisis of 2007-2008 can be interpreted as the failure of market discipline. External bailouts and unconventional monetary policies are signs of such failure. After the crisis, banking regulation has therefore undergone major changes. However, there is still a strong emphasis on market discipline. The purpose of this thesis is to study how market discipline has been reactivated in the recent period. The emphasis on transparency in financial reporting and the issue of internal bailouts are the two main avenues for the reactivation of market discipline. The first part of this thesis is thus devoted to an analysis of the relationship between financial disclosure, transparency and financial stability. In particular, we show that the relationship between these three terms is ambiguous, so that it is not possible to promote market discipline through disclosure requirements alone. In the second part of this thesis, we focus on the impact on bank behavior of the way financial information is produced, i.e. the impact of accounting standards. The third part of this thesis studies how market discipline could, or could not, be effectively implemented via regulatory requirements in terms of contingent convertible bonds (co-bonds). We show that the desire to reactivate market discipline through complex financial instruments such as CCOs is a dangerous oversight of history, as it was the complexity of finance that was at the origin of the crisis of the late 2000s.

The research work carried out is mainly in the field of banking, monetary and financial economics and is organized around three empirical perspectives. The first perspective is microeconomic and is located at the level of the banking firm. The research conducted analyzes the provisioning behavior of banks for credit losses and evaluates the risk profiles of banks. The second perspective is macroeconomic and is situated at the country level. The research focuses on the procyclicality of credit activities on the one hand, and the occurrence of banking crises on the other. The third perspective introduces an international dimension and thus complements the microeconomic and macroeconomic approaches previously used. The research conducted analyzes the effects of banking regulation and the consequences of the 2007-2008 financial crisis on international banking and financial activities.

In this article, we define two broad categories of conflicts of interest concerning systemic banks: micro conflicts of interest that undermine the fiduciary responsibility of banks towards their clients and macro conflicts of interest that harm the interests of society as a whole and fuel social distrust of banks. The hypothesis of this article is that the repeated financial scandals that splash the large international systemic banks are not an epiphenomenon but, on the contrary, a symptom of the flaws in their governance and the unaddressed conflicts of interest that undermine them. Deciphering the permissive conditions for the relaxation of ethical standards in banking is important for financial stability, for confidence in the financial system and should have major implications for public action. We therefore advocate that economists invest in this field of research.

This thesis proposes to analyze the political regime of the European currency. This concept refers to the manifestations of power within the currency in three modalities, namely (i) the construction of the rules of issuance, circulation and distribution, (ii) the realization of fiscal and economic policies and (iii) the crisis. We will use the case of Canadian monetary unification (1841-1867) to highlight the key characteristics of European monetary unification and to judge the relevance of our concept. The intergovernmental negotiations from 1989 to 1992 correspond to a point in time that highlights the power logics between the French and German executives. These logics determined the mobility of goods, services, people and capital (internal and external), the exchange rate regime (internal and external), the objectives and missions of the central bank, the existence or not of a central state, its methods of indebtedness and the presence of fiscal transfers, which were stabilized in a socio-political compromise. This has resulted in a fiscal policy framework that, through its interaction with the above characteristics, obliges member states to implement specific economic policies. Competitive disinflation and pro-cyclical policies question the reproduction of the economic order, that is, the accumulation of capital that allows for the recognition of debts issued in the previous period. This unsustainability of the political regime of the European currency has provoked a crisis, which will be resolved according to the institutional context established in the socio-political compromise. Due to the absence of a European state, it is impossible to modify the characteristics of this compromise, compromising this political regime of the currency.

This thesis contributes to the burgeoning literature on controller capture by deepening our understanding of the phenomena of cognitive and informational capture from multiple perspectives. The manuscript is partitioned into three chapters. In the first chapter, I develop a theoretical model to study the difficult trade-off a political leader faces when delegating the regulation of the financial system. The choice made by the political leader depends on his political environment and the characteristics of the regulated domain. In a second chapter, I define indicators of regulator capture and apply them to a database constructed by collecting the governance practices and procedures of 42 independent agencies. This work aims at evaluating the predictions of the theoretical model presented in chapter 1. The third chapter aims to explain the disparities observed between independent agencies. Competing hypotheses are tested: political explanations versus cultural and historical explanations.

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Finance education seems to have been little influenced by the great fi-nancial crisis of 2007-2008. This is the result of a questionnaire survey conducted by the Veblen Institute and four female finance teachers during 2018. Only 25% of the teachers surveyed believe that teaching has changed so significantly since the crisis. This inertia can be explained in part by the dominance of a few "reference" textbooks that focus largely on the mathematical and technical aspects of the finance profession, and more often than not neglect the issue of the impact of finance on society. The most cited textbooks do not really focus on the macroeconomic impact of finance, even though this impact is the major factor in the economic transformations that have taken place since the 1980s. This note analyzes the results of the questionnaire conducted between May and June 2018, and the authors propose several avenues for reforming the teaching. The full set of data from the survey is available on the Veblen Institute website.

Finance education seems to have been little influenced by the great financial crisis of 2007-2008. This is the result of a questionnaire survey conducted by the Veblen Institute during 2018. Only 25% of the teachers surveyed believe that teaching has changed significantly since the crisis. This inertia can be explained in part by the dominance of a few "reference" textbooks that focus largely on the mathematical and technical aspects of the finance profession, often neglecting the issue of the impact of finance on society. The most cited textbooks do not really focus on the macroeconomic impact of finance, even though this impact is the major factor in the economic transformations that have been taking place since the 1980s. This note analyzes the results of the questionnaire conducted between May and June 2018, and the authors propose several avenues for reforming the teaching. The full set of data from the survey is available on the Veblen Institute website.

Ten years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the dramatic fall of 2008 when the global banking and financial system was truly on the brink of collapse, the time has come to take stock of the reforms undertaken. This is the purpose of this report. In the background of this work, crucial questions arise for public authorities: are our economies now immune to the risks of a major financial crisis? Have the lessons of the crisis been learned in the structuring of financial and banking regulation instruments? Have the very ambitious announcements made at the G20 summits in Washington DC in 2008 and in London and Pittsburgh in 2009 been followed up? In order to answer these questions as well as possible, we present in the first part an overview of post-crisis banking regulations. This involves presenting in detail the reforms undertaken in terms of bank capitalization and liquidity ratios (Basel III), resolution mechanisms (in particular bail-in), but also the reform of market infrastructures (clearing houses). For each of them, we draw up a balanced assessment highlighting the progress they represent relative to the pre-crisis period, but also their shortcomings. A more global critique of the inspiration and philosophy of these regulatory changes deserves to be stated. In the second part of this report, we question the very philosophy of prudential regulations.

This report is the result of work begun in 2014 and starts from a simple observation. Populist mistrust. This defiance, which has deleterious effects on our democracy, is fueled by real dysfunctions that should not be denied. An inadequate treatment, hence the title of this report. Conflicts of interest can be summarily defined as situations in which a person charged with defending an interest (particular interest or general interest) is in a position, or perhaps suspected of being in a position, to abuse his or her position in order to defend another interest. Conflicts of interest are inherent to life in society: they exist in all economic and social fields and at all hierarchical levels. In this report, we are particularly interested in those that weaken our democracy and trust in our institutions. Our guiding principle is that the responses to be provided must be all the more demanding as individuals are in a position of responsibility towards the community and as the social "costs" of unaddressed conflicts of interest are heavy, particularly in terms of delegitimizing democratic institutions. Our proposals aim to make a contribution to the refoundation of democratic life. We develop our analyses in three fields that have been chosen because of their symbolic, economic importance and/or their impact on the lives of citizens. These are public life in the broad sense, banking and health. These sectors are very likely to generate conflicts of interest, a situation that is reinforced by the fact that the decision-makers in these sectors often have professional trajectories that are synchronously or diachronically part of both the public and private spheres. This structural approach to conflicts of interest does not deny the complexity of the situations, nor the necessary interweaving of the public and private spheres, and the solutions we propose are therefore not dual or Manichean. On the contrary, we envisage a gradation that goes from the incompatibility - or pure and simple prohibition - of a potentially conflicting dual position, leading to the elimination of the conflict of interest, to much more refined regulation mechanisms. The modulation of our proposals takes as a criterion the gravity of the risk to be averted.

The global economic crisis of 2007-2012, often compared to the Great Depression, revealed that the European banking system, in particular, is dominated by banks that are too big, too complex and too connected to fail. Because of their systemic status, these banks have the advantage of lower financing costs, which not only distorts competition but also creates moral hazard problems in terms of the incentives to increase their size. With this in mind, the objective of this thesis is to analyze how the distortion of the market structure, the structure of banks and the risk pricing problems they induce affect financial stability. It is structured in four chapters. In chapter 1, we show that an increase in the probability of individual default increases the contribution of banks to systemic risk. In chapter 2, we show that the implicit subsidy has the potential to decrease but also to reverse the systemic risk-reducing effect of increased competition. In Chapter 3, we show that the implicit subsidy has the potential to distort and, beyond a certain threshold, to reverse the individual risk-increasing effect of increased competition. Together, these results support the consensus that individual risk and systemic risk generated by banks have two distinct dimensions. In chapter 4, we provide evidence that large financial institutions identified as systemic and benefiting from the implicit subsidy contribute more to systemic risk when they have an increased reliance on wholesale liquidity funding.

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Despite apparent competition among currencies, the U.S. dollar is the currency adopted by the majority of international trade participants, both exporters and importers. This is shown by the statistical overview proposed in this thesis. Based on this observation, the objective of this thesis is to explain the choice of invoicing currencies in international trade. Various determinants have been established in the academic literature to explain the choice of invoicing currencies. Three approaches, with substantially different methodologies, contribute to this, and can therefore be compared: the standard macroeconomic approach, the institutionalist approach, and the international political economy approach. The main result of this thesis is to show that the understanding of the choice of the US dollar cannot be satisfied with the determinants highlighted by the instrumental approaches to money that dominate international macroeconomics, and in which money is seen above all as a tool for maximizing individual utilities: their contributions are useful, but insufficient. By applying the institutionalist reading to international trade, the thesis introduces the importance of the actors' relationships of trust and adherence to money and to the order defended by its regulatory institutions. This importance is verified in the history of the twentieth century, both in the failure of currencies competing with the dollar, and in the persistence of the American currency itself.

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This article highlights the theoretical foundations of the regulations at work in the banking sector and examines their responsibility in the onset of the 2007–2008 financial crisis. Drawing a parallel between the main changes in banking regulations since the 1960s and the evolutions in the economic analyses of regulation over the same period, it shows that the shift from the public interest theory of regulation that prevailed until the late 1960s towards the private interest theory of regulation accounts for the substitution of micro-prudential regulations for macro-prudential ones and explains a paradigmatic change in the conception of the regulatory instruments of the banking authorities. It also shows that although the outcome of several factors, the 2007–2008 crisis was also a consequence of the fact that the economic analysis of banking regulations supported micro-prudential regulations that fail to take the global features and impact of banking activities into account and have proved unable to recommend effective solutions in a context of crisis.

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The objective of this thesis, composed of four empirical and theoretical papers, is to study the involvement of central banks in financial stability - defined as a stable and high state of confidence in the ability of the financial system to facilitate the allocation of economic resources, manage risks, and withstand shocks - and to discuss their new macroprudential responsibilities. The global financial crisis has shifted financial regulation and supervision from a microprudential perspective based on the resilience of individual institutions to a macroprudential perspective that takes into account the interactions between financial institutions, the externalities associated with their decisions, and also the effects of the financial cycle on the economic cycle and on financial stability. This thesis analyzes the policy mix of monetary - targeting the business cycle - and macroprudential - targeting the financial cycle - both of which have an impact on price stability and financial conditions. Indeed, these policies operate through transmission channels, some of which are common. Particular attention is paid, beyond macroprudential policy in a heterogeneous monetary union such as the euro area - where countries experience differentiated macroeconomic conditions - in terms of financial and macroeconomic stabilization. Starting from the observation that a single interest rate is adapted to the average of the zone but not to the needs of each country, macroprudential policy could compensate for the absence of an autonomous monetary policy in each country. This would improve the degree of optimality of the monetary zone.

The global financial crisis of 2007-2009 revealed the fragility of modern banks as well as regulatory shortcomings. In the wake of the crisis, the banking sector has undergone significant regulatory reforms: strengthening of micro-prudential regulation, implementation of schemes with macro-prudential objectives, and various initiatives to separate activities. In this context, this thesis, using US data, first attempts to explain the vulnerability of banks by their financial characteristics and organizational structure. Then, the thesis proposes an analysis of the effectiveness of some new tools in the context of reforms. We find the following results: 1) The risk of failure is higher for banks that adopt aggressive strategies during the economic boom and finance themselves with unstable funds. A healthy (well-capitalized and profitable) parent company is a source of strength for bank subsidiaries. This supports the introduction of the countercyclical capital buffer and the liquidity ratio in Basel III. 2) Diversification of activities contributes to the decrease of bank risk, while increasing commitments in volatile non-traditional activities seems to make banks more vulnerable. This supports the need for structural reform for some universal banks. 3) Leverage ratios predict the probability of failure of large banks better than the risk-weighted ratio, while both types of ratios are equally effective in predicting the failure of small banks. This result underscores the importance of strengthening the regulation of systemic banks and implies its implementation.

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This thesis is composed of three essays: the first and second essays deal with the effects of regulations and supervision on profitability and risk taking by European banks during the period 2005-2011. The results show that these effects depend not only on internal and external influencing factors, but also on the supervisory modality and the pace of implementation of financial regulations. We also find that the results change for each group of countries with common characteristics. This is explained by the impact of the European crisis as well as the sovereign debt crisis. However, the third essay studies the impact of banking governance mechanisms on the performance of large French banking groups during the period 2005 - 2011. Indeed, the results confirm that the ownership and managerial structure are different from one bank to another: institutional investors are an element of banking development and the managerial participation of employees reinforces the federative spirit. The larger the board of directors, the greater the conflict of interest and lack of coordination, and the more frequent the meetings and attendance of directors, the greater the financial stability. Our study of the impact of governance structure on performance, using random-effect panel data, confirms our findings. Indeed, the presence of institutional investors and employee ownership favor bank profitability, and the size of the board of directors and the independence of directors increase excessive risk taking. However, the study of the interaction between regulation, supervision and bank governance structure and their impact on bank performance confirms that the effects of regulation and supervision on bank performance depend on the managerial structure as well as the ownership structure of the bank.

The interdependence between the various banking businesses has increased considerably over the last two decades. Indeed, financial globalization has increased the porosity between the different banking businesses, particularly during shocks which, although initially limited to a segment of the banks' activity, now rapidly contaminate the banks' overall financial health. This state of affairs is supported by the subprime crisis. The failure of banking regulation revealed through the global financial crisis compels us to re-examine the current regulatory regime and to place great importance on regulatory reforms in the banking system. The objective of this thesis is to identify the shortcomings of banking regulation and to analyze avenues of regulatory reform to address these shortcomings of the current regulatory regime. This thesis provides empirical evidence that the joint implementation of a high leverage strategy and a risky liquidity strategy has destabilized banks in recent years. Future regulations should therefore focus on the complementarity between capitalization regulation and liquidity regulation. In line with these empirical results, this dissertation finally proposes a theoretical framework to show that considering liquidity regulation as the complement of capitalization regulation is socially optimal.

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This thesis consists of three articles that are part of a single problematic on the interrelations between the financial and real sectors in South Korea. Our empirical analysis verified the proper functioning of some components of the transmission mechanism between the financial and real sectors. First, we found that the bank credit channel functioned as one of the transmission channels of monetary policy (Chapter 1). Second, we empirically verified that bank capitalization is an important factor in the transmission of monetary policy shocks (Chapter2). Finally, our analysis of the interaction between house prices and bank lending showed that there is a long-run relationship between house prices and bank lending (Chapter 3). As verified empirically in our analysis, the financial sector and the real sector are closely related through the financial or real shock. The results highlight the following points about monetary and supervisory policies. First, it is important for monetary policy to take into account capital regulation and its effect on the economy. Second, taking into account the fact that mortgage lending is very closely related to economic conditions in Korea, the instrument of macroprudential policy to reduce procyclicality is necessary. The central bank and the prudential authority can work together to develop these instruments.

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Structural changes in the financial industry are numerous, protean and complex. The analysis of their consequences, particularly in terms of financial stability, is crucial. Our work focuses on one of these transformations, namely the emergence and development of financial conglomeration, which has the singularity of intertwining diversification and globalization, and which, in our opinion, has been relatively little studied. Our objective is therefore to contribute to filling this gap. We have structured our reflection around three axes: the practical understanding of financial conglomeration, its implications in terms of risk, and its implications for prudential arrangements, and more particularly for supervisory architecture. We propose to compensate for the absence of data specifically dedicated to this movement by using data related to M&A transactions. While it is impossible to state unequivocally whether these groups are more or less risky than their individual counterparts and likely to expose the financial sphere to exacerbated and/or new risks, we make explicit the elements likely to generate a higher risk profile, emphasize the importance of adopting a global perspective of the level of risk incurred and demonstrate the pernicious impact of the diversification strategy on the probability of systemic risk. Finally, we show using a Multinomial Probit that financial conglomeration is an explanatory factor along with the traditionally emphasized factors of unification of national supervisors.

To limit the systemic potential of future financial crises, it is necessary to strengthen the macro-prudential dimension of regulation. In this thesis, we propose the following four avenues for the construction of a more robust macro-prudential framework: i) detect decisions that play a decisive role on the level of risk of the bank and its exposure to financial crises. ii) use an aggregate leverage indicator to detect runaway credit supply. iii) introduce a form of Prompt Corrective Action in Europe whose detection signals would be composed of information on the capital and liquidity of banks. iiii) find the best way to fight against the moral hazard risk of systemic financial institutions. The results of this work are as follows: 1) the combination of an aggressive leverage policy and a financing policy largely oriented towards short-term markets is the determining factor in identifying vulnerable banks. 2) The aggregate leverage indicator we constructed has a fairly high predictive power and can therefore be used as a tool for detecting financial crises. 3) Information on liquidity risk seems to be a good complement to capital ratios to detect vulnerable banks and trigger supervisory intervention in the framework of a European Prompt Corrective Action. 4) the most relevant solutions to solve the moral hazard problem associated with systemic institutions seem to be those that aim at simplifying the structure of banks in order to facilitate their resolution.

The aim of this thesis is to identify, both theoretically and empirically, the financial strategies and governance methods of institutional investors that are specific to their long-term investment behavior. These investors have a decisive advantage in strategic asset allocation: a long time horizon and more or less defined commitments. To this end, he confines his investigations and analyses to pension funds, observing what is likely to bring them closer or further away from long-term investor behavior. The deliberate choice to focus on pension funds is due to the fact that they have contractual commitments to their principals in terms of long-term pension liabilities. This paper focuses on one aspect of pension funds' behavior - namely their investments in hedge funds - in order to analyze the different proposals for regulating pension funds and hedge funds.

The history of monetary unions is still a relatively unexploited field in economics. However, it can be a rich source of information. The main interest of this thesis is to present a historical and quantitative analysis of the phenomena of monetary union since the 19th century (five experiences of monetary union are studied here: the Latin Union, the Candinavian monetary union, the Franc-CFA zone, the Monetary Union of the Eastern Caribbean and the Monetary Union of the Eurozone), which further substantiates the relevance of the institutionalist argument that the traditional theory of optimal currency areas is neither "positively" nor "normatively" satisfying. Therefore, the orthodox theory must be abandoned in favor of a conception of money as a sovereign institution. This calls for a multidisciplinary approach to monetary unions, with particular emphasis on the conceptual tools developed in the framework of International Political Economy. On this basis, we have analyzed the possibilities of monetary unions in the world, and in particular in MERCOSUR, distinguishing at the regional level, on the side of the "supply of a monetary regime" as well as on the side of the "demand for a regime", the forces capable of supporting (or hindering) the accomplishment of the MERCOSUR monetary union project. This is the second major point of interest of this thesis.

This thesis focuses on two major financial innovations that have occurred in the banking sector in recent decades: securitization and credit scoring. More specifically, we propose three theoretical analyses concerning i) the link between the generalization of the use of these tools and the intensification of banking competition. ii) the impact of the use of these tools on the information production function of banks (monitoring and screening). The main results of this work are as follows: 1) The principle of competition does not guarantee the adoption of the most efficient technology when two banks, differentiated according to their credit granting technology, lending relationship or credit scoring, compete twice in both the credit and deposit markets. 2) Banks can use loan assignment to avoid revealing private information that they may have collected on their customers through the customer relationship when the possession of private information is likely to provide a future competitive advantage in the context of intertemporal competition . 3) Securitization can be used strategically to mitigate competition in the credit market. Specifically, securitization can be used by a bank as a means of signaling to its competitors that it will reduce the intensity of its monitoring in order to mitigate the adverse selection problem they face. By doing so, banks manage to increase their overall profit, but at the expense of market efficiency.

This thesis focuses on the impact of foreign bank entry patterns on the performance of the local banking system in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. To this end, we first conducted a comparative analysis of cost efficiency and productivity growth between foreign de novo banks and foreign acquiring banks, and between the latter and domestic banks. Second, we focused our analysis on the impact of lifting restrictions on each mode of foreign bank entry on the performance of the local banking system. The results show that de novo foreign banks enjoy better cost efficiency and higher productivity growth than foreign acquiring banks, while there does not appear to be a significant difference in cost efficiency between foreign acquiring banks and domestic banks. Moreover, while the lifting of entry restrictions on de novo foreign banks had a limited impact on the performance of the local banking system, the lifting of entry restrictions on foreign acquirer banks led to significant declines in profitability and interest margins, and an increase in administrative costs both for all banks and for domestic banks alone.

The purpose of this thesis is the creation of a European central bank and the adoption of a single currency. The first part justifies the creation of a European central bank by placing it in its long historical dynamics and by a theory of money that places the payments system at the heart of any monetary economy. The second part focuses on the institutional organization and concrete functioning of the future European central bank system. The systematic use of the analogy with the American federal reserve system, both in its decentralized period of operation (until 1935) and in its current structure, is one of the original features of this part. The main developments concern the following issues: the mandate and independence of the European central bank, the impossibility of applying the principle of subsidiarity in monetary policy, prudential policy (supervision, prudential regulation, lender of last resort, deposit insurance and security of payment systems) and monetary policy in the transitional and final phase of the monetary unification process.