Education

4 th Financial Stability Conference

'Banks and the Public Finances'

4 and 5 October 2012
Tilburg, Netherlands

The conference will be organized in cooperation with the European Banking Center and the CEPR.
The conference will be sponsored by SNL Financial Ltd.


CALL FOR PAPERS
The ongoing financial crisis is showing that the fates of a country’s banking sector and of its public finances are too much intertwined. Banking crises in Iceland, Ireland and other countries have wrecked the public finances of these countries. Currently, the European sovereign debt crisis is proving to be a major threat to the stability of Europe’s banking system.

The relationship between the banking sector and the public finances is a complex one. First, government ownership of banks is prevalent, and rising on account of the crisis. Second, the behavior of private banks may be influenced by politics, for instance if politicians sit on the boards of banks. Third, the financial safety net is backstopped by national treasuries so that a banking crisis entails potentially huge fiscal costs. Fourth, banks are subject to taxation, and potentially constitute a major source of tax revenues. Fifth, government debt is a key asset category of banks, so that a government debt crisis can cause widespread bank distress.
Going forward, a key question is how the relation between the banking sector and the public finances can be reconfigured to bring back financial stability, including government finance stability.

Keynote Speaker
Prof. Viral V. Acharya, New York University - Stern School of Business, CEPR.

Topics
We are inviting high quality submissions of theoretical and empirical nature. This conference aims to bring together contributions on topics including the following:

• The impact of government ownership of banks on efficiency, credit and financial stability
• Politics and banking.
• Subsidies implicit in the financial safety net, and how to eliminate them?
• How to cope with the too-big-to-fail and too-complex-to-fail phenomena?
• The fiscal costs of banking crises. How can bank regulation and resolution strategies reduce these costs?
• How to backstop an international bank? Is there need for institutional reform?
• Taxation of the financial sector. What are actual tax burdens on banks, how does taxation affect bank behavior, how to appropriately tax the financial sector, and what is the interplay between taxation and regulation?
• The sovereign debt crisis and the banking sector. The role of new institutions such as the EFSF.
• Does the Basle III framework adequately address bank holdings of sovereign debt?

Submission deadline
The deadline for submissions is May 15, 2012. Papers should be submitted electronically to meets@cepr.org along with your affiliation and email address. In the email, please indicate whether or not you are willing to act as a discussant. Acceptance decisions will be made by July 15, 2012. Economy class travel and accommodation for invited participants will be covered.

Further information
The conference will be held at Tilburg University. Tentatively, the program will start on Thursday at 9:00 and will end on Friday at 14:00. The program will include 8-10 papers with their discussions, leaving ample time for comments from the audience. Presenters and discussants are kindly invited to attend for the whole duration of the conference.

Participation and registration
The conference participation fee is 75 euro and covers admission to all academic sessions, handout materials and information package, drinks and lunches. Participation is free of charge for CEPR and Tilburg University affiliates, presenters and discussants. There is an additional 75 euro fee if you want to join the official conference dinner on October 4, 2012. This fee is only waived for presenters, discussants and session chairs. Please register for this conference via ebc@uvt.nl. You will receive a confirmation of your registration and additional information on the payment if applicable.

Organizers
- Olivier De Jonghe (EBC, Tilburg University)
- Harry Huizinga (EBC, Tilburg University)

Program committee
- Charles Calomiris (Columbia Business School)
- Stijn Claessens (IMF, CEPR and University of Amsterdam)
- Reint Gropp (European Business School)
- Florencio Lopez de Silanes (EDHEC Business School)
- Enrico Perotti (University of Amsterdam, CEPR)
- Andrea Sironi (Bocconi University)
- Philip Strahan (Boston College)
- Wolf Wagner (Tilburg University)