##heritiers : la crise francaise du travail ”, editions seuil. bis central bankers ’ speeches where he musters a lot of empirical evidence to show that the labour crisis in france stems from bad employers - employees relations associated with a system that “ preserves inheritance, direct or sociological ”. this capacity to link serious economic research with practical social problems is yet another sign of the excellence achieved by thomas in his body of work. i am confident that thomas philippon will continue making extraordinary contributions to this and other research areas in the coming years. i extend my sincerest congratulations to him for winning the 2013 german bernacer prize. bis central bankers ’ speeches

##b ’ s programme, we said that the decision to accept long - term loans from the ecb should have been seen as a rational business decision and not as a sign of bank distress. 4 the importance of clearly identifying the nature of the frictions leading to the market failures before designing the intervention is also emphasised in another contribution by thomas philippon. in his 2013 paper in the journal of finance written with philipp schnabl, he characterises the optimal intervention in a financial industry plagued by the debt overhang problem. 5 when banks are financed with too much debt, they forgo productive investments, i. e. lending, because in the event of bankruptcy the debt holders would appropriate most of the cash flows. thomas philippon and his co - author show that in this case the optimal intervention consists of capital injections against preferred stock ( plus warrants ) and it is conditional on sufficient bank participation. this design makes it possible to restore the efficient level of lending by providing capital to banks, and at the same time minimises the cost of intervention by controlling for the potential opportunistic behaviours of banks. in particular, the authors highlight two types of opportunistic behaviours induced by the intervention. first, since banks that do not directly participate may benefit from the overall improvement in the market conditions, a free rider problem arises. therefore, intervention should be conditional on the participation of a critical mass of banks. second, if the conditions are very favourable, banks may choose strategically to participate in the programme, thus increasing its overall cost. hence, it is paramount that the intervention entails some costs for the current shareholders. i don ’ t need to stress how relevant these issues became, especially in the aftermath of the financial crisis, when massive intervention in the banking industry had imposed very large costs on europe ’ s taxpayers and had significant consequences for the sovereigns. indeed, a key concern for policy - makers is that the large support offered to the financial sector may spur opportunistic behaviour and generally distort financial institutions ’ risk - taking incentive, possibly magnifying the costs of the intervention while reducing its effectiveness. thomas philippon ’ s analysis is timely and tackles a very relevant issue as new rules for intervention and resolution of banks are currently being implemented. the new eu rules surrounding see, for example, heider, f., m. hoerova, and c. holthausen, ( 2009 ) “ liquidity hoarding and interbank market