Three Essays on Financial Innovation.

Summary This dissertation is composed of three distinct chapters, which aim to empirically analyze financial innovation in different fields: household finance, public finance, and the financial sector. The first chapter, written in collaboration with Claire Célérier, analyzes the increasing complexity of financial products offered to retail investors and suggests that this complexity is used by banks to reduce competitive pressure. The second chapter, written with Christophe Pérignon, focuses on toxic loans issued by local governments, and how their use is part of a political incentive system. The third chapter examines how the adoption of an innovative type of bond, representing conditional capital, can contribute to solving the dilemma of bank leverage.