In this paper we suggest a new approach to risk assessment for banks. Rather than looking at them individually we try to undertake an analysis at the level of the banking system. Such a perspective is necessary because the complicated network of mutual credit obligations can make the actual risk...

We give a precise operational definition to three requirements the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision specifies for stress tests: Plausibility and severity of stress scenarios as well as suggestiveness of risk reducing actions. The basic idea of our approach is to define a suitable region of...

We criticize the popular view that separately calculating regulatory capital for market and credit risk yields a conservative aggregate risk assessment. We show that this view depends on a flawed intuition about diversification effects that arise between subportfolios. If a bank’s portfolio...