The revised Basel Capital Accord requires banks to meet a capital requirement for operational risk as part of an overall risk-based capital framework. Three distinct options for calculating operational risk charges are proposed (Basic Approach, Standardised Approach, Advanced Measurement...

The Basel Committee for Banking Supervision designed a system of risk weights (the so called standardised approach) to measure the riskiness of banks� loan portfolios. Its ability to adequately reflect risk is empirically investigated in this paper, through an analysis of the economic...

In recent years, banks have become increasingly aware of the credit risk borne in lending in the interbank market and they select their counterparties accordingly. They may also fear that if they come across a bad borrower, rescue plans will be skewed towards domestic creditors; moreover,...

Large and growing international financial linkages between East and West have altered the nature of the stability risks faced by European banking systems, increasing susceptibility to contagion. This paper aims to identify potential risks of cross-border contagion using a sample of large Western...

We exploit highly disaggregated bank-firm data to investigate the dynamics of foreign vs. domestic credit supply in Italy around the period of the Lehman collapse, which brought a sudden and unexpected deterioration of economic conditions and a sharp increase in credit risk. Taking advantage of...

This paper builds a dynamic model of the information flow between partially informed financial institutions and a public agency. The financial institutions decide how to allocate their portfolio between a risk-free technology with a known payoff and a risky technology whose payoff is unknown....

We develop a model which accounts for the observed equity premium and average risk free rate, without implying counterfactually high risk aversion. The model also does well in accounting for business cycle phenomena.

The paper investigates the opinions of Italian families on the advisability and the possibility of saving. The analysis was carried out using the monthly micro-data underlying the Italian consumer survey conducted by Isae up to 2010 and by Istat thereafter. The results show that in recent years...

The role of movements in real rates in explaining the relationship between long and short-term interest rates is explored using a model of optimal government debt management.

The act of choosing can influence maximizing behaviour for at least two distinct reasons: 1) process significance and 2) decisional inescapability. The constructive programme of the paper is combined with critical appraisal of the implications of these concerns for rational decisions about...