This paper identifies the macroeconomic factors that influence Italian equity returns and tests the stability of their relation with securities returns. In the sixteen-year period that has been analyzed the relation between stock returns and the macroeconomic factors is found to be highly...

This paper explores the implications of systemic risk in Credit Structured Finance (CSF). Risk measurement issues loomed large during the 2007-08 financial crisis, as the massive, unprecedented number of downgrades of AAA senior bond tranches inflicted severe losses on banks, calling into...

The volume collects the essays presented at the 15th Workshop on Public Finance organised by Banca d'Italia in Perugia from 4 to 6 April 2013. The workshop focused on the link between fiscal policy and macroeconomic imbalances and comprised four sessions. The first session concentrated on the...

Supervisors and policy makers pay increasing attention to the possible procyclical nature of banks� behaviour. Indeed, to guarantee macro and financial stability, it is important to understand whether, and to what extent, banks are affected by the macroeconomy and second round effects...

This paper discusses the role that macroeconomic uncertainty plays in banks� decisions on the optimal asset allocation. Using a portfolio model recently proposed in the literature, the paper aims at disentangling how Italian banks choose between loans and risk-free assets when uncertainty...

After August 2007 the plumbing system that supplied banks with wholesale funding, the interbank market, failed because toxic assets obstructed the pipes. Banks were forced to squeeze liquidity in a �lemons market� or to ask for liquidity �on tap� from central banks. This...

The aim of the paper is to understand the interaction between market and credit risk. Using a comprehensive set of Italian data, we apply a factor model to identify the common sources of risk driving fluctuations in the real and financial sectors. The common latent factors are then inserted in a...

Aim of this article is to judge the empirical performance of 'ARCH models as diffusion approximations' of models of the short-term rate with stochastic volatility. Our estimation strategy is based both on moment conditions needed to guarantee the convergence of the discrete time models and on...

This paper analyzes the determinants of credit default swap spread changes for a large sample of US non-financial companies over the period between January 2002 and March 2009. In our analysis we use variables that the literature has found have an impact on CDS spreads and, in order to account...

A time series model in which the signal is buried in non-Gaussian noise may throw up observations that are outliers when judged by the Gaussian yardstick. We describe an observation-driven model, based on an exponential generalized beta distribution of the second kind (EGB2), in which the signal...