The fallout from the 2008 financial crisis has been particularly acute in the euro area Member States of the south-western rim and in the new EU Member States, due to their previously accumulated macroeconomic and financial imbalances. The perception that the euro environment provided a solid...

Model uncertainty hampers consensus on the main determinants of corporate default. We employ Bayesian model averaging (BMA) techniques in order to shed light on this issue. Empirical findings suggest that the most robust determinants of corporate default are firm-specific variables such as the...

During the last crisis, developed economies’ sovereign Credit Default Swap (hereafter CDS) premia have gained in importance as a tool for approximating credit risk. In this paper, we fit a dynamic factor model to decompose the sovereign CDS spreads of ten OECD economies into three components:...

This article estimates a general credit risk model with both macroeconomic and latent credit factors for Spanish banks during the period 2004-2010. The proposed framework allows to estimate with bank level data both the standard credit risk model of Basel II and generalized models. I fi nd...

This paper analyses the risk and return of loans portfolios in a joint setting. I develop a model to obtain the distribution of loans returns. I use this model to describe the investment opportunity set of lenders using mean-variance analysis with a Value at Risk constraint. I also obtain closed...

A common assumption in the academic literature is that franchise value plays a key role in limiting bank risk-taking. As market power is the primary source of franchise value, reduced competition in banking markets has been seen as promoting banking stability. We test this hypothesis using data...

We propose a new method for analysing multiperiod stress scenarios for portfolio credit risk more systematically than in the current practice of macro stress testing. Our method quantifies the plausibility of scenarios by considering the distance of the stress scenario from an average scenario....