This article analyses the way in which different socio-political configurations have had a significant effect on the economic development of Argentina, Brasil and Mexico. The characteristics of the socio-political coalitions in the three countries are presented, and their imprints on industrial...

Using a unique data set on German banks' sector specific loan exposures to the real economy and the corresponding write-offs and write-downs, we examine the impact of loan portfolio sector concentration on credit risk. By controlling for common risk factors, we separate the bank-specific...

The main challenge of forecasting credit default risk in loan portfolios is forecasting the default probabilities and the default correlations. We derive a Merton-style threshold-value model for the default probability which treats the asset value of a firm as unknown and uses a factor model...