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...

To test if safety nets create moral hazard in the banking industry, we develop a simultaneous structural two-equations model that specifies the probability of a bailout and banks' risk taking.We identify the effect of expected bailout probabilities on risk taking using exclusion restrictions...

On 3 December EY hosted a SUERF conference on banking reform with Sir Howard Davies, the Chairman of RBS, and Dame Colette Bowe, the Chairman of the Banking Standards Board, as the two keynote speakers. Professor David Miles (Imperial College) gave the SUERF 2015 Annual Lecture on Capital and...

SUERF – The European Money and Finance Forum, the Deutsche Bundesbank and the Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (IMFS) took the opportunity of the first anniversary of this new institution to organise a joint conference in Berlin on 8-9 November 2011. The purpose of this event was...

Efficiency is considered a key factor when evaluating a bank's performance. Moreover, efficiency enhancement is an explicit policy objective in the Single Market Directive of the European Commission. But efficiency improvements may come at the expense of deteriorating bank profits and excessive...

We investigate the consistency of efficiency scores derived with two competing frontier methods in the financial economics literature: Stochastic Frontier and Data Envelopment Analysis. We sample 34,192 observations for all German universal banks and analyze whether efficiency measures yield...

This paper analyses the role of bank-related constraints in explaining the sharp slowdown in bank lending to non-financial corporations in Germany during the recent financial crisis. We use a panel approach based on a unique data set which matches the individual responses of the banks...

Section 340f of the German Commercial Code allows banks to provision against the special risks inherent to the banking business by building hidden reserves. Beyond risk provisioning, these reserves are implicitly accepted as an earnings management device. By analyzing financial statements of...

Over the past two decades, Germany experienced several periods of banking system instability rather than full-blown banking system crises. In this paper we introduce a continuous and forward-looking stability indicator for the banking system based on information on all financial institutions in...