With the advent of Basel II, risk–capital provisions need to also account for operational risk. The specification of dependence structures and the assessment of their effects on aggregate risk–capital are still open issues in modeling operational risk. In this paper, we investigate the...

In the light of the fundamental role played by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the economy of many countries including Italy and of the specific treatment of this issue within the Basel II regulation, the aim of this work is to build a default prediction model for the Italian SMEs....

The solution adopted in Basel II to deal with procyclicality of capital requirements (i.e. through the cycle ratings and long-run average estimates of default probabilities) implies a reduction in the risk-sensitivity that contradicts the original spirit of the new framework.In order to preserve...