Extending a standard credit-risk model illustrates that a single factor can drive both expected losses and the extent to which they may be exceeded in extreme scenarios, ie "unexpected losses." This leads us to develop a framework for forecasting these losses jointly. In an application to...

A parsimonious extension of a well-known portfolio credit-risk model allows us to study a salient stylized fact - abrupt switches between high- and low-loss phases - from a risk-management perspective. As uncertainty about phase switches increases, expected losses decouple from unexpected...

Using an unbalanced panel of commercial, savings and co-operative banks for the years 1997 to 2004 we examine the cyclical behaviour of European bank capital buffers.After controlling for other potential determinants of bank capital, we find that capital buffers of the banks in the accession...

The solvency standards implicit in bank capital levels, as reported eg in Jackson et al (2002), are much higher than those required for top ratings, if standard single period economic capital models are taken seriously.We explain this excess capital puzzle by forward looking rating targeting...

Building on Cecchetti and Li (2005), we show that the bank lending channel affects monetary policy trade-offs only when interest rates affect marginal costs of production (ie when there is a cost channel of monetary policy) in the New Keynesian monetary policy model. In our calibrated model the...