I analyze the risk premium on bank bonds at origination with special focus on the role of implicit and explicit public guarantees and the systemic relevance of issuing institutions. Looking at the asset swap spread on 5,500 bonds, I find that explicit guarantees and sovereign creditworthiness...

This paper shows how credit quality transition matrices of loans to Italian firms changed during a cyclical downturn (2008-09), compared with a previous time of growth (2006-07). Once transition matrices were linked to interest rates, banks appear to have been remarkably able at calibrating...

A consensus has recently emerged that a number of variables in addition to the level, slope, and curvature of the term structure can help predict interest rates and excess bond returns. We demonstrate that the statistical tests that have been used to support this conclusion are subject to very...