The analysis of the financial crisis has revealed not only major market and regulatory failures, but also shortcomings in supervisory approaches and in banks’ systems of internal and external controls. These failures and shortcomings played a significant role in the origin and evolution of the...

This paper aims to highlight the importance of banks’ Internal Corporate Governance (ICG), viewed as an operational mitigation instrument, in a context where banks enjoy a high degree of organisational flexibility due to principle-based regulatory and risk-based supervisory approaches. The...

A widespread consensus for an easier access to bank credit for SMEs to quicken the recovery could lead to overlook risks, for banks as well as for economies, of financing projects that do not fit the structural adjustments in the world economy caused by the international crisis. Sustainable...

The aim of the paper is to analyse how credit crunch has modified the traditional bank-firm relationship with a particular attention to the Italian situation. Our analysis reinforces the finding that in Italy, the credit available to the real economy is insufficient in terms not only of quantity...

The Basel II capital accord has fostered the debate over the financial stability of the aggregate banking sector. There is a large empirical literature focused on the effects of macroeconomic disturbances on the banking system. Specifically, loan losses are an important factor for the banking...

As emphasized by the introduction of Basel II, the macroeconomic factors strongly affect credit risk variables. In order to account for the business cycle in a forward-looking way, a macroeconomic forecast can be introduced in the estimation of credit risk variables. This work proposes to model...

This paper aims to stress the importance of market liquidity for the stability of the financial system, emphasizing the pivotal role played by liquidity risk in the development of the current financial crisis, pointing out the flaws of regulation and supervision and stressing the need for their...

This paper examines the impact of bank concentration on bank financial distress using a balanced panel of commercial banks belonging to EU 25 over the sample period running from 2003 to 2007. Financial distress is proxied by the observations falling below a given threshold of the empirical...

The increasing use of internal market models for market risk assessment and management promotes, in compliance with Basel II, better risk management practices but introduces at the same time the so called model risk. In the light of the many open issues connected to market risk, the aim of this...

The main objective of this paper is to investigate the determinants of collateral requirements on loans that are extended to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in less–developed countries. Our primary data source is the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) results...