This study investigates whether banks and insurance corporations perform regulatory arbitrage by buying bonds with inflated credit ratings. We argue that credit rating based capital requirements incentivize banks and insurance corporations to hold more bonds with inflated credit ratings. We...

The paper investigates how the mix of credit risk measurement methodologies under Basel capital adequacy rules influenced banking stability in the Netherlands during 2008-2015. It presents a first descriptive analysis that helps to examine the micro-regulation of individual banks and the...

The commercial real estate market is pro-cyclical. This feature, together with the relative size of the industry and the large capital inflows, has made this sector relevant for financial stability. Using a novel loan level data set covering the commercial real estate portfolios of Dutch banks...

This paper experimentally studies the impact of uncertainty about bank and borrower fundamentals on loan repayment. We find that solvent borrowers are more likely to default strategically when stricter disclosure creates common knowledge about bank weakness. Borrowers are also less likely to...

This paper discusses liquidity regulation when short-term funding enables credit growth but generates negative systemic risk externalities. It focuses on the relative merit of price versus quantity rules, showing how they target different incentives for risk creation. When banks differ in credit...

We investigate the role of loan loss provisions (LLPs) for bank earnings management and risk provisioning. First, banks use LLPs to reduce the volatility of their earnings and banks with less volatile regulatory capital requirements have also less volatile earnings. Second, LLPs are higher when...

We examine the relationship between credit ratings and bond yield spreads of peripheral countries in the euro area (Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain) for the period 1995-2014. Since 2012, bond spreads of those countries have come down very fast, whereas credit ratings have hardly...

This paper revisits the credit spread puzzle in bank CDS spreads from the perspective of information contagion. The puzzle, rst detected in corporate bonds, consists of two stylized facts: Structural determinants of credit risk not only have low explanatory power but also fail to capture a...

This study investigates what drives the credit cycle, focusing on the role of foreign funded bank credit (FFC). Considering credit cycles in 41 countries over the period 1985-2015, this study finds that credit booms are associated with an increase in the share of FFC in an economy, both in...

This paper employs a time-varying parameter state space model to explore the impact of the crisis on bank retail rates in the euro area. We show that σ-convergence in interest rates has been adversely affected by the crisis and quantify the role of sovereign and credit risk as two alternative...