The crisis has highlighted the importance of setting up macro-prudential oversight frameworks, having effective macro-prudential instruments in place to be called upon to mitigate growing financial imbalances as needed. We develop a new approach using the euro area Bank Lending Survey to assess...

For almost a decade, the IMF has been using stress tests to identify vulnerabilities across institutions that could undermine the stability of a country's financial system. This working paper focuses on the IMF's experience with stress testing in the Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP)....

This paper develops a framework for analyzing macro-financial linkages in the United States. We estimate the effects of a negative shock to banks' capital/assetratio on lending standards, which in turn affect consumer credit, mortgages, and corporate loans, and the corresponding components of...

Bank profits are high in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) compared to other regions. This paper uses a sample of 389 banks in 41 SSA countries to study the determinants of bank profitability. We find that apart from credit risk, higher returns on assets are associated with larger bank size, activity...

Credit Default Swap spreads have been used as a leading indicator of distress. Default probabilities can be extracted from CDS spreads, but during distress it is important to take account of the stochastic nature of recovery value. The recent episodes of Landbanski, WAMU and Lehman illustrate...

The credit risk measures we develop in this paper are used to investigate macrofinancial linkages in the Mexican banking system. Domestic and external macro-financial variables are found to be closely associated with banking soundness. At the aggregate level, high external volatility and...

The paper shows how-in a Merton-type model with bankruptcy-the currency composition of debt changes the risk profile of a company raising a given amount of financing, and thus affects the cost of debt. Foreign currency borrowing is cheaper when the exchange rate is positively correlated with the...

Intro -- Contents -- I. INTRODUCTION -- II. THE BASIC MODEL SETTING -- III. MODEL 1: A SIMPLE MODEL WITH NON-RANDOM DEFAULT PROBABILITIES -- IV. INTRODUCING THE POISSON APPROXIMATION -- V. MODEL 2: THE MODEL WITH KNOWN PROBABILITIES REVISITED -- VI. MODEL 3: THE MODEL WITH RANDOM DEFAULT...

Intro -- Contents -- I. INTRODUCTION -- II. CREDIT RISK TRANSFER INSTRUMENTS: STRUCTURED CREDIT PRODUCTS AND CREDIT DERIVATIVES -- III. INTERLINKAGES ACROSS FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS -- IV. EXPOSURE OF U. K. FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS TO CREDIT DERIVATIVES -- V. REGULATORY AND SUPERVISORY INITIATIVES...