Assessing when credit is excessive is important to understand macro-financial vulnerabilities and guide macroprudential policy. The Basel Credit Gap (BCG) - the deviation of the credit-to-GDP ratio from its long-term trend estimated with a one-sided Hodrick-Prescott (HP) filter-is the indicator...

We present a semi-structural model of default risk, which is a function of loan and borrower characteristics, economic conditions, and the regulatory environment. We use this model to simulate bank credit losses for stress-testing purposes and to calibrate borrower-based macroprudential tools....

The traditional approach to the stress testing of financial institutions focuses on capital adequacy and solvency. Liquidity stress tests have been applied in parallel to and independently from solvency stress tests, based on scenarios which may not be consistent with those used in solvency...

Whether and to what extent tougher bank regulation weighs on economic growth is an open empirical question. Using data from 28 manufacturing industries in 50 countries, we explore the extent to which cross-country differences in bank liquidity and capital levels were related to differences in...

Credit is key to support healthy and sustainable economic growth but excess aggregate credit growth can signal the build-up of imbalances and lead to systemic financial crisis. Hence, monitoring the credit cycle is key to identifying vulnerabilities, particularly in emerging markets, which tend...

This paper discusses issues in calibrating the countercyclical capital buffer (CCB) based on a sample of EU countries. It argues that the main indicator for buffer decisions under the Basel III framework, the credit-to-GDP gap, does not always work best in terms of covering bank loan losses that...

The paper presents a framework to integrate liquidity and solvency stress tests. An empirical study based on European bond trading data finds that asset sales haircuts depend on the total amount of assets sold and general liquidity conditions in the market. To account for variations in market...

Periods of banking distress are often followed by sizable and long-lasting contractions in bank credit. They may be explained by a declined demand by financially impaired borrowers (the conventional financial accelerator) or by lower supply by capital-constrained banks, a ""credit crunch"". This...

The relationship between the observance of financial system standards and financial stability is complex owing to the multitude of macroeconomic and structural factors affecting stability. Therefore, assessments of standards in terms of technical criteria for compliance needs to be reinforced...