We document a significant inverse relationship between a firm’sdividend payouts and reliance on bank loan financing. Banks limitdividend payouts to shareholders in order to protect the integrity oftheir senior claims on the firm’s assets. Moreover, dividendpayouts decline in the presence of...

This paper looks at the role of commercial banks and investment banks as financial advisors. Unlike some areas of investment banking, commercial banks have always been allowed to compete directly with traditional investment banks in this area. In their role as lenders and advisors, banks can be...

This paper looks at the role of commercial banks and investment banks as financial advisor's. Unlike some areas of investment banking, commercial banks have always been allowed to compete directly with traditional investment banks in this area. In their role as lenders and advisor's, banks can...

Certain nonrecurring circumstances associated with the passage of the Financial ServicesModernization Act of 1999 have created a unique opportunity for the market to obtainbank examination ratings of management quality. We utilize this natural experiment in order to determine how the market...

Using equity returns for financial institutions we estimate both catastrophic and operational risk measures over the period 1973-2001. We find evidence of cyclical components in both the catastrophic and operational risk measures obtained from the Generalized Pareto Distribution and the Skewed...

Certain nonrecurring circumstances associated with the passage of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 have created a unique opportunity for the market to obtain bank examination ratings of management quality. We utilize this natural experiment in order to determine how the market...

Procyclicality has emerged as a potential drawback to adoption of risk-sensitive bank capital requirements. Systematic risk factors may result in increases (decreases) in bank capital requirements when the economy is depressed (overheated), thereby decreasing (increasing) bank lending capacity...

We survey both academic and proprietary models to examine how macroeconomic and systematic risk effects are incorporated into measures of credit risk exposure. Many models consider the correlation between the probability of default (PD) and cyclical factors. Few models adjust loss rates (loss...

Using equity returns for financial institutions we estimate both catastrophic and operational risk measures over the period 1973-2001. We find evidence of cyclical components in both the catastrophic and operational risk measures obtained from the Generalized Pareto Distribution and the Skewed...

Retail loan markets create special challenges for credit risk assessment. Borrowers tend to be informationally opaque and borrow relatively infrequently. Retail loans are illiquid and do not trade in secondary markets. For these reasons, historical credit databases are usually not available for...