I analyze how lack of commitment affects the maturity structure of sovereign debt. Governments balance benefits of default induced redistribution and costs due to income losses in the wake of a default. Their choice of short- versus long- term debt affects default and rollover decisions by...

We develop a sovereign debt model with offcial and private creditors where default risk depends on both the level and the composition of liabilities. Higher exposure to offcial lenders improves incentives to repay but carries extra costs, such as reduced ex-post flexibility. The model implies...

We shed light on the function, properties and optimal size of austerity using the standard sovereign debt model augmented to include incomplete information about credit risk. Austerity is defined as the shortfall of consumption from the level desired by a country and supported by its repayment...

Collateral is a widely used, but not well understood, debt-contracting feature. Two broad strands of theoretical literature explain collateral as arising from the existence of either ex ante private information or ex post incentive problems between borrowers and lenders. However, the extant...

This paper analyzes the influence of market discipline on the risk-taking incentives of banks. It is shown that market discipline reduces risk if banks can credibly commit to a given level of risk before the interest rate on deposits is set. If, however, the bank can readjust the level of risk...

Credit risk transition probabilities between aggregate portfolio classes constitute a very useful tool when individual transition data are not available. Jones (2005) estimates Markovian Credit Transition Matrices using an adjusted least squares method. Given the arguments of Judge and Takayama...

We examine the quantification of operational risk for banks. We adopt a financial-economics approach and interpret operational risk management as a means of optimizing the profitability of an institution along its value chain. We start by defining operational risk and then propose a...

We propose a simple and implementable model of credit contagion where we in-clude macro- and microstructural dependencies among the debtors within a creditportfolio. We show that, even for diversified portfolios, moderate microstructuraldependencies have already a significant impact on the tails...

In this paper, we characterize explicitly the first derivative of the Value at Risk and the Expected Shortfall with respect to portfolio allocation when netting between positions exists. As a particular case, we examine a simple Gaussian example in order to illustrate the impact of netting...

Like many financial contracts, derivatives are subject to default risk. A very popular mechanism in derivatives markets to mitigate the risk of non-performance on contracts is margining. By attaching collateral to a contract, margining supposedly reduces default risk. The broader impacts of the...