How do banks set their target capital ratio? How do they adjust to reach it? This paper answers these questions using an original dataset of capital ratio targets directly announced to investors by European banks, materially improving data quality compared to usual estimated implicit target. It...

This paper illustrates that systemically important banks reduce a range of activities at year- end, leading to lower additional capital requirements in the form of G-SIB buffers. The effects are stronger for banks with higher incentives to reduce the indicators, and for banks with balance sheet...

We analyse the impact of the adoption of expected credit loss accounting (IFRS 9) on the timeliness and potential procyclicality of banks' loan loss provisioning. We use granular loan-level data from the euro area's credit register and investigate both firm-level credit events and macroeconomic...

How do near-zero interest rates affect optimal bank capital regulation and risk-taking? I study this question in a dynamic model, in which forward-looking banks compete imperfectly for deposit funding, but households do not accept negative deposit rates. When deposit rates are constrained by the...

This paper investigates the costs and benefits of liquidity regulation. We find that liquidity tools are beneficial but cannot completely remove the need for Lender of Last Resort (LOLR) interventions by the central bank. Full compliance with current Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) and Net Stable...

Following the financial crisis, the share of non-performing loans has significantly increased, while the regulatory guidelines on the Internal-Ratings Based (IRB) approach for capital adequacy calculation related to defaulted exposures remains too general. As a result, the high-risk nature of...

We develop a structural model for valuing bank balance sheet components such as the equity and debt value, the value for the government when the bank is operated by private shareholders including the present value of a possible future bailout, the bailout value incurred by the government...

Using a difference-in-differences approach and relying on conftdential supervisory data and an unique proprietary data set available at the European Central Bank related to the 2016 EU-wide stress test, this paper presents novel empirical evidence that supervisory scrutiny associated to stress...

When the Covid-19 crisis struck, banks using internal-rating based (IRB) models quickly recognized the increase in risk and reduced lending more than banks using a standardized approach. This effect is not driven by borrowers' quality or by banks in countries with credit booms before the...

This paper investigates both the magnitude and the drivers of bank window dressing behaviour in euro-denominated repo markets. Using a confidential transaction-level data set, our analysis illustrates that banks engineer an economically sizeable contraction in their repo transactions around...