Liberalization and deregulation have recently accelerated.It is therefore useful to keep risk within a certain level inrelation to capital, considering that financial institutionsmust control their risk appropriately to maintain thesafety and soundness of their operation. In 1988, the...

This paper was presented at the conference "Financial services at the crossroads: capital regulation in the twenty-first century" as part of session 2, "Credit risk modeling." The conference, held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on February 26-27, 1998, was designed to encourage a...