This paper investigates contagion of major financial institutions by focusing on extreme stock return co-movements. Our measure of contagion within banking and insurance sectors is the number of coincidences of daily extreme returns that cannot be explained by a linear propagation model of...

This paper investigates systemic risk in the Dutch financial sector by focusing on extreme returns of the major financial institutions. Our measure of systemic risk is the number of coincidences of extreme returns that cannot be explained by a linear model of constant correlation. By using a...

Derivatives activity, motivated by risk-sharing, can breed risk taking. Bad news about the risk of the asset underlying the derivative increases the expected liability of a protection seller and undermines her risk prevention incentives. This limits risk-sharing, and may create endogenous...

Derivatives activity, motivated by risk-sharing, can breed risk taking. Bad news about the risk of the asset underlying the derivative increases the expected liability of a protection seller and undermines her risk prevention incentives. This limits risk-sharing, and may create endogenous...

The recent international credit crisis has highlighted the significant exposure that banks and insurers, especially mono-line credit insurers, have to residential house price risk. This paper provides an assessment of risk models for residential property for applications in banking and insurance...

In this, the third paper in the Economists’ Hubris series, we highlight the shortcomings of academic thought in developing models that can be used by financial institutions to institute effective enterprise-wide risk management systems and policies. We find that pretty much all of the models...

This article constructs triple-difference tests around shifts in the supply of risk management instruments available to agricultural producers to reveal a positive relation between risk management and productivity. This relation is more robust when producers adopt instruments with payoffs linked...

Basel II Framework brings important changes, since life insurance and surety policy are «eligible» guarantees for Credit Risk Mitigation. Nevertheless, banks could offer a better pricing to borrowers not because they are less risky, but because the whole operation would need a lower capital...

This paper deals with the risk management of savings accounts. Savings accounts are non-maturing accounts bearing a relatively attractive rate of return and two embedded options: a customer’s option to withdraw money at any time and a bank’s option to set the deposit as it wishes. The risk...

In this paper we suggest a new approach to risk assessment for banks. Rather than looking at them individually we try to undertake an analysis at the level of the banking system. Such a perspective is necessary because the complicated network of mutual credit obligations can make the actual risk...