This paper examines the impact of the Asian crisis on bank stocks across four Western countries and six Asian countries. In the second half of 1997, Western banks experienced positive returns. In contrast, East Asian bank indices incurred losses in excess of 60% in each of the crisis countries....

In this paper we explore the developments in the cross-border bank exposures using the BIS International Banking Statistics. To this end, we treat the web of the cross-border bank exposures as a "network" and investigate the characteristics of the network topology, and compute various...

Trade finance, particularly in the form of short-term letters of credit has received favourable capital treatment new Basel III rules. However, concerns have been expressed over the potential negative “unintended consequences” of the newly created leverage ratio for trade. This paper offers...

After completing the painful transition of the 1990s, former communist countries enjoyed a period of rapid economic growth which was underpinned by three groups of factors: (i) benefits of market reforms and transition-related restructuring in the 1990s; (ii) increasing participation in the...

The present paper investigates how an emerging market economy is affected when it suddenly faces a higher risk premium on international capital markets. We study this question empirically for five Latin American economies over the period 1994-2007 within a structural panel vector autoregression...

This paper discusses the role of state intervention for prevention, containment, and resolution of financial crises based mainly on the Korean experience during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Crises in emerging market and developing economies tend to be more complicated than those faced by...

This paper reviews the origin and spread of the distressed debt problem in the transition region. We argue that while the crisis was triggered abroad, the current high level of distressed debt in various transition countries mainly reflects home-grown vulnerabilities. As in the West, the root...

This paper discusses the role of state intervention for prevention, containment, and resolution of financial crises based mainly on the Korean experience during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Crises in emerging market and developing economies tend to be more complicated than those faced by...

This paper explores the relationship between sovereign risk and banking risk during the European sovereign debt crisis in May 2010. We link banks’ stock returns and CDS rates to sovereign CDS rates, to examine the spillover of sovereign risk to the banking system in the EU. More specifically,...

This paper investigates banking and sovereign distress in the Eurozone and the importance of direct and indirect financial exposures. We use BIS cross-border banking claims to link member states in a GVAR framework and jointly model sectoral CDS premia. Based on balance sheet positions of an...