An increase in the level of interest rates is said to have a negative impact on banks net interest margins in the short run. Using a time series of more than 40 years for the German banking system, we show that the opposite effect exists in the long run, where an increase in the level of...

We introduce an empirical approach to studying credit risk in the corporate loan portfolio. First, historical adverse scenarios for loss rates are identified at sector level. Second, we estimate the empirical association between loan losses and economic growth and then apply it to a scenario of...

Es wird ein empirischer Ansatz vorgestellt, wie die Kreditrisiken im Unternehmenskreditportfolio untersucht werden können. Dabei werden Stress-Szenarien für Verlustquoten auf der Ebene der einzelnen Sektoren historisch ermittelt. Alternativ schätzen wir die empirische Assoziation zwischen...

Section 340f of the German Commercial Code allows banks to provision against the special risks inherent to the banking business by building hidden reserves. Beyond risk provisioning, these reserves are implicitly accepted as an earnings management device. By analyzing financial statements of...

We use portfolios of passive investment strategies to replicate the interest risk of banks' banking books. The following empirical statements are derived: (i) Changes in banks' present value and in their net interest income are highly correlated, irrespective of the banks' portfolio composition....

This paper investigates contagion at the German interbank market under the assumption of a stochastic loss given default (LGD). We combine a unique data set about the LGD of interbank loans with data about interbank exposures. We find that the frequency distribution of the LGD is u-shaped. Under...

We decompose the change in banks' net interest margin into a change in market-wide bank rates and a change in the balance-sheet composition. Our empirical findings from a detailed data set on German banks' balance-sheet positions, broken down into different maturities, creditors and borrowers...

We use a unique dataset of German banks' exposure to interest rate risk to derive the following statements about their exposure to this risk and their earnings from term transformation. The systematic factor for the exposure to interest rate risk moves in sync with the shape of the term...

This paper investigates contagion in the German interbank market under the assumption of a stochastic loss given default (LGD). We combine a unique data set about the LGD of interbank loans with detailed data about interbank exposures. We find that the frequency distribution of the LGD is...

Carrying out interbank contagion simulations for the German banking sector for the period from the first quarter of 2008 to the second quarter of 2011, we obtain the following results: (i) The system becomes less vulnerable to direct interbank contagion over time. (ii) The loss distribution for...