This paper examines two major forces that may soon increase competition in the U.S. secondary conforming mortgage market: 1) the expansion of Federal Home Loan Bank mortgage purchase programs, and 2) the adoption of revised risk-based capital requirements for large U.S. banks (Basel II).(...)

In this paper we show that reputation formation in endogenously formed relationships is a decisive determinant for the existence and performance of credit markets. In theabsence of any third party enforcement of debt repayment the contracting parties succeed in establishing stable bilateral...

This paper develops a sequential learning estimator of production functions and productivitydynamics for unbalanced establishment panels. Extending an idea from the literatureon dynamic industry models, establishments are uncertain about their own idiosyncraticproductivities and update...

Since the mid-1990s, major Japanese banks have sold off a significant portion of their holdings of corporate equity. Using information on the identity of Japanese firms' top 10 shareholders, this paper explores the process of banks' equity disposal. There is some evidence that, after FY2001,...

Our paper introduces a new estimation method for arbitrary temporal heterogeneityin panel data models. The paper provides a semiparametric method for estimatinggeneral patterns of cross-sectional specific time trends. The methods proposed in thepaper are related to principal component analysis...

One of the greatest challenges in modeling credit portfolio risk is the issue of correlations between borrowers.Up to now no consistent methodology for identifying correlations exists. In general two approachesare employed: “direct” and “indirect” modeling. While the former specify...

This paper examines latent risk factors in models for migration risk. We employ thestandard statistical framework for ordered categorical variables and induce dependencebetween migrations by means of latent risk factors. By assuming a Markov process forthe dynamics of the latent factors, the...

The aim of this paper is to explain why cross-sectional estimated migration correlations displayed in the academic and professional literature can be either not consistent, or inefficient, and to discuss alternative approaches. The analysis relies on a model with stochastic migration in which...

In this paper we explain how to use rating histories provided by the internal scoring systems of banks and by rating agencies in order to predict the future risk of a set of borrowers. The method is developed following the steps suggested by the Basle Committee. To introduce both migration...

This paper empirically investigates the impact of macroeconomic uncertainty on thespreads of individual rms' credit default swaps (CDS). While existing literature ac-knowledges the importance of the levels of macroeconomic factors in determiningCDS spreads, we nd that the second moments of these...