flat capital requirements if the approach is applied uniformly across banks and if the costs of implementation are not too … high. However, the banks' right to choose between the standardized and the IRB approaches under Basel II gives larger banks … a competitive advantage and, due to fiercer competition, pushes smaller banks to take higher risks. This may even lead …

Our paper addresses firm size as a driver of systematic credit risk in loans to small and medium enterprises (SMEs …). Key contributions are the use of a unique data set of SME lending by over 400 German banks and relating systematic risk to … particularly rich and well developed credit market for SMEs in Germany. We estimate asset correlations as the key measure of …

mortgage-specialized banks raise prices more than their competitors do. Second, risk-weighting schemes linked to borrower risk … intended effect in shifting mortgages from less resilient to more resilient banks, but stricter capital requirements do not … appear to have discouraged less resilient banks from risky mortgage lending. …

(CRE) exposures in Norway, applicable to the largest banks. CRE is the sector where banks have historically incurred the … weight floor is high enough to cover banks' CRE loan losses[1] during the downturn in 2002-03, but lower than the CRE loan … cover some of the losses. On the other hand, risk weight floors should not be set to a level that weakens banks' incentives …