Non-performing loans in the Albanian banking system is becoming one of key concerns for banks, particularly after the breakout of the last global financial & economic crises of 2008. The crises effects, twinned with other specific factors of Albania’s economic structure, could be identified as...

Adding contingently convertible debt securities, cocos, in an amount equal to about 3% of tangible assets to the financing mix of financial institutions is a promising reform idea. It would also be inexpensive for these institutions to issue cocos and thus to be prepared to recapitalize and to...

Ratings measure the counterparty risk for an issuer or an issue while CDs are a market evaluation of the same risk exposure. The market evaluation could be not aligned with the rating agencies' judgment and the difference could be relevant. The article presents an empirical analysis on a sample...

This paper studies how fiscal policy in the eurozone and the United States (US) affected banks’ loan loss provisioning during the COVID-19 crisis. By decomposing government support into below-the-line (loan guarantees) and above-the-line (cash transfers) support, we examine how both types of...

We show that when borrowers are privately informed about their creditworthiness and lenders have a soft budget constraint, efficient investment requires a limit on the fraction of a firm’s cash flows that can be pledged to outsiders. That is, pledgeability should neither be too low nor too...

In this paper, we ask how firms’ optimal debt structure responds to a change in the bankruptcy regime. While existing work shows that this relationship is dependent on the ex-ante liquidation value of a firm, we demonstrate that the ownership of lenders they are connected to also matters. We...

It was once conventional wisdom that lenders routinely influenced corporate managers’ decision making. Covenants constrained borrower risk taking and compelled specific affirmative obligations to protect lenders. Recent policy discussion, however, laments loan markets’ turn to various forms...

It was once conventional wisdom that lenders routinely influenced corporate managers’ decision making. Covenants constrained borrower risk taking and compelled specific affirmative obligations to protect lenders. Recent policy discussion, however, laments loan markets’ turn to various forms...

Credit risk assessment is a crucial part of macroprudential analysis, with the aggregate nonperforming loan (NPL) ratio serving as a proxy for the economy-wide probability of default of the banking sector's overall loan exposure. Therefore, the factors driving the NPL ratio deserve a lot of...

The economic and financial crisis of the year 2008 highlighted the need for banking sector regulation via the creation of the banking union. The Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD) represents an important milestone in the formation of the banking union. It is supposed inter alia to...