This study investigates whether banks and insurance corporations perform regulatory arbitrage by buying bonds with inflated credit ratings. We argue that credit rating based capital requirements incentivize banks and insurance corporations to hold more bonds with inflated credit ratings. We...

The paper proposes a sequential Bayesian updating approach to estimate default probabilities on rating grade level for no- and low-default portfolios.Bayesian sequential updating enables default probabilities to be obtained also for those rating grades for which no defaults have been...

We investigate how provisioning models affect bank regulation. We study an accuracy vs. timeliness trade-off between an incurred loss model (IL) and a current expected credit loss model (CECL). Relative to IL, CECL improves efficiency by enabling timely intervention to curb inefficient ex post...

The paper starts with an evaluation of the banks' solvency information disclosed in the 2018 and 2016 EU-wide stress tests, asking do they add value to the information available in the bank capital ratios observed at the start of the stress exercise? It argues that information from...

Two models of default risk are prominent in the financial literature: Merton's structural model and Altman's reduced-form model. The former has the benefit of being responsive, since the probabilities of default can continually be updated with the evolution of firms' asset values. Its main flaw...

Recognizing that many banks suffered trading losses that notably exceeded their minimum capital requirements during the recent crisis, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (2011) revised its regulatory framework for trading portfolios. In this paper, we compare: (1) the relative...

In setting minimum capital requirements for trading portfolios, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (1996, 2011a, 2013) initially used Value-at-Risk (VaR), then both VaR and stressed VaR (SVaR), and most recently, stressed Conditional VaR (SCVaR). Accordingly, we examine the use of SCVaR...

This paper investigates the interplay of abnormal loan growth, credit reporting system and systemic risk in banking. Based on a sample of publicly traded banks in Asia from 1998 to 2012, higher abnormal loan growth leads to higher systemic risk one year ahead. A closer investigation further...

This paper addresses the trade-off between additional loss-absorbing capacity and potentially higher bank risk-taking associated with the introduction of the Basel III Leverage Ratio. This is addressed in both a theoretical and empirical setting. Using a theoretical micro model, we show that a...

We analyze the link between banking sector quality and sovereign risk in the whole European Union over 1999–2014. We employ four different indicators of sovereign risk (including market- and opinion-based assessments), a rich set of theoretically and empirically motivated banking sector...