The US credit boom has been identified as one of the causes of the global financial crisis and the resulting debt overhang is seen as the primary reason for the weak economic recovery. Most of the existing literature links the credit boom to the emergence of the shadow banking system. This paper...

The crisis has highlighted the importance of setting up macro-prudential oversight frameworks, having effective macro-prudential instruments in place to be called upon to mitigate growing financial imbalances as needed. We develop a new approach using the euro area Bank Lending Survey to assess...

This paper studies the welfare effects of different credit arrangements and how these effects depend on the trading mechanism and inflation. In a competitive market, a deviation from the Friedman rule is always sub-optimal. Moreover, credit arrangements can be welfare-reducing, because increased...

The present study examines political roots of bank and sovereign default risk co-movements for banks in Europe and the United States. A flattening of the yield curve, lower bank interest margins, higher interbank market rates and increasing levels of Economic Policy Uncertainty are found to...

In this paper we examine the effects of limited liability on mortgage dynamics. While the literature has focused on default rates, renegotiation, or loan rates individually, we study them together as equilibrium outcomes of the strategic interaction between lenders and borrowers. We present a...

The post-Lehman phase of the financial crisis has exposed a number of weaknesses in the banking sectors of the European Union's New Member States (NMSs). One of these is the prevalence of lending in foreign currency. While banks themselves in these countries have not taken on sizeable currency...

The post-Lehman phase of the financial crisis has exposed a number of weaknesses in the banking sectors of the European Union’s New Member States (NMSs). One of these is the prevalence of lending in foreign currency. While banks themselves in these countries have not taken on sizeable currency...

The interplay between liquidity and credit risks in the interbank market is analyzed. Banks are hit by idiosyncratic random liquidity shocks. The market may also be hit by a bad news at a future date, implying the insolvency of some participants and creating a lemon problem; this may end up with...

The United States is now committed to using two relatively sophisticated approaches to measuring capital adequacy: Basel III and stress tests. This paper shows how stress testing could mitigate weaknesses in the way Basel III measures credit and interest rate risk, the way it measures bank...

This paper proposes a new theoretical framework for the analysis of the relationship between credit shocks, firm defaults and volatility. The key feature of the modelling approach is to allow for the possibility of default in equilibrium. The model is then used to study the impact of credit...