The current banking regulatory framework assigns EU government bonds a risk weight of zero. Since the European debt crisis, there has been increasing controversy over eliminating this equity capital privilege, which is viewed as contributing to the close relationship between state and bank...

This paper analyses whether the introduction of capital requirements for bank government bond holdings increases financial stability by making the banking sector more resilient to sovereign debt crises. Using a theoretical model, we show that a sudden increase in sovereign default risk may lead...

Although banks are required to document their equity capital for loans, corporate bonds, and other receivables, they are currently exempted from the procedure when investing in government bonds: they enjoy an “equity capital privilege.” As part of the Basel III regulatory framework redraft,...

The European sovereign debt crisis illustrated how the stability of the entire financial system suffers when banks and sovereigns become too intertwined. However, there has been seemingly little success in reducing the bank-sovereign nexus in the decade since the crisis. As this Weekly Report...

“Safe assets” is a catch-all term for financial contracts that market participants treat as if they were risk-free. These may include government debt, AAA corporate debt, bank debt, and asset-backed securities, among others. The International Monetary Fund estimated potential safe assets at...

Excessive borrowing of local governments in China sparked concerns that the debt may threaten the financial stability of the economy and ultimately cause economic collapse. It becomes critically important to understand the credit rating of China's LFGV bonds and the association between the...

We study the response of bond spreads to a liquidity supply shock in the credit default swap (CDS) market. Our identification strategy exploits the exogenous exit of a large dealer from the single-name CDS market as well as granular data on CDS transactions and bond portfolio holdings of German...

In this study, we analyze the effects of sovereign credit rating reviews on national stock market performances in GIIPS and BRIC countries during the European Sovereign Debt Crisis of 2009-2013. Through an event study, we test the Null Hypothesis that cumulative abnormal returns on national...

We study the response of bond spreads to a liquidity supply shock in the credit default swap (CDS) market. Our identification strategy exploits the exogenous exit of a large dealer from the single-name CDS market as well as granular data on CDS transactions and bond portfolio holdings of German...