A model is presented that shows when (Basel Accord) capital standards and (FDIC) insurance premiums primarily reflect a bank's physical expected default losses, a bank can increase its shareholder value by making loans and investing in bonds that have relatively high systematic risk. Such an...

Climate change can be a source of financial risk. This paper examines how credit rating agencies accepted by the Eurosystem incorporate climate change risk in their credit ratings. It also analyses how rating agencies disclose their assessments of climate change risks to rating users. The paper...

We investigate whether credit rating agencies incorporate climate risk in their rating models. As climate risk is not well defined, we implement several identification strategies using a sample of U.S. cities whose creditworthiness should vary with climate risk–related disruptions to their...

This paper presents a Least Square Monte Carlo approach for accurately calculating credit value adjustment (CVA). In contrast to previous studies, the model relies on the probability distribution of a default time/jump rather than the default time itself, as the default time is usually...

The incremental risk charge (IRC) is a new regulatory requirement from the Basel Committee in response to the recent financial crisis. Notably few models for IRC have been developed in the literature. This paper proposes a methodology consisting of two Monte Carlo simulations. The first Monte...

This paper proposes a set of indicators relevant for the risk characteristics of covered bonds, as based on granular publicly available transparency data. The indicators capture various aspects of cash flow risks related to the issuer, the cover pool and the payment structure. They offer unified...

We investigate ratings quality across uncertain and normal times proxied by variations in economic policy uncertainty. We find that increased policy uncertainty is associated with weaker rating standards. This finding is unrelated to variations in macroeconomic conditions and holds when we use...

We address a three-period model of fi nancial intermediaries that involves securitization of risky loan assets, leverage, and asymmetric information. We show that the risk retention requirement with a fi xed ratio, stipulated by the Dodd-Frank Act, might induce losses of social welfare in the...

Why does the market discipline that banks face seem too weak during good times and too strong during bad times? This paper shows that using rollover risk as a disciplining device is effective only if all banks face purely idiosyncratic risk. However, if banks' assets are correlated, a two-sided...