Policy discussions on the recent financial crisis feature widespread calls to address the pro-cyclical effects of regulation. The main concern is that the new risk-sensitive bank capital regulation (Basel II) may amplify business cycle fluctuations. This paper compares the leading alternative...

Regulatory capital for trading book positions includes two components that cover different risks but apply to the same portfolio, one for market risk and one for credit risk. Similar approaches are common in banks’ internal models for economic capital. Although it is known that joint market...

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...

Recent literature suggests that regulatory risk measures do not adequately capture the actual economic risk of bank portfolios. We shed new light on this issue by analyzing both unexpected and expected losses and their assessment according to regulatory and accounting standards. Examining a...

In the follow-up to the 1926 financial crisis in France, a new government led by Raymond Poincaré attempted to restore monetary stability by restructuring public debt. This policy led to a sharp decrease in the outstanding amount of floating debt, which had become a standard source of funding...

Purpose: SME sector credit risk has received attention in research from several dimensions of the financial system. SME sector's funding is mainly supplied by financial institutions and SME sector is both diversified and large sector in both well developed and less developed economies. Specific...

Efforts to control bank risk address the wrong problem in the wrong way. They presume that the financial crisis was caused by CEOs who failed to supervise risk-taking employees. The responses focus on executive pay, believing that executives will bring non-executives into line — using...

This paper investigates the effects of interbank rate uncertainty on lending rates to euro area firms. We introduce a novel measure of interbank rate uncertainty, computed as the cross-sectional dispersion in interbank market rates on overnight unsecured loans. Using proprietary bank-level data,...

Why do banks squeeze their lending activity? is an oft-repeated question during the times of financial crisis. This study examines an emerging economy's banking system and contributes to the evolving body of literature on the topic by providing answers as to what causes the sluggish bank credit...

We empirically assess the sensitivity of Basel risk weights to bank portfolio risk and the business cycle. With our econometric model, we distinguish between cross-sectional risk sensitivity and longitudinal risk sensitivity (cyclicality) of the regulatory standard. Employing a comprehensive...