In this paper we build a unique dataset to study how banks decide which firms to lend to and how this decision depends on their own situation and the characteristics of their borrowers. We find that weaker capitalised banks adjust their credit standards more than healthier banks, especially for...

We study the impact of credit risk determinants on the Romanian and Bulgarian banking systems using a structural Markov Regime-Switching vector autoregressive (MRS-SVAR) analysis. To capture changes in the domestic macroeconomic conditions as well as the spillover effects from the Greek crisis...

We study loans from banking and non-banking lenders to different groups of borrowers in order to unveil significant differences on how those respond to a shock and evaluate possible alternative explanations for such differences. The objective is to gain insights useful to explain the loan...

This paper analyzes firms' difficulties in accessing credit before and during the crisis, by focusing on two of their characteristics: financial fragility and growth prospects. Our econometric analysis indicates that fragile financial conditions were associated with a much higher than average...

We propose a new methodology to identify aggregate demand and supply shocks in the bank loan market. We present a model of sticky bank-firm relationships, estimate its structural parameters in euro area credit register data, and infer aggregate shocks based on those estimates. To achieve...

Within bank activities, which is normally defined as the joint exercise of savings collection and credit supply, risk-taking is natural, as in many human activities. Among risks related to credit intermediation, credit risk assumes particular importance. It is most simply defined as the...

We use a compound option-based structural credit risk model to infer a term structure of banking crisis risk from market data on bank stocks in daily frequency. Considering debt service payments with different maturities this term structure assigns a separate estimator for short- and long-term...

During the last years the lending business has come under considerable competitive pressure and bank managers often express concern regarding its profitability vis-a-vis other activities. This paper tries to empirically identify factors that are able to explain the financial performance of bank...

The Basel Committee's reform to strengthen the global capital framework, known as Basel III, takes into account a series of measures to address procyclicality and, consequently, make banks' capital requirements more stable during the different phases of the economic cycle. The range of possible...

An important research question examined in the credit risk literature focuses on the proportion of corporate yield spreads attributed to default risk. This topic is reexamined in the light of the different issues associated with the computation of transition and default probabilities obtained...