Credit risk is one of the most important forms of risk faced by national and international banks as financial intermediaries. Managing this kind of risk through selecting and monitoring corporate and sovereign borrowers and through creating a diversified loan portfolio has always been one of the...

In order to dynamize the static Gaussian copula model of portfolio credit risk, we introduce a model filtration made of a reference Brownian filtration progressively enlarged by the default times. This yields a multidimensional density model of default times, where, as opposed to the classical...

This report reviews the macroeconomic determinants of the rapid growth in the Spanish housing market, including various policy elements. It examines the vulnerabilities of households' finances as a result of the rapid growth of housing prices and mortgage debt. It also describes the Spanish...

This paper proposes a framework for the surveillance of financial institutions' derivatives activities. The designed framework builds on information likely to be collected by financial market regulators for supervisory purposes, and/or information collected by market participants for the purpose...

A quantitative framework is developed to bring forward the insurance motive of holding international reserves. The insurance value of reserves is quantified as the market price of an equivalent option that provides the same insurance coverage as the reserves. This quantitative framework is...

The objective of this paper is to discuss the key issues relating to the development of local corporate bond markets. We examine the requirements for local corporate bond market development, and compare and contrast experiences across both mature and emerging markets. We suggest that core...

Derivatives are few and far between in countries where the compatibility of financial transactions with Islamic law requires the development of shari'ah-compliant structures. Islamic finance is governed by the shari'ah, which bans speculation and gambling, and stipulates that income must be...

This paper assesses proposals to redefine the scope of activities of systemically important financial institutions. Alongside reform of prudential regulation and oversight, these have been offered as solutions to the too-important-to-fail problem. It is argued that while the more radical of...

The availability of financial instruments related to indices that track global financial conditions and risk appetite can potentially offer countries alternative options to insure against external shocks. This paper shows that while these instruments can explain much of the in-sample variation...