This paper studies the relationship between the riskiness of banks' assets and their average risk weight. Banks' initial risk weights explain about half of the variation in projected credit losses in the 2018 European Banking Authority stress test. In contrast to related papers, this paper also...

We show that banks' risk exposure in one asset category affects how they report regulatory risk weights for another asset category. Specifically, banks report lower credit risk weights for their loan portfolio when they face higher risk exposure in their trading book. This relationship is...

The internal ratings-based (IRB) approach maps bank risk profiles more adequately than the standardized approach. After switching to IRB, banks' risk-weighted asset (RWA) densities are thus expected to diverge, especially across countries with different supervisory strictness and risk levels....