We propose a rigorous and flexible methodological framework to select and calibrate initial shocks to be used in bank stress test scenarios based on statistical techniques for detecting outliers in time series of risk factors. Our approach allows us to characterize not only the magnitude, but...

The spectacular failure of the 150-year old investment bank Lehman Brothers on September 15th, 2008 was a major turning point in the global financial crisis that broke out in the summer 2007. Through the use of stock market data and Credit Default Swap (CDS) spreads, this paper examines the...

The current financial crisis offers a unique opportunity to investigate the leading properties of market indicators in a stressed environment and their usefulness from a banking supervision perspective. One pool of relevant information that has been little explored in the empirical literature is...

We assess the extent to which capital buffers (the capital banks hold in excess of the regulatory minimum) exacerbate rather than reduce the cyclical behavior of credit. We empirically study the relationships between output gap, capital buffers and loan growth with firm-level data for French...