Financial intermediaries often use stress testing to set risk exposure limits. Accordingly, we examine a model with an agent who faces stress testing constraints and another who does not. Three results are obtained. First, when there are K* binding constraints, the constrained agent's optimal...

We investigate whether sovereign bond holdings of European banks are determined by a risk-return trade-off. Using data between 2011 and 2018 for 75 European banks, we confirm that banks exhibited risk-taking behavior during the sovereign debt crisis, e.g., due to moral suasion. In the period...

Assessments of market risk for economic or regulatory capital typically involve calculating a portfolio's sensitivity to key risk factor movements. Historically, practitioners have focused on two classical sources of risk, adverse changes in interest rates and volatility. As stress testing has...

The existing replication policies at top finance journals are far weaker than the policies at top economics journals. This paper explores both the costs and benefits of having a stronger replication policy in the context of my failed 2010 initiative to develop a unified policy across all top...

Recent policy discussion includes the introduction of diversification requirements for sovereign bond portfolios of European banks. In this paper, we evaluate the possible effects of these constraints on risk and diversification in the sovereign bond portfolios of the major European banks....

This paper examines how banks around the world have resized and reallocated their earning assets in response to the subprime and sovereign debt crises. We focus especially on the interaction between sovereign debt and the bank asset allocation process. After the crisis we observe a general...

Now that the stock market's streak skyward has hit the five-year mark, more financial industry experts feel justified in slamming Americans for not saving enough money. Are we really making the mistakes these people describe? In fact our big mistake may be paying any attention at all to the...

We find the financial condition of states impacts bank credit supply through their municipal bond holdings. In particular, we treat sudden political and statutory actions during the 2011 union bargaining rights debates in Wisconsin and Ohio as exogenous shocks to state solvency. We show bank...

Several countries have banking policies geared towards providing access to credit to ethnic or religious minorities, e.g., India, China, Malaysia, South Africa, United States. In this paper, we characterize the compensating risk premium for such minority bank (MB) policies. Our theory apparatus...

One of the declared goals of the supervisory authorities for the insurance and banking sectors is to enhance the resilience of the financial system by establishing consistent regulatory frameworks. In view of this goal, this paper provides a critical analysis of the consistency of the Basel III...