We use cross country data on a sample of 210 large Western European banks during the ten year period from 2000 to 2009 to evaluate the impact of government ownership on bank risk and lending activity across the economic and political cycles. Three main results emerge from our analysis. First,...

We use cross-country data on a sample of large European banks to evaluate the impact of government ownership on bank risk. We distinguish between default risk (likelihood of creditors' losses) and operating risk (likelihood of negative equity). Our analysis is based on the joint use of issuer...

We evaluate the impact of government ownership on the issuer and individual ratings of a sample of 224 large European banks over the 1999-2004 period. Individual ratings differ from traditional ones in that they focus on banks' economic and financial conditions and do not take into account any...

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has recently tested credit risk measurement models used by large international banks to measure the risk of their portfolios in order to measure the risk of default of its insured banks' deposits. Using both balance sheet and equity market data...

One of the major objectives of the 1988 Basel Accord was that of leveling the international playing field. While evaluating the contribution of the Accord remains a very difficult task because of the many factors involved, it is clear that relevant cross-country differences in the cost of equity...

The question of which factors are relevant in determining corporate bonds pricing is empirically investigated by analyzing the issuance spreads of eurobonds completed by Canadian, European, Japanese and U.S. companies during the 1991-2001 eleven year period. A unique dataset of spreads, ratings...