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Report
Robust capital regulation
Banks? leverage choices represent a delicate balancing act. Credit discipline argues for more leverage, while balance-sheet opacity and ease of asset substitution argue for less. Meanwhile, regulatory safety nets promote ex post financial stability, but also create perverse incentives for banks to engage in correlated asset choices and to hold little equity capital. As a way to cope with these distorted incentives, we outline a two-tier capital framework for banks. The first tier is a regular core capital requirement that helps deter excessive risk-taking incentives. The second tier, a novel ...
Report
Understanding the securitization of subprime mortgage credit
In this paper, we provide an overview of the subprime mortgage securitization process and the seven key informational frictions that arise. We discuss the ways that market participants work to minimize these frictions and speculate on how this process broke down. We continue with a complete picture of the subprime borrower and the subprime loan, discussing both predatory borrowing and predatory lending. We present the key structural features of a typical subprime securitization, document how rating agencies assign credit ratings to mortgage-backed securities, and outline how these agencies ...
Journal Article
Why were banks better off in the 2001 recession?
In a sharp turnaround from their fortunes in the 1990-91 recession, banks came through the 2001 recession reasonably well. A look at industry and economy-wide developments in the intervening years suggests that banks fared better largely because of more effective risk management. In addition, they benefited from a decline in short-term interest rates and the relative mildness of the 2001 downturn.
Report
Forecasting economic and financial variables with global VARs
This paper considers the problem of forecasting real and financial macroeconomic variables across a large number of countries in the global economy. To this end, a global vector autoregressive (GVAR) model previously estimated over the 1979:Q1-2003:Q4 period by Dees, de Mauro, Pesaran, and Smith (2007) is used to generate out-of-sample one-quarter- and four-quarters-ahead forecasts of real output, inflation, real equity prices, exchange rates, and interest rates over the period 2004:Q1-2005:Q4. Forecasts are obtained for 134 variables from twenty-six regions made up of thirty-three countries ...
Working Paper
Exact maximum likelihood estimation of ARCH models
Report
Estimating probabilities of default
We conduct a systematic comparison of confidence intervals around estimated probabilities of default (PD), using several analytical approaches from large-sample theory and bootstrapped small-sample confidence intervals. We do so for two different PD estimation methods-cohort and duration (intensity)-using twenty-two years of credit ratings data. We find that the bootstrapped intervals for the duration-based estimates are surprisingly tight when compared with the more commonly used (asymptotic) Wald interval. We find that even with these relatively tight confidence intervals, it is impossible ...
Report
Visible and hidden risk factors for banks
This paper examines the common factors that drive the returns of U.S. bank holding companies from 1997 to 2005. We compare a range of market models from a basic one-factor model to a nine-factor model that includes the standard Fama-French factors and additional factors thought to be particularly relevant for banks such as interest and credit variables. We show that the market factor clearly dominates in explaining bank returns, followed by the Fama-French factors. The bank-specific factors are not informative, particularly for the largest banks, which take advantage of protection in the form ...
Report
Macroprudential supervision of financial institutions: lessons from the SCAP
A fundamental conclusion drawn from the recent financial crisis is that the supervision and regulation of financial firms in isolation--a purely microprudential perspective--are not sufficient to maintain financial stability. Rather, a macroprudential perspective, which evaluates and responds to the financial system as a whole, seems necessary, and the ongoing discussions of regulatory reform in the United States underscore this view. The recently concluded Supervisory Capital Assessment Program (SCAP), better known as the bank "stress test," is one example of how the macro- and ...
Journal Article
Hedge funds, financial intermediation, and systemic risk
Hedge funds, with assets under management approaching an estimated $1.5 trillion in 2006, have become important players in the U.S. and global capital markets. These largely unregulated funds differ from other market participants in their use of a variety of complex trading strategies and instruments, in their liberal use of leverage, in their opacity to outsiders, and in their convex compensation structure. These differences can exacerbate potential market failures stemming from agency problems, externalities, and moral hazard. Counterparty credit risk management (CCRM) practices, used by ...
Journal Article
Robust capital regulation
Regulators and markets can find the balance sheets of large financial institutions difficult to penetrate, and they are mindful of how undercapitalization can create incentives to take on excessive risk. This study proposes a novel framework for capital regulation that addresses banks' incentives to take on excessive risk and leverage. The framework consists of a special capital account in addition to a core capital requirement. The special account would accrue to a bank's shareholders as long as the bank is solvent, but would pass to the bank's regulators?rather than its creditors?if the ...