Lena Tonzer

Bank risk proxies and the crisis of 2007/09: a comparison

ABSTRACT The global financial crisis has again shown that it is important to understand the emergence and measurement of risks in the banking sector. However, there is no consensus in the literature which risk proxy works best at the level of the individual bank. A commonly used measure in applied work is the Z-score, which might suffer from calculation issues given poor data quality. Motivated by the variety of bank risk proxies, our analysis reveals that nonperforming assets are a well-suited complement to the Z-score in studies of bank risk.

Sovereign Credit Risk Co-Movements in the Eurozone: Simple Interdependence or Contagion? : Sovereign Credit Risk Co-Movements in the Eurozone

Since the onset of the eurozone sovereign debt crisis, credit risk spreads in Europe have diverged. Despite this divergence, credit risk comoves strongly within certain country groups such as the eurozone periphery. We seek to answer what the determinants of the observed pattern of credit risk co-movements are and whether and during which periods sovereign debt markets have been subject to contagion. We proceed in three steps. First, we apply dynamic conditional correlations from a multivariate GARCH model to sovereign CDS spreads of 17 countries over the period 2008 to 2012. Second, we separate periods of simple interdependence from contagion. Third, we analyze the determinants behind credit risk co-movements and the role of contagion using regression analysis. Our results reveal a high degree of co-movements in sovereign credit risk, especially for eurozone countries during the sovereign debt crisis. We find strong evidence for both fundamentals and nonfundamentals based contagion. Similarities in economic fundamentals, cross-country linkages in banking and common market sentiment play a significant role. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)