Under the Basel II accord, improving probability of default models is a key risk-management priority. There are four main aspects of this research: suggesting the bank default classification; using a wide time horizon (quarterly Russian banking statistics from 1998 to 2011); investigating the...

This paper investigates the relationship between operating cost efficiency and the loan quality of Rus-sian banks. It tries to answer the question whether it is always beneficial for banks to be highly cost effi-cient (the “bad management” hypothesis) or whether this higher cost efficiency...