Recent literature states that international monetary cooperation results in substantial welfare gains in an environment with imperfectly correlated sectoral shocks and with prices only set in firms (domestic) currency. However, empirical studies provide evidence that firms not only set their...

We investigate the effect of model specification on the aggregation of (correlated) market and credit risk. We focus on the functional form linking systematic credit risk drivers to default probabilities. Examples include the normal based probit link function for typical structural models, or...

We propose procedures for estimating the time-dependent transition matrices for the general class of finite nonhomogeneous continuous-time semi-Markov processes. We prove the existence and uniqueness of solutions for the system of Volterra integral equations defining the transition matrices,...

We study the relation between the credit cycle and macro-economic fundamentals in an intensity-based framework. Using rating transition and default data of U.S. corporates from Standard and Poor’s over the period 1980—2005 we directly estimate the credit cycle from the micro rating data. We...

We determine the magnitude and nature of systematic default risk using 1971{2009) default data from Moody's. We disentangle systematic risk factors due to business cycle effects, common default dynamics (frailty), and industry-specific dynamics (including contagion). To quantify the contribution...

A macro-prudential policy maker can manage risks to financial stability only if currentand future risks can be reliably assessed. We propose a novel framework to assessfinancial system risk. Using a dynamic factor framework based on state-space methods, we model latent macro-financial and credit...

We introduce a new efficient importance sampler for nonlinear non-Gaussian state space models. We propose a general and efficient likelihood evaluation method for this class of models via the combination of numerical and Monte Carlo integration methods. Our methodology explores the idea that...