Extending a standard credit-risk model illustrates that a single factor can drive both expected losses and the extent to which they may be exceeded in extreme scenarios, ie "unexpected losses." This leads us to develop a framework for forecasting these losses jointly. In an application to...

We study a unique experiment to examine the importance of rating agencies' private information for bank shareholders. On July 20, 2011, Fitch Ratings refined their bank standalone ratings, which measure intrinsic financial strength, from a 9-point to a 21-point scale. This refinement did not...

While corporate credit losses have been low since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, their future evolution is quite uncertain. Using a forecasting model with a solid track record, we find that the baseline scenario ("expected losses") is benign up to 2024. This is due to policy support...

A parsimonious extension of a well-known portfolio credit-risk model allows us to study a salient stylized fact - abrupt switches between high- and low-loss phases - from a risk-management perspective. As uncertainty about phase switches increases, expected losses decouple from unexpected...

An operational macroprudential approach to financial stability requires tools that attribute system-wide risk to individual institutions. Making use of constructs from game theory, we propose an attribution methodology that has a number of appealing features: it can be used in conjunction with...

A parsimonious extension of a well-known portfolio credit-risk model allows us to study a salient stylized fact – abrupt switches between high- and low-loss phases– from a risk-management perspective. As uncertainty about phase switches increases, expected losses decouple from unexpected...