Previous work has documented a greater sensitivity of long-term government bond yields to fundamentals in Euro area stress countries during the euro crisis, but we know little about the driver(s) of regime-switches. Our estimates based on a panel smooth threshold regression model quantify and...

We study determinants of sovereign portfolios of Spanish banks over a long time-span, starting in 2008. Our findings challenge the view that banks engaged in moral hazard strategies to exploit the regulatory treatment of sovereign exposures. In particular, we show that being a weakly capitalized...

Using novel monthly data for 226 euro-area banks from 2007 to 2015, we investigate the causes and effects of banks' sovereign exposures during and after the euro crisis. First, in the vulnerable countries, the publicly owned, recently bailed out and less strongly capitalized banks reacted to...

We propose a simple model that captures the link between bank and sovereign credit risk. It allows evaluating policy options to address this 'doom loop' in which the government may need to raise debt to recapitalise banks, and an increase in government debt raises sovereign risk and in turn...

I propose a dynamic general equilibrium model in which strategic interactions between banks and depositors may lead to endogenous bank fragility and slow recovery from crises. When banks' investment decisions are not contractible, depositors form expectations about bank risk-taking and demand a...

Euro area governments have committed to break the doom loop between bank risk and sovereign risk. But policymakers have not reached consensus on whether and how to reform the regulatory treatment of banks' sovereign exposures. To inform policy discussions, this paper simulates portfolio...

Recent policy discussion includes the introduction of diversification requirements for sovereign bond portfolios of European banks. In this paper, we evaluate the possible effects of these constraints on risk and diversification in the sovereign bond portfolios of the major European banks....

The euro area sovereign debt crisis has highlighted the importance of reducing public debt levels and building up sufficient fiscal buffers during normal and good times. It has also reaffirmed the need for a thorough debt sustainability analysis (DSA) to act as a warning system for national...

We study the impact of changes in regulations and policy interventions on systemic risk among European sovereigns measured as volatility spillovers in respective credit risk markets. Our unique intraday CDS dataset allows for precise measurement of the effectiveness of these events in a network...