Stress testing of banks and policy implications
Recent stress tests, while admittedly not perfect, have proven useful to bring a degree of clarity over banks’ portfolio quality. When backed by credible financing plans, the tests have helped confidence in battered banking sectors. In Europe two major regional exercises are under way: a CEBS-coordinated and nationally-implemented testing of the largest EU-based bank groups, and a regional exercise by the IMF, both with expected results around September.
Peer pressure, positive…
A look at non-performing loans: the boomerang effect
Authors: Ralph De Haas and Stephan Knobloch , 16 July 2009.
When the global financial crisis hit the transition region, worries among policy makers centred on the local banking systems and the potential for financial contagion from west to east. And when unemployment started to rise and output declined sharply as of Q4 2008, the attention shifted towards the real-economic impact of the crisis.
Now, notwithstanding more frequent discussions about green shoots…
Riding Russian rail: the 12.56 to Sergiev Posad
Students of Russian and Soviet history quickly learn the pivotal role that the railroads have played in the country’s economic development. In czarist times, it was the construction of the mammoth Trans-Siberian Railroad which opened up the Russian Far East, much as the completion of the transcontinental railroad had opened up the American West a few decades before.
In Soviet times, it was the rails that facilitated breakneck industrialisation, military…
Search
Subscribe to our feed
Our Bloggers
|
E. Berglof |
|
|
J. Zettelmeyer |
|
|
P. Nagy |
|
|
R. De Haas |
|
|
R. Kemppinen |
|
For more information about our bloggers click here.