How Risky Are Banks' Risk Weighted Assets? Evidence From the Financial Crisis

Download or read book How Risky Are Banks' Risk Weighted Assets? Evidence From the Financial Crisis written by Mr.Sonali Das and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We study how investors account for the riskiness of banks' risk-weighted assets (RWA) by examining the determinants of stock returns and market measures of risk. We find that banks with higher RWA had lower stock returns over the US and European crises. This relationship is weaker in Europe where banks can use Basel II internal risk models. For large banks, investors paid less attention to RWA and rewarded instead lower wholesale funding and better asset quality. RWA do not, in general, predict market measures of risk although there is evidence of a positive relationship before the US crisis which becomes negative afterwards.