The Role of Industry, Geography and Firm Heterogeneity in Credit Risk Diversification

Mohammad Pesaran, Til Schuermann and Björn-Jakob Treutler

No 05.25, IEPR Working Papers from Institute of Economic Policy Research (IEPR)

Abstract: In theory the potential for credit risk diversifcation for banks could be substantial. Portfolios are large enough that idiosyncratic risk is diversifed away leaving exposure to systematic risk. The potential for portfolio diversifcation is driven broadly by two characteristics: the degree to which systematic risk factors are correlated with each other and the degree of dependence individual firms have to the different types of risk factors. We propose a model for exploring these dimensions of credit risk diversifcation: across industry sectors and across di¤erent countries or regions. We find that full firm-level parameter heterogeneity matters a great deal for capturing differences in simulated credit loss distributions. Imposing homogeneity results in overly skewed and fat-tailed loss distributions. These differences become more pronounced in the presence of systematic risk factor shocks: increased parameter heterogeneity greatly reduces shock sensitivity. Allowing for regional parameter heterogeneity seems to better approximate the loss distributions generated by the fully heterogeneous model than allowing just for industry heterogeneity. The regional model also exhibits less shock sensitivity.

Keywords: Risk management; default dependence; economic interlinkages; portfolio choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C32 E17 G20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 53 pages
Date: 2005-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-fin, nep-geo, nep-mac, nep-rmg and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Working Paper: The Role of Industry, Geography and Firm Heterogeneity in Credit Risk Diversification (2005)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:scp:wpaper:05-25

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