Author Archives: Francesc Rodríguez Tous
Loan evergreening: the role of bank solvency
In a previous post, I discussed how a couple of economists at the Banco Central del Uruguay and I are identifying instances of loan evergreening—when banks provide additional credit so that firms repay their previous loans—using very granular data. The … Continue reading
Books Do Furnish a Life, by Richard Dawkins
Yep, I am catching up with book reviews. I have read several this year, although not at the same pace as last year, so there’s a lot of work to do. Let’s dive in. Richard Dawkins, the eminent British biologist, … Continue reading
Loan evergreening
Loan evergreening is a situation where banks provide loans to firms in order to ensure that firms keep repaying the existing (previous) loans. It is a concept related to zombie lending, broadly defined as lending to non-viable firms. Loan evergreening … Continue reading
So we are Bayes Business School now
Yesterday, The Business School (formerly Cass), which used to be—yes, you guessed it—Cass Business School, and that also used to be City University Business School, became Bayes Business School. You may recall that, in the wake of the killing of … Continue reading
The Scout Mindset, by Julia Galef
I have known about Julia Galef for a while, as she hosts the podcast Rationally Speaking. I have talked about this podcast in the past. She used to co-host it with Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher and authors of several books, … Continue reading
30 books in 2020
So I read 30 books in 2020. I’m not sure how I did it, but I did it. You don’t believe me? Look at my Goodreads notification: Almost 23 pages per day, which is around one hour of reading. I … Continue reading
Draft No. 4, by John McPhee
“It takes what it takes” (William Shawn, former editor of The New Yorker) “Get that boy from the Old Vic” (Winston Churchill, referring to Richard Burton) “Write on subjects in which you have enough interest on your own to see … Continue reading
Arbitrage in SME lending
One of the big concerns of the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis is that the recovery might take much longer because many firms, particularly small and medium (SMEs), will have closed down for good. From the very beginning, different actions … Continue reading
Limiting borrowers leverage
In the last post I talked about the countercyclical capital buffer (CCyB), a new regulatory tool to increase banks’ capital requirements that most countries have not used but that could have been effective to mitigate the Covid-19 crisis. As I … Continue reading
Countercyclical capital buffers and regulatory discretion
One of the main regulations that banks have to comply with are capital requirements; in particular, banks need to hold a minimum amount of capital depending on the composition of their investments (assets). Actually, the use of the word “hold”, … Continue reading
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