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Oxf Rev Econ Policy 1999; 15:63-79
© 1999 Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Ltd

Article

Credit risk and financial instability

RJ Herring
Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, USA

Abstract

Recent advances in modelling credit risk bring much greater discipline to the pricing of credit risk and should promote diversification by penalizing concentrations of credit risk with greater allocations of economic capital. Although these models perform well with regard to high-frequency hazards, they are ill equipped to deal with the low-frequency, high-severity events that are likely to be the most serious threat to financial stability. Cognitive biases in estimating the probability of such losses may lead to disaster myopia. In periods of benign financial conditions, disaster myopia is likely to lead to decisions regarding allocations of economic capital, the pricing of credit risk, and the range of borrowers who are deemed creditworthy, that make the financial system increasingly vulnerable to crisis. Alternative policy measures to counter disaster myopia are considered.


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