Learning lessons from the crisis: relative risk of Canadian compared to American banks

Stan, Mitchell (2012). Learning lessons from the crisis: relative risk of Canadian compared to American banks. In: 13th International Conference on Finance and Banking, 12-13 Oct 2011, Ostrava, Czech Republic, pp. 371–379.

URL: http://www.opf.slu.cz/kfi/icfb/proc2011/pdf/52_Sta...

Abstract

This paper examines whether, as is commonly believed, the risk of Canadian banks is lower than that of American banks for the 2002-2007 period leading up to the financial crisis. A comparison of American and Canadian banking risk is of particular interest since the two countries are so similar with strong linkages of the two countries’ economies under the North American Free Trade Agreement, yet apparently have had markedly different levels of risk in their financial systems in recent years given the large number of American bank failures during the financial crisis compared to their complete absence in Canada. The importance of a better understanding of the relative levels of risk of various nationalities of banks and regulatory regimes has become increasingly apparent as the costs of taxpayer-funded responses to the international credit crisis, which has led to a worldwide recession, have skyrocketed. My main finding is that the risk of Canadian banks is, in fact, higher. This finding persists when banks are compared on a size-matched basis.

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