Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Do banks overstate their Value-at-Risk?

Contents:

Author Info

  • Pérignon, Christophe
  • Deng, Zi Yin
  • Wang, Zhi Jun
Registered author(s):

    Abstract

    This paper is the first empirical study of banks' risk management systems based on non-anonymous daily Value-at-Risk (VaR) and profit-and-loss data. Using actual data from the six largest Canadian commercial banks, we uncover evidence that banks exhibit a systematic excess of conservatism in their VaR estimates. The data used in this paper have been extracted from the banks' annual reports using an innovative Matlab-based data extraction method. Out of the 7354 trading days analyzed in this study, there are only two exceptions, i.e. days when the actual loss exceeds the disclosed VaR, whereas the expected number of exceptions with a 99% VaR is 74. For each sample bank, we extract from historical VaRs a risk-overstatement coefficient, ranging between 19 and 79%. We attribute VaR overstatement to several factors, including extreme cautiousness and underestimation of diversification effects when aggregating VaRs across business lines and/or risk categories. We also discuss the economic and social cost of reporting inflated VaRs.

    Download Info

    If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VCY-4PK7P63-2/1/5a28cecbaa2cd0fa69ac96c196e7bca3
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

    Bibliographic Info

    Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Journal of Banking & Finance.

    Volume (Year): 32 (2008)
    Issue (Month): 5 (May)
    Pages: 783-794

    as in new window
    Handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:32:y:2008:i:5:p:783-794

    Contact details of provider:
    Web page: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbf

    Related research

    Keywords:

    References

    References listed on IDEAS
    Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
    as in new window
    1. Sean D. Campbell, 2005. "A review of backtesting and backtesting procedures," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2005-21, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    2. Leippold, Markus & Trojani, Fabio & Vanini, Paolo, 2006. "Equilibrium impact of value-at-risk regulation," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 30(8), pages 1277-1313, August.
    3. Paul H. Kupiec, 1995. "Techniques for verifying the accuracy of risk measurement models," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 95-24, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    4. Philippe Artzner & Freddy Delbaen & Jean-Marc Eber & David Heath, 1999. "Coherent Measures of Risk," Mathematical Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(3), pages 203-228.
    5. Darryll Hendricks & Beverly Hirtle, 1997. "Bank capital requirements for market risk: the internal models approach," Economic Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, issue Dec, pages 1-12.
    6. James M. O'Brien & Jeremy Berkowitz, 2007. "Estimating Bank Trading Risk. A Factor Model Approach," NBER Chapters, in: The Risks of Financial Institutions, pages 59-102 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Peter Christoffersen & Jeremy Berkowitz & Denis Pelletier, 2008. "Evaluating Value-at-Risk Models with Desk-Level Data," CREATES Research Papers 2009-35, School of Economics and Management, University of Aarhus.
    8. Peter Christoffersen & Denis Pelletier, 2003. "Backtesting Value-at-Risk: A Duration-Based Approach," CIRANO Working Papers 2003s-05, CIRANO.
    9. Christoffersen, Peter F, 1998. "Evaluating Interval Forecasts," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 39(4), pages 841-62, November.
    10. Pérignon, Christophe & Smith, Daniel R., 2010. "The level and quality of Value-at-Risk disclosure by commercial banks," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 362-377, February.
    11. Con Keating & Hyun Song Shin & Charles Goodhart & Jon Danielsson, 2001. "An Academic Response to Basel II," FMG Special Papers sp130, Financial Markets Group.
    12. Cuoco, Domenico & Liu, Hong, 2006. "An analysis of VaR-based capital requirements," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 362-394, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as in new window

    Cited by:
    This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.

    Lists

    This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:32:y:2008:i:5:p:783-794

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Wendy Shamier).

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

    If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.