Countercyclical Capital Buffers and Credit-to-GDP Gaps: Simulation for Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe
2015
Abstract
Under Basel III, banks are required to build up countercyclical capital buffers during periods of excessive credit growth to cover future credit losses. Based on a review of the credit boom episodes in sixteen Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European countries during 2000s, two measures of excessive credit are calculated: one based on the Hodrick-Prescott filter, as suggested by the Basel Committee for the activation of the countercyclical buffer, and the other based on an estimate of equilibrium credit.
While the filtering-based measure signals future credit losses quite well, using the measure based on equilibrium credit improves the forecast of future deleveraging and its impact on GDP.