The interaction of financial fragility and the business cycle in determining banks' loan losses: an investigation of the Italian case

The Basel II capital accord and the recent crises have fostered the debate over the financial stability of the aggregate banking sector. Since loan losses are an important factor for banking stability, this paper aims to gauge the impact of real and financial fragility on default losses of Italian banks. To this end the ratio of non-performing loans to total loans is regressed on the business cycle and indebtedness. In addition, to capture the joint effect of real and financial fragility, the analysis considers an interaction term which to our knowledge has never been applied before to Italian default data. Based on the interaction model, results show that the actual impact of financial fragility on default losses depends not only on the business cycle phase but also on the firm’s size, whereby in adverse economic conditions, small firms are more significantly affected by financial fragility.