Measuring Excessive Risk-Taking in Banking

In this paper we propose a new approach to the assessment of excessive risk-taking by a banking sector. We use the portfolio approach to assess the optimal risk-return combination of a bank’s portfolio, based on data for 32 categories of loans. It provides a benchmark for the optimality of the bank’s portfolio. We apply this method on an exhaustive sample of Czech banks for the period January 2005–February 2008. We observe an average excess of risk-taking of 33% of the optimal risk and a slight reduction of this excess risk over the analyzed period.