G21 - Banks; Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; MortgagesReturn

The paper is a thematic analysis of 44 empirical studies that applied frontier techniques in analysing efficiency of Czech and Slovak commercial banks. The 44 journal articles were extracted from the Web of Science database and classified by prevailing research interest, methodological configuration and main findings in order to determine the state of the art and provide a starting point for further research in this subject area. The main research agenda of efficiency studies focused on Czech and Slovak banking was classified into eight relatively compact research interests ranging historically from effects of transition reforms to effects of asset and income diversification. The first identifiable wave of research was represented by foreign authors who examined issues of economic transition and its impact on performance of banks, and lasted until about 2013, when the baton passed into the hands of authors of Czecho-Slovak provenience.

The non-maturing deposit (NMD) pass-through rate represents a key parameter needed in the process of managing interest rate risk of the banking book (IRRBB). NMD interest rates for retail and corporate segments are usually not directly linked to market interest rates, but depend rather on the bank’s marketing strategy, market competition, liquidity, and possibly on other factors. The ratio at which banks adjust their NMD interest rates to changes in interbank market interest rates is known as the NMD pass-through rate. The goal of this paper is to analyse the variability of NMD pass-through rates in the 19 Eurozone countries and identify their possible determinants. The pass-through rates are estimated using cointegration analysis based on datasets available from the ECB Statistical Data Warehouse and the results show significant variability between countries. To analyse the determinants of pass-through rates in the Eurozone, the rates are regressed on nine aggregates of the country-level banking sector including concentration, profitability or funding, and three macroeconomic and socio-economic variables. Out of the tested predictors, the ratio of wholesale funding to liabilities was found to be the most significant predictor of retail and corporate pass-through rates, with a positive coefficient, indicating that countries where banks rely more heavily on wholesale funding exhibit higher pass-through of market interest rate changes to NMD deposit rates. Additionally, the loan-to-deposit ratio was found to have a significantly negative impact on retail pass-through rates, while the return on equity has a significantly positive impact on the corporate pass-through rates.

The public finances of the Czech Republic fell into deep deficits during the pandemic, while the money supply growth rate accelerated. We make a basic comparison of monetary acceleration during the first two years of the pandemic with other countries. We verify that this acceleration in the Czech Republic was partly due to commercial banks increasing credit to the government. We argue that purchases of government bonds by non-residents have a similar effect. This is particularly true when non-residents use existing koruna deposits held by them, partly as a result of past foreign exchange interventions, to purchase government bonds. While there was an acceleration in monetary growth during the pandemic, there was a decline in monetary growth during the Great Financial Crisis (GFC). However, our analysis suggests that this was due mainly to a decline in private credit growth during the GFC. We see no fundamental reasons for a structural change in money demand as a result of the pandemic. We therefore believe that unless the observed monetary acceleration is offset by slower-than-trend monetary growth in the near term, it will translate into an increase in the price level.

This paper aims to find the microeconomic and macroeconomic determinants of European bank profitability from 2012 to 2019 using the regression model with the multicollinearity condition as a matrix parameter, the multicollinearity below the defined value, ensuring regression model reliability. The bank sector profitability is measured by return of average equity, return of average assets and net interest margin as dependent variables. The research creates a set of independent variables based on a literature review. The model is built on a sample of 3,257 European commercial banks for all EU countries excluding Romania due to missing data, and the input data were obtained based on the Orbis Focus Bank and the World Bank Database. The results revealed that the cost to income ratio and loan loss reserves to gross loans are the most important determinants of profitability of European commercial banks as measured by return of average assets. The results also show that GDP growth rate, inflation measured by the consumer prices and loan loss reserves to gross loans are the most important determinants for the net interest margin indicator. We recommend that commercial banks optimize the cost structure, create sufficient reserves, monitor the process of digital transformation and monitor credit risk indicators.

The paper integrates elements of microstructural network models of the banking sector developed by Cont and Shaanning (2017) and Duarte and Eisenbach (2018) to simulate endogenously the fire sales contagion channel of systemic risk. The scale of the effect is illustrated on the EBA supervisory stress test results for 2018, based on which the secondary impact of fire sales increases aggregate losses by 69%. The model is used to identify banks with the highest contribution to systemic risk. Alternative systemicity predicators are proposed based on the results. The second section discusses the ability of the model to incorporate behavioural and regulatory aspects associated with the systemic risk, with the main focus on the impact of (i) calibration of regulatory leverage ratio limits, (ii) leverage ratio targeting, (iii) decrease in market liquidity, and (iv) change in the shape of the market price impact function on the dynamics of systemic losses due to the fire sales contagion.

This paper examines the development and comparison of competition and concentration in the banking and insurance sector in the Czech Republic during the 2007-2019 period using the Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HH index). In the empirical section we calculate the degree of concentration and indexes separately for the banking and insurance markets, where the main variable in relation to banks is the balance sheet and this variable is the gross written premium in relation to insurance companies. Subsequently, we compare the two examined sectors including the analysis of their long-term equilibrium. The result of this research confirms the determined hypotheses, whereas the oligopolic structure of both markets, which falls over time and aims towards a competitive market but does not achieve this goal during the monitored period. Throughout examination, the insurance market demonstrates higher HH index values and therefore lower competitiveness compared to the banking market.

Relative changes in home and foreign assets of the Czech banking system are negatively correlated in the period 1996-2017. The target of the research is to test this empirical fact deeply to explain how far this is only a balance sheet effect that is a result of booking the exchange rate changes in monetary survey statistics and how far this is a consequence of economic system behaviour. Our empirical analysis using the Granger causality test and the unconditional ARDL ECM model does not rule out the validity of the balance sheet hypothesis. Besides, it explains the economic nature of this phenomenon in relationship with GDP, exchange rate, foreign reserves, short-term interest rates and bank capital dynamics and confirms a possibility of substitutions between net home and foreign assets of a banking system within a money creation process represented by the M2 monetary aggregate.

For millennia, there have been two credit theories in the Western tradition and two types of credit institutions derived from them. One focused on raising capital for investment purposes, the other dealing with lending of money to private individuals for consumption. This distinction, which is the key to understanding ancient and medieval economic thought, not only allows us to better understand the question of usury in the past, but is also the key to a proper understanding of the development of European credit markets, which have evolved in two ways - investment banking and retail banking. Particular attention is paid to benevolent credit institutions, which laid the foundations for European retail banking.

Index number theory interprets the task of measuring productivity change as examining changes between two one-year periods (or other partial time instances). Nonetheless, in practice there arises a need to assess how productivity fared between two periods consisting of several years (or several partial time instances) and what drove its change. The paper focuses on such situations and has two interlinked goals. On the one hand, the paper formulates a methodology for measuring productivity change based on the Hicks-Moorsteen index and on the decomposition into basic determinants after Diewert and Fox. On the other hand, it demonstrates its usability in investigations of trends in productivity of the Slovak banking sector in the area of financial intermediation between the period 2005-2008 and the period 2009-2016. The results point to an improvement in financial intermediation productivity for most banks and an sector-wide upward shift in the production possibility frontier.

The paper deals with the optimal strategy for entering a derivative contract under existence of counterparty credit risk. Derivative contracts can be traded in three ways - bilaterally without any collateral agreement, bilaterally with collateral agreement or through a central counterparty. Our goal is to define rules for determining the most efficient way of trading. We take into account credit value adjustment, funding costs and capital costs related to regulatory requirements. In our empirical research, we focus on interest rate swaps with different maturities, specifically we analyse the impact of own and counterparty credit spreads on the overall costs. The results show higher efficiency of central clearing for investors with high creditworthiness. The costs of central clearing are very sensitive with respect to own credit spread and, therefore, the final decision depends on the actual relation with counterparty spread.

The paper deals with the issue of interbank interest rate pass-through into client interest rates offered by banks in the condition of Slovak Republic between 2004 and 2016. We provide an overview of studies of the interest rate relationship analysis in the bank and interbank market. We investigate the interest pass-through from money market rates to various loan and deposit rates. The analysis is carried out using the methodology of cointegration error-correction model, which take into account both the long-term and the short-term aspect of interest rate development. Our results point to considerable differences in the size of the pass-through with respect to either different loan and deposit rates. It has also shown a low rate of immediate transmission, the incompleteness of the pass-through, higher efficiency in the process of interbank interest rates pass-through into the interest rates on loans, and we can conclude that the process of interest rates pass-through in our conditions is relatively stable.

We analyze and quantify link between quality of the banking sector and sovereign risk in the states of the European Union (EU) using data over 1999-2014. We employ two market-based measures of the sovereign risk along with several empirically and theoretically motivated variables that characterize banking sector. We perform Bayesian estimations on several panels of countries. Our results show that higher ratio of the non-performing loans represents the most important industry-specific variable that is linked with a heightened rate of the sovereign risk. On the other hand, findings related to the size and depth of the banking sector, along with the capital adequacy ratio, are less clear-cut. Higher penetration of the foreign banks and higher degree of competition characterize a diversified structure of the banking industry that seems to be beneficial for the banking sector stability and is linked with lower sovereign risk.

Measuring and managing of financial risks is an essential part of the management of financial institutions. The appropriate risk management should lead to an efficient allocation of available funds. Approaches based on Value at Risk measure have been used as a means for measuring market risk since the late 20th century, although regulators newly suggest to apply more complex method of Expected Shortfall. While evaluating models for market risk estimation based on Value at Risk is relatively simple and involves so-called backtesting procedure, in the case of Expected Shortfall we cannot apply similar procedure. In this article we therefore focus on an alternative method for comprehensive evaluation of VaR models at various significance levels by means of data envelopment analysis (DEA). This approach should lead to the adoption of the model which is also suitable in terms of the Expected Shortfall criterion. Based on the illustrative results from the US stock market we conclude that NIG model and historical simulation should be preferred to normal distribution and GARCH model. We can also recommend to estimate the parameters from the period slightly shorter than two years.

The article deals with constraint of credit supply consistent with external solvency of economy and solvency of banking sector under negative international investment position, foreign ownership of banking sector and growing bank´s capital and stable funding requirements. The target is to define main parameters of sustainable supply of funding of external capital providers and to test the relationships among determinants of external solvency, foreign sources of funding the economy and banking sector and credit aggregates in the Czech Republic using unrestricted ARDL ECM model. The results show growing inflow of debt funding motivated by export led growth, the Czech FDI investments and lack of euro liquidity due to CNB foreign exchange interventions. The debt provided by foreign parent companies could overcome a constraint of home banking sector´s credit supply. Growing export causes investments to production capacity financed by equity of foreign holders. The cost of negative NFA is driven by profitability of exporters which is positively correlated with GDP growth. The bank´s capital incl. reinvested profits do not reflect a credit cycle due to excess of capital in the Czech banking sector.

Banks which underwent the privatization process in the Czech Republic, i.e. Česká Spořitelna, a.s., Československá Obchodní Banka, a.s., Investiční a Poštovní Banka, a.s., Komerční Banka, a.s., Živnostenská Banka, a.s., have been very widely discussed by both professional and lay public from several perspectives. Namely, what the actual economic condition of these banks was on the date of completion of the privatization, as well as the transfer of graded loans, or rather low-performing assets, which the state took over and reimbursed to the banks through consolidation institutions (hereinafter CI), and all this obviously in relation to the purchase price obtained within the scope of privatization. The aim of this article, within the possibilities stipulated by its scope, is: 1) To analyse the development of the banks' economic condition in the time interval of 1990-2010; 2) To identify factors that determine the volume of income from the sale of the state's investments in privatized banks; 3) To confirm or refute the hypothesis that the bank rescues before the completion of the privatization process were excessive; 4) To analyse the overall balance of the privatization process, or rather the efficiency of the sale of the banks; 5) To test the practical applicability of the economic theories connected to the issue in question. With regard to the above, the article is structured in the following manner. Firstly, literary research of articles on the theme of The Privatization Of Commercial Banking in reputable economic impact magazines is processed. This is followed by the actual economic analysis of the privatized banks in the Czech Republic, where economic parameters are examined in an interval of approximately 20 years - total assets, costs, revenue, profit, capital adequacy, etc. The conclusion firstly evaluates the development of the economic condition, then identifies factors that determine the volume of income from privatization, the excessiveness of the banks' rescue, the overall balance of the privatization process, and the practical applicability of the economic theories in question.

Aggregate non-performing loans are the loans of a banking sector with delayed payments. This paper examines how aggregate non-performing loans (NPLs), as an indicator of aggregate credit risk, respond to macroeconomic developments in the Czech Republic. It uses data for the period 1993-2014 and the Bayesian estimation method of instrumental variables. This method exploits a priori information from similar studies for other countries and considers the potential endogeneity of macroeconomic developments vis-a-vis non-performing loans. The estimation results reveal a strong persistence of NPLs and a significantly positive and robust, effect of economic growth and income effect of the exchange rate on the financial condition of borrowers. We also find a significantly negative and robust effect of lending rates on the financial condition of borrowers. The effects of inflation and unemployment are significant but not as robust as the experience of other countries suggests. The balance sheet effect of the exchange rate is positive, but its significance is changing with model specifications. For economic policy, a timely, real depreciation of the koruna in response to rising credit risk could be an effective measure to stabilize the solvency of the banking sector.

The paper deals with an impact of new Basel III liquidity regulation on bank's liquidity and solvency conditions. It analyzes a change from qualitative to quantitative based regulation and compares bank's liquidity approaches within an application of LCR regulatory measures. Strict defi nition of LCR causes a change in bank's liquidity allocation and funding which is less effective, more costly and restrictive for providing credits comparing with pure economic determinants. Empirical part shows a simulation of an impact of aggregate liquidity shock and credit risk shock on annual rate of capital return consistent with bank's solvency. It proves huge liquidity buffer of the Czech banking sector due to systematic liquidity surplus, its rising capital endowment and high capital profi tability. VAR estimation shows that links among bank's liquidity characteristics, sources of liquidity shocks, market illiquidity and central bank's liquidity facilities withdrawal are quite weak with non-persistent features

This paper investigates the possible reasons why many microfi nance institutions (MFIs) have gradually experienced a decrease in the share of female borrowers in their portfolios over the last few years. We confi rm that the share of women may be decreasing due to the growing proportion of low-income inhabitants in the area and unpaid family workers. Our results further show that the share of women is also strongly dependent on employment policy that has a positive impact on the dependent variable. Unexpectedly, none of macroeconomic variables such as economic growth, wage and household consumption has an impact on the number of female borrowers.

This article provides a brief but comprehensive overview of microfinance academic literature with emphasis on recent innovations, trends and efficiency. In particular, we focus on controversial issues of microfinance, such as commercialization, regulation, interest rate policy and the balance between outreach and performance of MFIs. In summary, the findings of the reviewed literature underline the great improvement in the microfinance field that, however, has not reached its full potential yet. At the same time, we outline potential risks and drawbacks which are being discovered along the way of microfinance development and maturing, many of which still waiting for more rigorous scholarly examination.

The goal of the article is a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the relationship among savings, investments and credits in a business cycle in the Czech Republic. The presented analysis brings specific recommendations on the interaction between monetary policy and macroprudential regulation. The article starts with a critical analysis of the Austrian Economic School and its monetary theory of business cycle, which provides a methodological base for further empirical analysis in the paper. Based on the data of the Czech economy, the authors empirically test a hypothesis whether credits create a financial bubble when a credit growth exceeds a real GDP growth. The financial cycle had a significantly higher volatility comparing to real business cycle volatility in the Czech Republic in the period 1997-2013. The existence of the credit bubble was confirmed by statistically significant model parameters, when using the differences in relative year on year changes of banking client credits as a depended variable and relative year on year changes of real GDP as an independent variable. Currently valid European regulation doesn't allow using the same tools to host regulator and supervisor towards the bank subsidiaries and branches in a need to react to the different phases of financial cycle. If a host supervisor needs to influence and safeguard the financial stability, it has only the following tools applying to both forms of banking operations in the host countries: counter cyclical capital buffer, capital regulation of real estate exposures, and setting the loan to value (income) limits.

The article formulates the general political-economic possibilities for smoothing of business cycles under the realistic assumptions of the current credit-economy. Firstly it endeavours to explain the mechanism of the financial and real economy functioning with an emphasis on banking sector. The initial theoretical model is considered as unrealistic but proper for demonstration of the consequences of money endogeneity, mechanism of banking financing and dependency of economic growth on credit growth and savings. On the basis of this explanation the article identifies the real causes of credit cycles in the current credit-economy and performs some relevant empirical evidence. The causes include insufficient credit growth, significant concentration of monetary assets, disproportionate development between inflation and excess money growth, deregulation, transmission of credit risk, deleveraging of private sector and imperfect steering of interest rates. Subsequently, author constitutes the basic political-economic tools which could possibly eliminate (or at least mitigate) both the deep and shallow recessions in ex-ante and ex-post periods. The study concludes that possible political-economic tools are following: traditional and non-traditional monetary policy, fiscal expansion, redistribution through progressive taxation, microeconomic and macroeconomic regulation. The entire study is based on US data.

The purpose of this paper is to create a financial fragility model for the Czech financial sector. We adapt the Goodhart-Tsomocos model which is based on general equilibrium with incomplete markets, money and default. The calibration of the model is based on publicly available data from the period 2003-2011. Finally, we perform comparative statics to show how the key variables of the model respond to possible events. The model can be used by government institutions to stress-test the banking sector, as well as by banking and other financial institutions to estimate the development of, inter alia, the default rates of their clients. The model also incorporates default of households and may be used, after further extension, in predicting households' default rates with respect to the behaviour of banks in consequence of changes in macroeconomic parameters of the environment.

The recent financial crisis has significantly modified the approach to helping troubled banks. The traditional role of the central bank has shifted toward non-credit forms of assistance, provided mainly by the state, and even toward assisting insolvent banks. State assistance - directly or through specialized institutions - mainly concerned banks too big to fail, i.e. systemically important banks. State aid should be forthcoming only once funds available from shareholders, owners of subordinated debt and uninsured depositors have been exhausted. Credit by a central bank should be granted only to temporarily illiquid banks. Primarily as this credit assistance can have significant monetary implications, in as much as it leads to the growth of reserves in the banking system. The impact on the economy then depends primarily on the credit activity of commercial banks. The author compares theory against practice and, using the U.S. and the EMU as an example, analyses the monetary impact using the development of money multipliers.

The objective of the article is to identify impact of economic policy implications on current financial and economic crisis. The analysis examines a hypothesis that the main causes of financial and economic crisis include unbalanced developments of the macroeconomic sphere as well as existing weaknesses of banking systems, which often do not evolve in line with the development of economy fundamentals. The article is going to inspect three areas: (i) What development trends and economic policy were registered in the pre-crisis period in order to identify the main causes of economic fluctuations of economy; (ii) How economic policies responded to the course of the financial and economic crisis; (iii) What was the effect financial crisis had on the real economy development? The main task for after-crisis periods is to improve setting of monetary and fiscal policy, bank risk management system and also system for monitoring and analysing the business cycle.

The paper deals with interest rate volatility interpretation in the dealer's model of optimal interest margin. It defines main sources of interest rate volatility and studies how specific source of volatility influences optimal interest margin. Special attention is focused on unexpected shock in liquidity of banking system, actual central bank's decision on targeted level of interest rate, long-term deviation of inflation and output from central bank's targeted values and potential impact of these factors on term premium instability. Sources of interest rates are discussed in term of bank's refinancing/reinvestment risk with an attempt to formalize interest rate volatility for further empirical research. Our conclusion is that dealer's model of optimal interest margin is consistent with only permanent shocks to banking system liquidity and long-lasting central bank's surprises with its monetary policy that increase a level of refinancing/reinvestment risk faced up by banks. On the other hand it is not consistent with interest rate volatility caused by transitory liquidity shocks, expected current changes in central bank's targeted main policy rate and long run trends in main policy rate based on disinflation.

The paper deals with deposit insurance schemes as an integral part of the present system of the banking regulation. Insurance premiums, limits and the rates of compensation and consequences of deposit insurance are then discussed from the theoretical and practical points of view. The moral hazard of banks and depositors and adverse selection are the main undesirable accompanying effects, which are directly connected with the scale of insurance protection in banks. The European Union unifi es the rules of compensation. However, data analysis shows that there are still differences in the levels of protection because of different averages in deposits per household. Some possible alternatives to depositor protection in banks are also analyzed. Although deposit insurance is accompanied by problems, it is the best form of depositor protection.

Operational risk management has becoming more important in the financial industry in the recent years mainly due to scandals in UBS in 2011 and Societé Générale in 2007. The reasons for this attention can be attributed to introduction of operational risk into the Basel II regulatory framework and to high losses stemming from operational risk events. Despite the fact that the new Basel III proposal does not give much attention to this risk, operational risk should not be underestimated. In this paper we present a theoretical background for the use of insurance in banks' operational management according to Basel II rules. Moreover, we provide empirical analysis of the role of insurance in operational risk management in an anonymous bank located in Central Europe. We compare the results of our case study with impact studies conducted for Basel II evaluation. Based on our analysis we reject a hypothesis that insurance serves as an effective mitigation tool of operational risk in case of the researched bank.

This study examines the question whether uncoordinated steps of some EU states changing their deposit insurance schemes in the middle of 2008 could have led to shift of deposits among EU countries. The paper deals with changes of the rules which were introduced at the end of year 2008, and concerns with the amended Directive on Deposit Guarantee Schemes. Empirical analysis concentrates on the impact of state guarantees on the deposit grow rate in individual states. In the final part, we discuss the consequences of recent development.

The authors of the paper discuss reasons as well as current stage of the regulation of the financial (mostly banking) sector. They are not in favor of strict rejection of the regulation, but they are not in favor of strong regulation of the financial sector either. The article is based on the economic theory that there are objective economic reasons as well as specific financial features which cannot recommend and provide clear, simple, and unilateral solution about what level of regulation is appropriate in the financial market. The authors offer some economic ideas that can be useful for preparing and evaluating new regulation of the banking sector. The paper also defines theoretical assumptions of an ideal financial system. Based on those assumptions, the authors formulate and describe problems of real working financial (banking) system, and these problems create necessary condition, but not sufficient condition for imposing regulation. Finally, the paper describes and discusses impacts of concrete new banking regulatory proposals (increasing capital requirements, creating conservation and countercyclical capital buffers, calculating leverage ratio and liquidity ratio, and imposing bank levy).

The paper deals with accumulation of foreign exchange reserves of central banks and its consequences in banking system liquidity management. In theoretical part the case of banking system liquidity surplus is analyzed focusing on creation of liquidity through FX operations, sterilization of liquidity and main sources of liquidity absorption. In this context it is analyzed how monetary policy instruments (on outright or repo basis) enable central bank to react on volatility of banking system liquidity needs and to cover issued currency in circulation and bank's reserves by net foreign assets. In empirical part these problems are analyzed and compared using the example of the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary. The paper focuses on main differences in the level of liquidity surplus, cost of sterilization, volatility of spread between O/N reference interest rate and main policy rate, main sources of liquidity absorption and dynamics of currency in circulation and reserves covering by net foreign assets.

The paper presents empirical analysis of influence of different ownership forms on efficiency of Czech and Slovak banks using the Stochastic Frontier Analysis. The paper brings new results as it uses set of data which has not been used previously in the literature. On the set of 44 Czech and 21 Slovak banks in the 1996 - 2005 period we show, that the stochastic specification of cost frontier is justified method for the data. Our main findings are that the structural influences are significant for both countries. Foreign-owned banks are bit more cost efficient than domestic private banks, state-owned banks are significantly less cost efficient when compared to domestic private banks. Extent of inefficiency also depends on the specification of the model.

This paper analyses various approaches to dealing with problematic assets of the banking sector. These approaches include the establishment of an asset management company, capital injection and sale of the bank, purchase and assumption transactions, liquidation or bridge bank. All these approaches are evaluated with respect to Czech transformation experience and with respect to experience of other foreign countries. The paper concludes that the establishment of Czech Consolidation Agency (Czech Consolidation Bank, respectively) was the least suitable approach to dealing with problematic assets in the Czech banking sector during the period of the transformation. The paper furthermore suggests that other methods, such as the liquidation accompanied with deposit insurance payments, publicly assisted mergers and acquisitions, or finally privately or publicly assisted purchase and assumption transactions should have been used instead. The knowledge of these alternative approaches to weak-bank restructuring is supposed to guarantee that Czech authorities will not step up to establish a similar inefficient asset management company, should banking-sector problems emerge once again.

In this paper historical performance of eleven approaches for estimation of one-day 95% value-at-risk is evaluated. Random sample of 1000 foreign exchange portfolios consisting of positions in EUR and USD with CZK as a base currency was considered. Since foreign exchange portfolio consists of linear instruments, historical simulation and the variance-covariance method for VaR estimation were investigated. Performance of all approaches was evaluated using seven performance criteria. With minimal degree of simplification we can say that variance-covariance method using exponentially weighted averages with is the best approach. This approach produces risk estimates which are systematically lowest ones and with high time volatility. It also achieves perfect coverage (95 %) and the highest correlation between risk measure and absolute value of the outcome. RiskMetrics variance-covariance approach was dominant in spite of violation of normality assumption.

Privatization of the Czech banking sector was not an ideal process. Many errors and failures could be mentioned. The role of national banking for the raising of national entrepreneurial class was overvalued. There was also a broad naiveté about a great interest of potential investors. Also the timing of privatization of Czech banks is a topic for a discussion: It is complicated to deduce when was the optimal time for privatization but the majority of economists concluded that the banks were privatized too late. Privatization led to the following results: At the end of the process there is a standard banking sector in the Czech Republic as well the prices from privatization were the best prices (measured by price/NAV) from all of the transition countries. The cost of trans- formation of the Czech banking was extremely high. The text is focused mainly to the procedural problems of the Czech banking privatization.