Dear Colleagues and Friends,

It is our pleasure to invite you to attend the 17th International Conference on Credit Risk Evaluation Designed for Institutional Targeting in finance.

The objective of the Conference is to bring together academics, practitioners and PhD students working in the area of risk management. The conference this year focuses on Small Business Risk, Financial Regulation and Big Data Analytics and will provide an opportunity for participants engaged in research at the forefront of this area to discuss both the causes and implications of recent events in financial markets and may, in turn, suggest fruitful directions for future research. The Conference is the seventeenth of a series dedicated to various aspects of credit risk.

The co-sponsors of the Conference are GRETA Associati (Venice, Italy), the European Investment Fund (EIF, Luxembourg), European DataWarehouse (Frankfurt am Main, Germany) and Intesa Sanpaolo (Milan, Italy). The Conference is organised under the auspices of the Department of Economics of the University Ca’ Foscari of Venice, ABI - Italian Banking Association and European Investment Bank.

Since 2007, the financial crisis has triggered deep changes of various kinds. Central banks have experimented with new monetary policies (low interest rates, quantitative easing, forward guidance...). In the meantime the first steps towards a more neutral monetary policy are taken. The banking industry has had to develop new asset management strategies and to adjust its credit allocation practices in order to cope with a new environment characterized, in particular, by a prolonged period of very low risk-free returns. Meanwhile, regulatory frameworks have been reshaped all around the world, with the introduction of new requirements or guidelines including regulation on credit impairment provisioning. All these changes have called for a substantial amount of research to improve the knowledge of the mechanisms at play during the crisis, to design adapted policy tools and to provide a better description of the new economic and financial environment.

The organizers encourage submissions of papers on any topic within the overall theme of the conference and in the following areas in particular:

• Loan level data and credit risk analysis: credit registries; big data analytics; credit risk measurement; credit risk modelling.
• Financial regulation and credit cycles: macro-prudential regulation; banking cycles; bank business models; rational inattention.
• Macro-economic determinants of SMEs’ credit risk and SME loan portfolios: ECB policy; macro-parameters for SMEs’ credit risk; industry sector specialization; loan portfolio allocation.
• IFRS9, credit impairments and SME financing: expected credit loss; internal models versus standardized approach; procyclicality.
• The economic impact of government support measures (i.e. Credit Guarantee Schemes, Venture Capital): availability; real effects; inequality.
• Monetary policy, financial regulation and credit cycles: unconventional monetary policy; monetary policy normalization; macro-prudential tools; banking cycles.
• Macro-prudential regulation and real estate valuation: macro-prudential tools; loan-to-value; loan-to-income; collateral value; real estate prices.

The final program will include both submitted and invited papers. Acceptances received so far from invited speakers include Tor Jacobson (Sweden's Central Bank), Robert C. Merton (MIT Sloan School of Management), and Guillaume Plantin (Sciences Po & CEPR). The Conference will also feature a panel discussion on researchers' and practitioners' views of the major outstanding problems.

The Scientific Committee

Hans Degryse, KU Leuven, Halle Institute for Economic Research & CEPR, Programme Chair

Monica Billio, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice & GRETA

Vasso Ioannidou, Lancaster University & CEPR

Helmut Kraemer-Eis, European Investment Fund

Jan Pieter Krahnen, SAFE-Goethe University Frankfurt

Steven Ongena, University of Zurich, Swiss Finance Institute, KU Leuven & CEPR

Guillaume Plantin, Sciences Po & CEPR

Stephen Schaefer, London Business School

Enrico Sette, Bank of Italy

Ludovic Thebault, European DataWarehouse

The Local Organisers

Davide Alfonsi, Intesa Sanpaolo

Marco Angheben, European DataWarehouse

Monica Billio, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice & GRETA

Andrea Giacomelli, Knowshape & GRETA

Pier Luigi Gilibert, European Investment Fund

Domenico Sartore, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice & GRETA