We develop a dynamic framework to study banks’ incentives to take excessive risk in an emerging economy, where bank default probability and excess bank risk-taking are modeled endogenously. We calibrate it for the 1998 Peruvian economy. We find that the infinite-period feature amplifies banks’ incentives to take excessive risk. When we simulate the sudden stop that hit Peru in 1998, the model accurately predicts the substantial short-term rise in the non-performing loans ratio through the rise of the bank default probability.

This paper studies empirically the relationship between competition in the loan market and credit risk in the Peruvian financial system. Our finding challenges the theoretical work of Martinez-Miera and Repullo (2010) that finds a U-shaped relationship between competition and risk-taking, as well as the empirical work of Jiménez et al. (2013) that provides evidence that supports this nonlinear relationship in a developed economy as Spain. In contrast, we find that in Peru the shape of the relationship between competition and credit risk is more complex and it depends on the competition measure.