Big banks' business models, earning potential and the market view of economic uncertainty are the main determinants of credit default risk, research published Tuesday by the IMF says.

İnci Ötker-Robe and Jiri Podpiera, the paper's authors, use annual data on 29 large and complex European banks from 2004 to 2008 to draw their conclusions. Their study is unique, in that the literature on bank failures to date has tended to exclude large and complex banks.

The data shows that banks with higher