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Before the 2008 crisis, the cross-sectional skewness of banks’ leverage went up and macro risk concentrated in the balance sheets of large banks. Using a model of profit-maximizing banks with heterogeneous Value-at-Risk constraints, we extract the distribution of banks’ risk-taking parameters from balance sheet data. The time series of these estimates allow us to understand systemic risk and its concentration in the banking sector over time. Counterfactual exercises show that (1) monetary policymakers confront the trade-off between stimulating the economy and financial stability, and (2) macroprudential policies can be effective tools to increase financial stability.

Following the recent and on-going tightenings of capital requirements in response to the financial crisis many experts have predicted a decline in the importance of the banking sector as banks struggle to compete with other providers of financial intermediation. The purpose of our research is to investigate this hypothesis in a model where the need for bank regulation is explained from first principles.Our analysis suggests that, in a monopolistic competition setting, with higher capital requirements the bank sector may see bank competition reduced as the sector becomes dominated by fewer banks. Parallel with this development depositors may stop using banks in favor of an outside option that can be interpreted as banks which are either unregulated or subject to other, possibly less stringent, types of regulation. It is noteworthy that the first effect goes against an objective often stated by regulators, namely to reduce the number of large banks in the market, banks which may be "too big to fail".We explain tightened capital requirements as the regulator's response to financial innovation. In our model such innovation increases the riskiness of certain asset classes without improving on their expected return. The only way to prevent banks from using these new assets is by increasing the capital requirements for all asset classes. The costs of these requirements are ultimately born by depositors and may lead them to look for better returns elsewhere.Our model builds on the Salop (1979) model and in doing so also sheds some light on its properties. In particular we show that so-called monopoly equilibria only exist when the number of banks is constrained to be an integer.

This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the impact of bank regulation on bank lending. It also structures the empirical evidence according to the impact of various bank regulatory measures on bank lending. The surveyed theoretical literature generally indicates that the impact of bank regulation on lending could be asymmetric, depending on the trade-off between the costs and benefits of bank regulation. The evidence from the empirical studies also shows that the impact of bank regulatory measures on lending is ambiguous. Although many studies found the impact to be negative, some established that it was positive while others found it to be insignificant or inconclusive. However, most empirical studies only assumed first-round effects using static and/or dynamic models, whereas the ones incorporating second-round effects using general equilibrium models were limited. Therefore, this systematic review of the literature indicates that policy recommendations regarding the appropriateness and efficacy of bank regulatory measures in influencing bank lending cannot be implemented uniformly across different regions or countries.

This paper examines the impact of corruption, economic freedom, bank regulation and transparency on bank profitability and bank stability using a sample of 326 banks from the 19 Eurozone countries over the period 2005–2018. We use a balanced panel data set and the Arellano-Bond Generalized Method of Moments dynamic panel estimation procedure. We find that corruption and transparency have a negative effect on bank profitability and bank stability. By contrast, greater economic freedom boosts profitability and banking stability. Our results show that regulation is positively related to bank profitability and its precise effects on stability depend upon the nature of the regulation. We additionally examine how our results are affected by Governance issues and the addition of 5 other European countries from outside the Eurozone. Our overall results indicate that the impact of the variables of interest is sensitive to the precise measures chosen to calculate profitability and financial stability.

In this article, we study the transmission mechanisms of the effect of a set of 12 macroprudential policies on the risk-taking of banks using a large number of countries and a novel identification approach. Our results show that tools which aim to address vulnerabilities from interconnectedness and contagion of the financial system, such as limits on asset concentration and interbank exposures, have a positive effect on bank stability, enhancing the risk-return relation of banks and reducing leverage. Some borrower-based instruments also have a positive effect on bank stability, primarily through the leverage channel. We also find evidence that banks reduce their equity when policies impose limits on domestic and foreign currency loans. The effects are quite heterogeneous and vary considerably depending on the instrument implemented, market concentration, size of banks, liquidity, leverage and different levels of risk.

It has been determined that given the same factors of production, bank regulation of macroeconomic processes can lead to sustainable economic growth with inflationary self-regulation of market equilibrium and a catastrophic economy decline with deflationary self-regulation of market equilibrium. It is impossible to regulate the amount of money in circulation by simultaneously changing the interest rate and the exchange rate, because they are functionally dependent. There is a marginal interest rate, after which it is impossible to carry out foreign exchange transactions due to a reduction of cash in circulation through negative foreign currency. The exit of the economy from recession or depression through inflation can significantly increase the production factors.

Should we break up banks and limit bailouts? We study vertical integration of deposit-taking institutions with those investing in risky equity. Integration eliminates a credit spread, reducing aggregate banking sector profitability; so while integration increases output it also entails larger, more frequent bailouts of retail customers. Bailouts boost economic activity but are costly. The optimal structure of banking depends on the efficiency of government intervention, the competitiveness of the banking sectors and shocks. Separated institutions are preferred when government bailouts are costly. Optimal bank regulation tolerates profits at investment and universal banks to limit bailouts, but imposes strict antitrust on retail banks.

We investigate the design of prudential bank regulation and its eects on the real and financial decisions of banks in a continuous-time structural framework. In our model, the regulator controls the dynamic risk-shifting incentives of a representative bank through the threat of intervention in the bank’s operations. The optimal regulatory policy, which we characterize analytically, entails an optimal combination of a capital requirement, intervention to control the risk of the bank’s portfolio, capital injection, and liquidation of the bank. Under the optimal risk intervention policy, the regulator intervenes when the bank’s capital ratio lies inside a “band” consisting of two triggers. We calibrate the model and show that the optimal capital requirement is 23%, which supports the substantially higher capital requirements being proposed in the Basel III accords. Relative to a benchmark unregulated bank, regulation increases bank leverage by 12%, while lowering its credit spread. Capital injection or risk intervention alone has modest impact on the bank’s social value. The optimal combination of regulatory policies, however, significantly improves social value by 4% and bank value by 11%. Optimal capital requirements should be counter-cyclical and should be stricter for large banks. Optimal regulation is also significantly aected by monetary and fiscal policies. Overall, our analysis highlights the importance of considering the interactions among dierent individual regulatory

The current low interest-rate environment poses new challenges to international bank regulation policies. This paper analyzes the role of the Basel regulation in this new context. We study this issue by using a DSGE model with housing and collateral constraints, both on borrowers and banks. Results show that, on the one hand, low interest rates lead to an increase in bank capital, calling for less strict international regulatory regimes. On the other hand, this environment encourages more indebtedness of borrowers, calling for a stricter regulation for macroprudential purposes. An optimal analysis of the countercyclical buffer in Basel III regulation reveals that risks to financial stability outweigh the extra accumulation of bank capital. Thus, the countercyclical buffer should be implemented more aggressively in a low interest-rate world.

Banks play an important role in the post-Keynesian theory of endogenous money but post-Keynesians have not paid much attention to the prudential regulation of banks. Do post-Keynesian insights into the role of banks cast any light on the way they ought to be regulated, or can the conventional treatment of prudential bank regulation be grafted onto post-Keynesian theory without any significant modification? This paper begins a process of reflection on these questions. It argues that conventional prudential regulation theory can be utilised by post-Keynesians but with important modifications including a renewed emphasis on liquidity and greater recognition of endogenously generated systemic risk. A post-Keynesian approach to prudential bank regulation is shown to be characterised by both liquidity and capital requirements, as well as by a macroprudential framework that facilitates the counter-cyclical adjustment of these requirements in response to endogenous variations in systemic risk.

We explore how large and small banks make funding decisions when system-wide bailouts are possible. We show that bank size, purely on strategic grounds, is a key determinant of banks’ leverage choices, even when bailout policies treat large and small banks symmetrically. Large banks leverage more than small banks because they internalize that their decisions directly affect bailout policies. In equilibrium, this effect is amplified by strategic spillovers to small banks since banks’ leverage choices are strategic complements. Overall, the presence of large banks makes bailouts more likely. The optimal regulation features size-dependent policies that disproportionately restrict large banks’ leverage.

We investigate how deposit insurance affects the structure of the financial system in a general equilibrium setting in which a government insurer guarantees deposits at commercial banks, but not at shadow banks. With deposit-based or risky-asset-based insurance premia, price distortions induced by subsidized deposit insurance benefit shadow banks, by allowing these banks to trade to their advantage. Insured commercial banks and uninsured shadow banks coexist under subsidized deposit insurance. Capital requirements on commercial banks make shadow banking more attractive. The asset price distortion is eliminated when the aggregate subsidy to unsuccessful commercial banks equals the aggregate penalty to successful banks.

International audience; Frictions prevent banks to immediately adjust their capital ratio towards their desired and/or imposed level. This paper analyzes (i) whether or not these frictions are larger for regulatory capital ratios vis-à-vis a plain leverage ratio; (ii) which adjustment channels banks use to adjust their capital ratio; and (iii) how the speed of adjustment and adjustment channels differ between large, systemic and complex banks versus small banks. Our results, obtained using a sample of listed banks across OECD countries for the 2001-2012 period, bear critical policy implications for the implementation of new (systemic risk-based) capital requirements and their impact on banks' balance sheets, specifically lending, and hence the real economy.

Using data for banks from 65 countries for the period 2001–2013, we investigate the impact of bank regulation and supervision on individual banks’ systemic risk. Our cross-country empirical findings show that bank activity restriction, initial capital stringency and prompt corrective action are all positively related to systemic risk, measured by Marginal Expected Shortfall. We use the staggered timing of the implementation of Basel II regulation across countries as an exogenous event and use latitude for instrumental variable analysis to alleviate the endogeneity concern. Our results also hold for various robustness tests. We further find that the level of equity banks can alleviate such effect, while bank size is likely to enhance the effect, supporting our conjecture that the impact of bank regulation and supervision on systemic risk is through bank’s capital shortfall. Our results do not argue against bank regulation, but rather focus on the design and implementation of regulation.

This paper analyzes the determinants of net interest margin with a focus on the impact of capital regulation and deposit insurance. We extend the Ho and Saunders (1981) family of models to explicit...

We examine whether stress tests distort banks' risk‐taking decisions. We study a model in which a regulator may choose to rescue banks in the event of concurrent bank failures. Our analysis reveals a novel coordination role of stress tests. Disclosure of stress‐test results informs banks of the failure likelihood of other banks, which can reduce welfare by facilitating banks' coordination in risk‐taking. However, conducting stress tests also enables the regulator to more effectively intervene banks, coordinating them preemptively into taking lower risks. We find that, if the regulator has a strong incentive to bail out, stress tests improve welfare, whereas if the regulator's incentive to bail out is weak, stress tests impair welfare.

Purpose This study aims to examine the impact of regulation and other micro- and macro-economic factors on banks’ productivity growth. It investigates the impact of different regulatory reforms on banks’ performance of total factor productivity (TFP) and its component efficiencies, along with their association with bank-specific variables of profitability and equity, and with macro-level variables of economy and freedom. That is, through analysing the influence of regulatory and supervisory policies related to Basel accords pillars of capital and market discipline through private monitoring; restrictions on bank activities; and economic and financial freedoms on TFP growth and year-end performance in banking. Design/methodology/approach The authors examine TFP for commercial banks in response to regulatory reforms on an international scale. To estimate the TFP, the authors use a non-parametric frontier technique by calculating the Malmquist output-oriented index, following Delis et al. (2011) and Worthington (1999). The components of the Malmquist index are ratios of distance functions making its estimation a straightforward technique using activity analysis or data envelopment analysis methods. This allows controlling for efficiency changes depending on the reallocation of production frontiers signalling the technical change and the technical efficiency at once. Findings Results show that high capital requirements enhance productivity growth in North and Latin American banks, but not in European African or Asian banks. Supervisory powers drive bank productivity growth in all regions except Europe and Central Asia. Restrictions on real estate, insurance and securities activities impede productivity change in all income level groups but not in high-income economies. The results also show that market volatility and Z-score drive technological change and scale efficiency growth, but negatively impact pure technical efficiency. Originality/value This paper contributes to the literature by examining the relationship between the implementation of regulatory standards and the performance of the banking sector following a structural model of the banking firm and the concept of optimisation. An additional contribution of this study is that it examines economies with different levels of income based on the gross national income per capita. The study summarises bank-specific data used to synthesise the banks’ productivity (inputs and outputs) and country-specific economic and regulatory compliance data over 19 years (1999-2017). The extent of this data set coverage makes it most recent and most conclusive of variables to provide a significant contribution to the literature on bank regulation and efficiency effect.

We investigate the influence of the institutional environment on bank capital ratios. Using a sample of 160 banks operating in the Middle East and North Africa region for the period 2004–2014, we find that, when stock markets have little presence, institutional variables significantly affect risk-weighted regulatory capital ratios but not leverage ratios. Conversely, when stock markets are more developed, only leverage ratios are influenced by institutional factors. Our results also indicate that institutional variables affect non-weighted equity-to-asset ratios of banks that are listed on a stock exchange. Our findings contribute to the bank capital structure literature and have important policy implications for developing countries.

Using a relatively large sample of European and US banks for the period 1998–2016, we investigate the determinants of bank dividend smoothing based on agency, asymmetric information and risk‐shifting theories. We show that dividend payout ratio smoothing practices were implemented on both continents before and after the crisis of 2007 and were more strongly pronounced for EU banks. Our findings mostly support agency‐based explanations of bank dividend behavior as evidenced by higher payout ratio smoothing for banks with higher (initial) dividend payouts, lower ownership concentration, public banks, and banks with lower growth opportunities and weaker investor protection. Evidence in favor of asymmetric information explanations is stronger for EU countries, where smaller (more opaque) banks appear to smooth more. In both continents, banks that rely more heavily on equity issuances are found to smooth dividend payout ratios more, suggesting that banks aim at improving access to equity markets. We also provide evidence in support of risk‐shifting, as evidenced by the persistence of dividend payout ratio smoothing in the crisis years and higher dividend smoothing for banks under greater regulatory pressure. Additional analysis using a time series partial adjustment model for dividend levels provides evidence supporting the prevalence of dividend smoothing and the suggested theoretical explanations.

The Volcker Rule intends to limit bank risk taking by prohibiting or restricting proprietary trading. We find that discretionary loan loss provision significantly increases for affected banks. Affected banks are also less timely in their loan loss recognition. Our findings suggest the Volcker Rule has unintended consequence on bank transparency. This is consistent with the current concern that the Volcker Rule increases bank risk and reduces the effectiveness of risk management.

We study the relation between bank regulation stringency and announcement effects of seasoned equity offerings across 21 countries. Under a low to moderate bank regulation environment, the market reacts more positively to the bank SEO announcements for an increase in the level of bank regulation. However, the bank SEO announcement effects become more negative if the bank regulation becomes too stringent. This inverted U-shaped relation is robust after we use the exogenous cross-country and cross-year variation in the timing of the Basel II adoption as an instrument to assess the causal impact of bank regulation on SEO announcement effects. Bank regulation has no significant impact of SEO announcement effects if the equity offering is involuntary.

The effects of large banks on the real economy are theoretically ambiguous and politically controversial. I identify quasi-exogenous increases in bank size in postwar Germany. I show that firms did...

We study whether foreign banks engaged in countercyclical lending in the United States during the 1990–1991, 2001, and 2007–2009 recessions. Aggregate lending by foreign banks increased in the 1990–91 recession and by domestic banks in the 2001 recession. Controlling for local GDP and unemployment, we show countercyclical lending by foreign branches in the 1990 recession and by foreign subsidiaries in the 2001 recession. In the 2008 recession, foreign branches and subsidiaries exhibited neither countercyclical nor procyclical lending. We conclude that foreign banks like domestic banks respond to local economic conditions; the foreign ownership is not a factor.

This paper builds a general equilibrium model with commercial banks and shadow banks to study the unintended consequences of capital requirements. In particular, we investigate how the shadow banking system responds to commercial bank capital regulation changes. A key feature of our model are defaultable bank liabilities that provide liquidity services to households. While the debt of commercial banks is insured and therefore delivers the full value of liquidity services to households, shadow banks’ debt is uninsured. Its value depends on the expected default rate of shadow banks. Commercial banks are subject to a capital requirement. Tightening the requirement from the status quo, leads households to substitute shadow bank liquidity for commercial bank liquidity and therefore to more shadow banking activity in the economy. But this relationship is non-monotonic due to an endogenous leverage constraint on shadow banks that limits their ability to deliver liquidity services. The basic trade-off of a higher requirement is between bank liquidity provision and stability. Calibrating the model to data from the Financial Accounts of the U.S. and commercial banks’ regulatory fillings, the optimal capital requirement is around 20%.

This paper presents a bank capital structure model in which equity holders can increase asset risk once debt is in place. I study the effects of capital requirements and subsidized deposit insurance on the bank's privately optimal funding and operational risk level. The model predicts that there are synergetic effects of regulation and market discipline. When the regulator sets the capital charge and deposit insurance premium payments sufficiently high for a risky portfolio, the bank commits to the low-risk asset portfolio by setting a lower leverage ratio. This market discipline effect disappears when the regulatory costs become too high.

This paper exploits the information content of option markets to offer fresh insight into the Too-Big-to-Fail (TBTF) problem for banks. I employ option prices to construct a forward-looking measure of bank exposure to significant price drops (i.e. tail-risk) and explore cross-sectional differences between large banks with at least $50B in assets identified as systemically important and smaller banks. I document a permanent increase in the average tail-risk of the U.S. banking industry as a whole following the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), except for banks above the $50B size threshold. I argue that the stark post-crisis difference in tail-risk for banks above and below the $50B threshold is consistent with the notion that the TBTF status of above 50B banks was reinforced by the series of bailouts targeted at them during the crisis and their subsequent designation as systemically important by the Dodd-Frank Act. This in turn raised investor expectations of future bailouts for above 50B banks and reduced their perceived exposure to downside risk as captured by the tail-risk measure.

This article examines the aftermath of the 1897 Riksbank Act in Swedish banking. The act placed banks with unlimited liability and those with limited liability on equal footing, removing the note-issuing privileges of the former. We consider whether changes in risk preferences occurred subsequent to the act, or whether extended liability was a sufficient deterrent. We conclude that when legal differences were removed, lower transaction costs for unlimited liability banks (ULBs) spurred aggressive competition, reflected in narrower interest spreads relative to limited liability banks (LLBs). ULBs also took on greater leverage and held less liquidity, which supports the Coasean interpretation that the shareholder liability regime mattered little. After 1897, ULB shareholders continued to receive higher dividends, enjoyed substantially superior returns on equity, and maintained an array of corporate governance controls to shield themselves against their additional risk.

The tax benefit of interest deductibility encourages debt financing, but regulatory constraints create dependency between bank leverage and asset risk. Using a large international sample of banks this paper shows that banks located in high-tax countries have higher leverage and lower average asset risk-weights. This trade-off is stronger when regulation is more stringent and for banks with less capital. Non-financial firms' leverage and asset risk are positively related to tax rates, as further evidence of the regulatorily induced adjustment of portfolio risk. A difference-in-difference analysis provides support for a causal interpretation of these results. Overall, higher tax rates are positively correlated with systemic risk, suggesting that the lower asset risk does not offset the risk-inducing effect of tax rates on bank leverage.

We propose a novel conceptual approach to transparently characterizing credit market outcomes in economies with multi-dimensional borrower heterogeneity. Based on characterizations of securities' implicit demand for bank equity capital, we obtain closed-form expressions for the composition of credit, including a sufficient statistic for the provision of bank loans, and a novel cross-sectional asset pricing relation for securities held by regulated levered institutions. Our framework sheds light on the compositional shifts in credit prior to the 07/08 financial crisis and the European debt crisis, and can provide guidance on the allocative effects of shocks affecting both banks and the cross-sectional distribution of borrowers.

Contingent convertibles (CoCos) are intended to either convert to new equity or be written down prior to failure while a bank is a going-concern. Yet, in the first actual test case, CoCos never converted before its bank failed. We develop a model that predicts that CoCos lead to less (more) extreme stock returns and have yields greater than (similar to) standard subordinated debt yields if investors do (do not) expect them to convert or be written down prior to failure. These predictions are tested using data on CoCos issued by European banks during 2011 to 2017. We find evidence that equity conversion CoCos reduce stock return variance and several other measures of downside risk, consistent with the perception that they are going-concern capital. However, we also provide event study evidence that recent regulatory actions reduced the CoCo–subordinated debt yield spread, which indicates a diminished investor belief that CoCos are going-concern capital.

We test whether measures of potential influence on regulators affect stress test outcomes. The large trading banks – those most plausibly ‘Too big to Fail’ – face the toughest tests. In contrast, we find no evidence that either political or regulatory connections affect the tests. Stress tests have a greater effect on the value of large trading banks’ portfolios; the large trading banks respond by making more conservative capital plans; and, despite their more conservative capital plans, the large trading banks still fail their tests more frequently than other banks. These results are consistent with a public-interest view of regulation, not regulatory capture. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Financial regulation is synchronized across countries despite the fact that countries vary widely in their ability to bail out their banking sector in the event of a …nancial crisis. This paper addresses the question of whether countries with dierent …scal capacity should optimally have dierent ex-ante minimum bank capital requirements. In an environment with endogenously in- complete markets and overinvestment because of moral hazard and pecuniary externalities, I show that countries with larger …scal capacity should have lower ex-ante minimum bank capital require- ments. This result is the opposite of what one may expect given that countries with larger …scal capacity often have stronger moral hazard. I also show that, in addition to a minimum bank capital requirement, regulators in countries with strong moral hazard (which are countries with a concen- trated …nancial sector and large …scal capacity) should impose a limit on the amount of liquidity pledged by …nancial institutions in a crisis state. This would entail restricting the amount of put options/CDS contracts sold by …nancial institutions, among other measures.

This paper studies the optimal determination of deposit insurance (DI) when bank runs are possible. In a variety of environments, the welfare impact of changes in the level of deposit insurance coverage exclusively depends on three sufficient statistics: the sensitivity of the likelihood of bank failure with respect to the level of DI, the utility gain induced by preventing the marginal bank failure, which can be expressed in terms of the drop in depositors' consumption, and the direct social cost of intervention in bank failure scenarios, which can be expressed in terms of the probability of bank failure, the marginal cost of public funds, and the mass of partially insured depositors. The same expression applies a) when banks face perfect ex-ante regulation and b) when banks are not allowed to react to policy changes. Under imperfect regulation, because banks do not internalize the fiscal impact of their actions, changes in the behavior of banks induced by varying the level of DI (often referred to as moral hazard) only affect the level of optimal DI directly through a fiscal externality, but not independently. We characterize the wedges that determine the optimal ex-ante regulation, which map to liability-side regulation (e.g., deposit insurance premia) and asset-side regulation. Finally, we explore the quantitative implications of our approach through a direct measurement exercise and a model simulation.

I study positively and normatively the role of bank heterogeneity in the macroeconomy. I build an empirically-motivated macroeconomic model with a banking sector that features uninsurable idiosyncratic rate of return shocks, endogenous markups, costly default, and endogenous entry. The framework highlights a trilemma for bank regulation: the government cannot simultaneously improve financial competition, efficiency, and stability. Three validated channels impact the transmission of policy regimes on the macroeconomy: an economies of scale channel from larger banks being more efficient, an endogenous competition channel from larger banks charging higher markups, and a financial stability channel from smaller banks facing shorter distance to default. The trilemma extends to deposit insurance schemes, heterogeneous capital requirements, the too-big-to-fail hazard, and optimal constrained efficient allocations. I discuss implications of the framework for the ongoing rise of banking concentration, emergence of fintech credit, targeted stabilization policies like bank-level bailouts and liquidity facilities, and intermediary asset pricing.

Critics of recent regulation to increase minimum bank capital requirements contend that this policy will increase the cost of doing business for banks. We investigate the potential impact of heightened capital requirements on banks’ cost of capital. In the cross-section, banks’ cost of equity, measured by the implied cost of capital (ICC), and banks’ cost of debt decline when equity capital increases. The negative association between capital and banks’ ICC is stronger after the onset of the financial crisis, consistent with prior work suggesting that equity is more valuable during periods of financial distress. The negative association between capital and banks’ cost of equity and debt, compensates for the difference in the costs of these sources of financing. As a consequence, the overall cost of capital remains unaltered when capital increases. Thus, our findings do not offer support the claim that additional equity has a negative impact on credit because equity increases banks’ cost of capital. An exception to these findings is found in the sample of large banks. There is no discernible association between capital and the costs of equity and debt of large banks and their WACC increases when they substitute debt with more expensive equity.

Most research on the run-up in home prices before the Great Recession has focused on types of excessive demand—loose lending, foreign savings, loose monetary policy, speculation, bank deregulation, federal housing subsidies, etc. The focus on excess demand led to fatalism about the collapse in homebuilding that began in 2006 and the eventual recession and financial crisis that followed. Regardless of the sources of excess demand, a consensus developed that American spending had become unsustainably high because of a housing bubble and that demand needed to be reduced. Using a broad array of evidence, we find that constrained supply of new housing in key urban centers was the primary trigger for high home prices before the crisis. The recession and the financial crisis were the result of deliberate contractions of demand—both generally and specifically in residential investment—that were neither useful nor necessary. First, tightening monetary policy reduced aggregate spending and encouraged negative sentiment about real estate. Then, policy changes tightened lending standards and depressed housing markets for years after the 2008 financial crisis. A monetary policy regime targeting stable nominal income growth would have dramatically improved the economy during and after 2008.

We study how banks react to policy announcements during a representative policy cycle involving consultation and publication using a novel dataset on the population of all mortgage transactions and regulatory risk assessments of banks. We demonstrate that banks likely to benefit from lower capital requirements increase the size of this capital relief by permanently investing into low risk assets after the publication of the policy. In contrast, there is no evidence that they already reacted to the early step of the development of the policy, the publication of the consultation paper. We show how these results can be used to estimate a lower bound on the cost of capital for smaller banks, for which such estimates are typically difficult to obtain.

Countries are making more active use of macroprudential tools than in the past with the goal of improving the resilience of their broader financial systems. A growing body of evidence suggests that these tools can accomplish specific domestic goals and should reduce a country's vulnerability to many domestic and international shocks. The evidence also suggests, however, that these policies are not an elixir. They will not insulate economies from volatility, and they generate leakages to the nonbank financial system and spillovers through international borrowing, lending, and other cross-border exposures. Some of these unintended consequences can mitigate the effectiveness of macroprudential policies and generate new vulnerabilities and risks. The COVID-19 crisis provides a lens to evaluate the effectiveness of current macroprudential regulations during a period of extreme market volatility and economic stress. The experience to date suggests that macroprudential tools provide some benefits and should remain a focus of macroeconomic policy, but with realistic expectations about what they can accomplish.

This paper studies financial and monetary policy in environments in which equity investors and creditors may have distorted beliefs. We characterize conditions under which it is optimal to tighten or relax leverage caps in response to arbitrary changes in beliefs. The optimal policy response to belief distortions depends on the type as well as the extent of exuberance, and it is not generally true that regulators should lean against the wind by tightening leverage caps in response to optimism. We show that increased optimism by investors is associated with relaxing the optimal leverage cap, while increased optimism by creditors, or jointly by both investors and creditors is associated with a tighter optimal leverage cap. In the presence of government bailouts, increased optimism by equity investors may call for a tighter optimal leverage cap too, depending on whether equity optimism is concentrated on upside or downside risk. Increased optimism by either equity investors or creditors is associated with higher incentives to raise interest rates, so monetary tightening can act as a useful substitute for financial regulation.

This paper investigates the actual impact of new accounting and regulatory requirements on banks’ provisioning policies and earnings management in the context of the capital adequacy of Euro Area (EA) credit institutions. This paper also examines whether loan-loss provisions signal managements’ expectations concerning future bank profits to investors. Evidence drawn from the 2011-2019 period indicates that earnings management is an important determinant of LLPs for EA intermediaries. During recent years, small bank managers are much more concerned with their credit portfolio quality and do not use LLPs for discretionary purposes apart from income smoothing. The paper gives evidence of a lack of flexibility in the Balance-Sheet of smaller banks and provides some policy refinement to avoid disorderly piecemeal liquidation.

We investigate how provisioning models affect bank regulation. We study an accuracy vs. timeliness trade-off between an incurred loss model (IL) and a current expected credit loss model (CECL). Relative to IL, CECL improves efficiency by enabling timely intervention to curb inefficient ex post asset-substitution even though the imprecise information of CECL entails false alarms. However, from a real effects perspective, our analysis uncovers a potential cost of CECL: banks respond to timely intervention by originating riskier loans so that timely intervention induces timelier risk-taking. By appropriately tailoring regulatory capital to information about credit losses, the regulator can improve the efficiency of CECL. In particular, we show that regulatory capital under CECL would be looser when early estimates of credit losses are sufficiently precise and/or risk-shifting incentives are not too severe. From a policy perspective, our analysis suggests that better coordination between standard setters and bank regulators could enable the latter to relax capital requirements in order to spur lending.

This paper offers novel evidence on the impact of raising bank capital requirements on lending in an emerging market and explores heterogeneous effects, depending on bank characteristics and economic conditions. Using quarterly bank-level data and exploiting the adoption of bank-specific capital buffers, we find that higher capital requirements are associated with lower credit growth in Peru. But the effect is short-lived and becomes insignificant in about half a year. The impact of capital requirements varies with economic conditions and bank characteristics. The effects is stronger during periods of lower economic growth. Weaker (less profitable, less capitalized and less liquid) banks react more to changes in capital requirements. Our findings are robust to estimating a variety of specification to address concerns about the endogeneity of capital requirements.

This paper incorporates shadow banking modeled as off-balance-sheet financing in a continuous-time macro-finance framework. Regular banks pursue regulatory arbitrage via shadow banking, and they support their shadow banks with implicit guarantees. We show that an enforcement problem with implicit guarantees gives rise to an endogenous constraint on leverage for shadow banking. Our model captures that shadow banking is pro-cyclical and that shadow banking increases endogenous risk. Tightening bank regulation in our model increases the borrowing capacity of shadow banking and financial instability. Furthermore, we show that a limited degree of aggregate risk sharing does not improve financial stability in the presence of shadow banking.

This study reports estimates of the marginal benefits and costs of increasing the regulatory minimum bank equity-to-asset “leverage ratio” from 4 to 15 percent. Benefits arise from reducing the probability of a banking crisis. Costs arise from reduced lending, should banks pass off higher equity costs onto borrowers. Net benefits increase with a higher discount rate, a smaller tax advantage of debt, a lower non-financial corporate debt-to-capital ratio, a higher cost of crises, a longer duration of crises or if crises have some permanent effects. Baseline estimates indicate that the benefits equal costs at 19 percent.

Purpose This paper aims to study the design of bank capital regulation and points out a conceptual downside of risk-sensitive regulation. The author argues that when a bank is better informed about its risk than the regulator, designing regulation is subject to the Lucas critique. The second-best regulation could be risk-insensitive, which provides an explanation for the leverage ratio as a backstop to risk-based capital requirements. This paper offers empirical predictions and implications for policy. Design/methodology/approach The argument in the paper is based on analytical results from mechanism design. Findings Optimal bank regulation could be risk-insensitive, as is observed in practice in the form of the leverage ratio rule. Originality/value Counter to conventional wisdom, the paper argues and provides a new explanation for why bank regulation should not be sensitive to the risk of the bank. The paper then offers empirical predictions and implications for policy.

The bank regulation reforms in the 1980s and 1990s saw deposit rate ceilings being replaced by minimum capital requirements. However, there seem to be no theoretical studies supporting these reforms; either the two instruments are considered for all practical purposes equivalent, or the conclusion is in favor of deposit regulation. In our model there is a real tradeoff between the two: capital regulation is costly because the opportunity costs of capital are higher than the return from normal banking activities, while deposit rate ceilings may result in an inefficiently large number of banks. We show that, depending on the opportunity costs of banking capital and on the severity of the moral hazard problem they seek to address, each of the two regulatory instruments may welfare†dominate the other.

In an environment of near-zero yields for traditional asset classes and tightening bank regulation, debt in privately-arranged loans has become an interesting alternative to publicly-distributed bonds for borrowers and professional investors. Key questions for potential investors concern the expected return and risk inherent to such investments, and the diversification benefits they offer for strategic asset allocation. Due to the private nature of these markets, however, historical data are not available at a micro level. For most segments of the market, representative current yield figures for Europe can be only inferred from anecdotal evidence around current transactions or derived from central banks’ aggregate series. In this article, the authors analyze private debt interest rates and the features that are relevant for asset allocation decisions using a mix of non-public data, snap-shot data, and publicly available, highly aggregated historical data on bank loans. By means of regression analysis, the authors find that they can disentangle the main components of private debt rates over time, and assess the existence of a premium related to the illiquidity and complexity of private debt markets. Then, they look for possible diversification opportunities that private debt may offer in asset allocation, and observe that efficient portfolios obtained by investing in private debt are more diversified and achieve higher expected returns for any given level of expected risk than portfolios that do not invest in this asset class.

In this paper, we investigate the notion of asset commonality. We describe the evolution of asset commonality, for 43 European banks over 15 countries, by comparing the 2011 and 2016 EU-wide stress test reporting. We determine the main variables that influence asset commonality and its evolution. We notice that asset commonality can be used as a complementary measure to other market systemic risk measures. Furthermore, we find that asset commonality can influence the returns negatively and the volatility of the bank positively. We also find that some banks, which have no funding problems or fire sales, have experienced a decrease in their performance. Asset commonality can be seen as an interesting tool than can be used by regulators.

We analyze the Volcker Rule’s announcement effects on U.S. bank holding companies. In line with the rule and the banks’ public compliance announcements, we find that those banks that are affected by the Volcker Rule already reduced their trading books relative to their total assets 2.34% more than other banks. However, the announcement of the rule did not reduce the banks’ overall risk taking. To keep their risk targets, the affected banks raised the riskiness of their asset returns. We also find some evidence that the affected banks raised their trading risk and decreased the hedging of their banking business. Data, as supplemental material, are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2016.2583 . This paper was accepted by Gustavo Manso, finance.

This paper uses granular data on syndicated loans to analyse the impact of international reforms for Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs) on bank lending behaviour. Using a difference-in-differences estimation strategy, we find no effect of the reforms on overall credit supply, while at the same time documenting a substantial decline in borrower- and loan-specific risk factors for the affected banks. Moreover, we detect a significant decline in the pricing gap between interest rates charged by G-SIBs and other banks, which we interpret as indirect evidence for a reduction in funding cost subsidies. Overall, our results suggest that the G-SIB reforms have helped to mitigate moral hazard problems associated with systemically important banks, while the consequences for the real economy have been limited.