This paper explores the foundations for the application of the empirical growth-at-risk (GaR) approach to the assessment and design of macroprudential policies. It starts considering a stylized benchmark linear specification of the empirical GaR approach in combination with a linear–quadratic social welfare criterion that rewards expected GDP growth and penalizes the gap between expected GDP growth and GaR. If the growth rate follows a normal distribution, this welfare criterion can be microfounded as consistent with expected utility maximization under preferences for GDP levels exhibiting constant absolute risk aversion. The benchmark formulation implies an optimal policy rule linear in the risk indicator and an optimal gap between expected growth and GaR that does not depend on the time-varying risk indicator and is inversely related to the cost-effectiveness of macroprudential policy and the risk preference parameter. Extensions of the benchmark formulation show the potential to adapt the analysis and its insights to the richer specifications typically considered in empirical work.

We study restructuring solutions to the debt overhang problem faced by banks with a deteriorated loan portfolio in the presence of asymmetric information on loan quality. Classical liability restructuring solutions fail to work because banks can overstate the severity of their bad loan problem to obtain additional concessions from existing creditors. A sufficiently large loan sale requirement to the restructuring banks discourages such an opportunistic behavior, so a suitably chosen menu of loan sales cum liability restructuring is able to solve the debt overhang. We discuss the implementation of such a solution for banks funded with insured deposits through loan sales to outside investors supported by an asset protection scheme sponsored by the deposit insurance fund.

We analyze the loan pricing implications of the reform of bank capital regulation known as Basel II. We consider a perfectly competitive market for business loans where, as in the model underlying the internal ratings based (IRB) approach of Basel II, a single risk factor explains the correlation in defaults across firms. Our loan pricing equation implies that low risk firms will achieve reductions in their loan rates by borrowing from banks adopting the IRB approach, while high risk firms will avoid increases in their loan rates by borrowing from banks that adopt the less risk-sensitive standardized approach of Basel II. We also show that only a very high social cost of bank failure might justify the proposed IRB capital charges, partly because the net interest income from performing loans is not counted as a buffer against credit losses. A net interest income correction for IRB capital requirements is proposed.

This paper characterizes the optimal securities for venture capital finance in an environment with multiple investment stages and double-sided moral hazard in the relationship between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. We show that if the conditions relevant for continuation into later stages are verifiable, the optimal security gives the venture capitalist a constant share in the success return of the project over a predetermined set of continuation states. Otherwise, the parties sign an initial start-up contract that is later renegotiated. In this case, in order to minimize the incentive distortions associated with the burden of early financing stages, the optimal start-up security gives a zero payoff in low profitability states and thereafter an increasing share in the success return of the project.

We claim that the stock market encourages business creation, innovation, and growth by allowing the recycling of “informed capital”. Due to incentive and information problems, start-ups face larger costs of going public than mature firms. Sustaining a tight relationship with a monitor (bank, venture capitalist) allows them to finance their operations without going public until profitability prospects are clearer or incentive problems are less severe. However, the earlier young firms go public, the quicker monitors' informed capital is redirected towards new start-ups. Hence, when informed capital is in limited supply, factors that lower the costs for start-ups to go public encourage business creation. Technological spill-overs associated with business creation and thick market externalities in the young firms segment of the stock market provide prima facie cases for encouraging young firms to go public.

We quantify the gains from regulating maturity transformation in a model of banks that finance long-term assets with nontradable debt. Banks choose the amount and maturity of their debt by trading off investors’ preferences for short maturities with the risk of systemic crises. Pecuniary externalities make unregulated debt maturities inefficiently short. In calibrating the model to eurozone banking data for 2006, we find that lengthening the average maturity of wholesale debt from 2.8 to 3.3 months would produce welfare gains with a present value of euro 105 billion, while the lengthening induced by the NSFR would be too drastic. Received November 27, 2014; editorial decision November 14, 2016 by Editor Itay Goldstein.

We quantify the gains from regulating maturity transformation in a model of banks that finance long-term assets with nontradable debt. Banks choose the amount and maturity of their debt by trading off investors’preferences for short maturities with the risk of systemic crises. Pecuniary externalities make unregulated debt maturities inefficiently short. In calibrating the model to eurozone banking data for 2006, we find that lengthening the average maturity of wholesale debt from 2.8 to 3.3 months would produce welfare gains with a present value of euro 105 billion, while the lengthening induced by the NSFR would be too drastic.

We assess the procyclical effects of bank capital regulation in a dynamic equilibrium model of relationship lending in which banks are unable to access the equity markets every period. Banks anticipate that shocks to their earnings as well as the cyclical position of the economy can impair their capacity to lend in the future and, as a precaution, hold capital buffers. We find that under cyclically-varying risk-based capital requirements (e.g. Basel II) banks hold larger buffers in expansions than in recessions. Yet, these buffers are insufficient to prevent a significant contraction in the supply of credit at the arrival of a recession. We show that cyclical adjustments in the confidence level underlying Basel II can reduce its procyclical effects on the supply of credit without compromising banks’ long-run solvency targets.

[We compare various bank capital regulation regimes using a dynamic equilibrium model of relationship lending in which banks are unable to access the equity markets every period and the business cycle determines loans' probabilities of default. Banks hold endogenous capital buffers as a precaution against shocks that impair their future lending capacity. We find that Basel II is more procyclical than Basel I but makes banks safer, and it is generally superior in welfare terms. For high social costs of bank failure, the optimal capital requirements are higher but less cyclically varying, like those currently targeted by Basel III.]

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