Banks are subject to capital requirements because their privately optimal leverage is higher than the socially optimal one. This is in turn because banks fail to internalize all costs that their insolvency creates for agents who use their money-like liabilities to settle transactions. If banks can bypass capital regulation in an opaque shadow banking sector, it may be optimal to relax capital requirements so that liquidity dries up in the shadow banking sector. Tightening capital requirements may spur a surge in shadow banking activity that leads to an overall larger risk on the money-like liabilities of the formal and shadow banking institutions

Banks are subject to capital requirements because their privately optimal leverage is higher than the socially optimal one. This is in turn because banks fail to internalize all costs that their insolvency creates for agents who use their money-like liabilities to settle transactions. If banks can bypass capital regulation in an opaque shadow banking sector, it may be optimal to relax capital requirements so that liquidity dries up in the shadow banking sector. Tightening capital requirements may spur a surge in shadow banking activity that leads to an overall larger risk on the money-like liabilities of the formal and shadow banking institutions

We examine the optimal design of and interaction between capital and liquidity regulations. Banks, not internalizing fire sale externalities, overinvest in risky assets and underinvest in liquid assets in the competitive equilibrium. Capital requirements can alleviate the inefficiency, but banks respond by decreasing their liquidity ratios. When capital requirements are the only available tool, the regulator tightens them to offset banks’ lower liquidity ratios, leading to fewer risky assets and less liquidity compared with the second best. Macroprudential liquidity requirements that complement capital regulations implement the second best, improve financial stability, and allow for more investment in risky assets

We examine the effects of financial reporting regulation on firms’banking. Exploiting discontinuous public disclosure and auditing requirements assigned to otherwise similar small and medium-sized private firms, we document that financial reporting regulation reduces firms’ reliance on concentrated and local bank relationships and increases banks’ reliance on firms’ financial reporting, consistent with a shift in firms’ banking from relationship toward transactional approaches. Our evidence suggests that financial reporting regulation substitutes for banks’ information production role by burdening firms with the disclosure and auditing of their financial statements, consistent with institutional complementarities between reporting and banking systems

We examine the effects of financial reporting regulation on firms’ banking. Exploiting discontinuous public disclosure and auditing requirements assigned to otherwise similar small and medium-sized private firms, we document that financial reporting regulation reduces firms’ reliance on concentrated and local bank relationships and increases banks’ reliance on firms’ financial reporting, consistent with a shift in firms’ banking from relationship toward transactional approaches. Our evidence suggests that financial reporting regulation substitutes for banks’ information production role by burdening firms with the disclosure and auditing of their financial statements, consistent with institutional complementarities between reporting and banking systems. Received October 21, 2016; editorial decision September 15, 2017 by Editor Philip Strahan

Postcrisis bank regulations raised market-making costs for bank-affiliated dealers. We show that this can, somewhat surprisingly, improve overall investor welfare and reduce average transaction costs despite the increased cost of immediacy. Bank dealers in OTC markets optimize between two parallel trading mechanisms: market making and matchmaking. Bank regulations that increase market-making costs change the market structure by intensifying competitive pressure from nonbank dealers and incentivizing bank dealers to shift their business activities toward matchmaking. Thus, postcrisis bank regulations have the (unintended) benefit of replacing costly bank balance sheets with a more efficient form of financial intermediation

We argue that heightened regulation on large banks contributed to the rise in fragility of smaller banks revealed by the 2023 regional bank crisis. In 2018, regulators restricted Wells Fargo, the third largest U.S. bank, from growing its total assets. We estimate this asset cap led Wells Fargo to give up deposits amounting to 2.2% of aggregate bank deposits. These deposits, primarily uninsured, were reallocated to banks geographically proximate to Wells Fargo, including smaller, less regulated banks. In turn, these banks experienced higher deposit outflows once monetary tightening commenced and saw their stock prices plummet during the 2023 stress

[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

We show that concentrating bank regulation on bank capital ratios may be ineffective in controlling risk taking. We propose, instead, a more direct mechanism of influencing bank risk-taking incentives, in which the FDIC insurance premium scheme incorporates incentive features of top-management compensation. With this scheme, we show that bank owners choose an optimal management compensation structure that induces first-best value-maximizing investment choices by a bank's management. We explicitly characterize the parameters of the optimal management compensation structure and the fairly priced FDIC insurance premium in the presence of a single or multiple sources of agency problems

We show that concentrating bank regulation on bank capital ratios may be ineffective in controlling risk taking. We propose, instead, a more direct mechanism of influencing bank risk-taking incentives, in which the FDIC insurance premium scheme incorporates incentive features of top-management compensation. With this scheme, we show that bank owners choose an optimal management compensation structure that induces first-best value-maximizing investment choices by a bank's management. We explicitly characterize the parameters of the optimal management compensation structure and the fairly priced FDIC insurance premium in the presence of a single or multiple sources of agency problems