Using loan‐level data from Germany, we investigate how the introduction of model‐based capital regulation affected banks' ability to absorb shocks. The objective of this regulation was to enhance financial stability by making capital requirements responsive to asset risk. Our evidence suggests that banks “optimized” model‐based regulation to lower their capital requirements. Banks systematically underreported risk, with underreporting more pronounced for banks with higher gains from it. Moreover, large banks benefitted from the regulation at the expense of smaller banks. Overall, our results suggest that sophisticated rules may have undesired effects if strategic misbehavior is difficult to detect

This paper analyzes a regulator's optimal strategic delay of resolving banks when the regulator's announcement of the intervention delay endogenously affects the depositors' run propensity. Given intervention, the regulator either liquidates the remaining illiquid assets (“prompt corrective action”) or continues managing the assets at a reduced skill level (“resolution under receivership”). In either case, I show that if the regulator tolerates fewer withdrawals until intervention, the depositors may react by preempting the regulator: they run on the bank more often ex ante. A policy of never intervening can leave the bank more stable than a conservative intervention policy

We study how differences in bank regulation influence cross‐border bank acquisition flows and share price reactions to cross‐border deal announcements. Using a sample of 7,297 domestic and 916 majority cross‐border deals announced between 1995 and 2012, we find evidence of a form of “regulatory arbitrage” whereby acquisition flows involve acquirers from countries with stronger regulations than their targets. Target and aggregate abnormal returns around deal announcements are positive and larger when acquirers come from more restrictive bank regulatory environments. We interpret this evidence as more consistent with a benign form of regulatory arbitrage than a potentially destructive one

We propose a theory of banking in which banks cannot perfectly control deposit flows. Facing uninsurable loan and deposit shocks, banks dynamically manage lending, wholesale funding, deposits, and equity. Deposits create value by lowering funding costs. However, when the bank is undercapitalized and at risk of breaching leverage requirements, the marginal value of deposits can turn negative as deposit inflows, by raising leverage, increase the likelihood of costly equity issuance. Banks' inability to fully control leverage distinguishes them from nondepository intermediaries. Our model suggests a reevaluation of leverage regulations and offers new perspectives on banking in a low‐interest‐rate environment

This paper studies the default risk of banks generated by investment and remuneration pressures. Competing banks prefer to pay their banking staff in bonuses and not in fixed wages as risk sharing on the remuneration bill is valuable. Competition for bankers generates a negative externality, driving up market levels of banker remuneration and hence rival banks’ default risk. Optimal financial regulation involves an appropriately structured limit on the proportion of the balance sheet used for bonuses. However, stringent bonus caps are value destroying, default risk enhancing, and suboptimal for regulators who control only a small number of banks

Should regulators reveal the models they use to stress‐test banks? In our setting, revealing leads to gaming, but secrecy can induce banks to underinvest in socially desirable assets for fear of failing the test. We show that although the regulator can solve this underinvestment problem by making the test easier, some disclosure may still be optimal (e.g., if banks have high appetite for risk or if capital shortfalls are not very costly). Cutoff rules are optimal within monotone disclosure rules, but more generally optimal disclosure is single‐peaked. We discuss policy implications and offer applications beyond stress tests

We present a theory of optimal transparency when banks are exposed to rollover risk. Disclosing bank‐specific information enhances the stability of the financial system during crises, but has a destabilizing effect in normal economic times. Thus, the regulator optimally increases transparency during crises. Under this policy, however, information disclosure signals a deterioration of economic fundamentals, which gives the regulator ex post incentives to withhold information. This commitment problem precludes a disclosure policy that provides ex ante optimal insurance against aggregate shocks, and can result in excess opacity that increases the likelihood of a systemic crisis

We propose a model of post‐Great Financial Crisis (GFC) money markets and monetary policy implementation. In our framework, capital regulation may deter banks from intermediating liquidity derived from holding reserves to shadow banks. Consequently, money markets can be segmented, and the scarcity of Treasury bills available to shadow banks is the main driver of short‐term spreads. In this regime, open market operations have an inverse effect on net liquidity provision when swapping ample reserves for scarce T‐bills or repos. Our model quantitatively accounts for post‐2010 time series for repo rates, T‐bill yields, and the Fed's reverse repo facility usage

We study an economy with financial frictions in which a regulator designs a test that reveals outside information about a firm's quality to investors. The firm can also disclose verifiable inside information about its quality. We show that the regulator optimally aims for “public speech and private silence,” which is achieved with tests that give insiders an incentive to stay quiet. We fully characterize optimal tests by developing tools for Bayesian persuasion with incentive constraints, and use these results to derive novel guidance for the design of bank stress tests, as well as benchmarks for socially optimal corporate credit ratings

We find that deviations from the covered interest rate parity (CIP) condition imply large, persistent, and systematic arbitrage opportunities in one of the largest asset markets in the world. Contrary to the common view, these deviations for major currencies are not explained away by credit risk or transaction costs. They are particularly strong for forward contracts that appear on banks' balance sheets at the end of the quarter, pointing to a causal effect of banking regulation on asset prices. The CIP deviations also appear significantly correlated with other fixed income spreads and with nominal interest rates