This paper examines how financial regulation and institutional quality affect the probability of a banking crisis using a panel of 138 countries over the period 1996–2017. Our key inference is that the probability of a financial crisis fits an inverted U-shaped curve: it rises as regulation stringency moves from low to medium levels and falls from medium to high levels. Countries located in the intermediate level of regulatory stringency face more financial instability than either loosely or severely regulated countries, which are caught in a “liberalization trap” and a “regulation trap,” respectively. Institutional quality interacts significantly with the regulatory environment, implying a trade-off with regulatory stringency

We examine a policy in which owners of banks provide funds in the form of a surety bond in addition to equity capital. This policy would require banks to provide the regulator with funds that could be invested in marketable securities. Investors in the bank receive the income from the surety bond as long as the bank is in business. The capital value could be used by bank regulators to pay off the banks’ liabilities in case of bank failure. After paying depositors, investors would receive the remaining funds, if any. Analytically, this instrument is a way of creating charter value but, as opposed to Keeley (1990) and Hellman, Murdock and Stiglitz (2000), restrictions on competition are not necessary to generate positive rents. We demonstrate that capital requirements alone cannot prevent the moral hazard problem arising from deposit insurance

This paper develops a model of banking fragility driven by aggregate liquidity shortages. Inefficiencies arise from a failure of the interbank market to smooth the available liquidity in such a shortage. We find that a standard lender of last resort policy is ineffective in restoring efficiency as it leads to offsetting changes in the banks’ supply of liquidity. In contrast, subsidizing the purchase of assets from troubled banks increases welfare by improving the banks’ liquidity holdings. The first best, however, is achieved by redistributing existing liquidity from healthy to troubled banks in a crisis

This empirical study investigates whether a strong bank culture may help strengthen, weaken, or have no effect on the relationship between regulatory capital and liquidity creation. Using a machine learning approach and banks’ 10-K reports, we first measure the corporate culture of selected bank holding companies (BHCs) in the United State (U.S.) over the period between 1995 and 2019. We find that bank culture does affect the link between regulatory capital and liquidity creation. In particular, while we find that regulatory capital has a negative impact on bank liquidity creation, a strong culture in a bank weakens this negative association. We also find that an increase in asset-side liquidity creation is the main channel through which bank culture exerts its moderating role. Finally, our results are largely driven by smaller banks, banks with a more traditional funding structure and more profitable banks. The results of this study suggest that regulators should consider bank culture as being a crucial element in the monitoring approach when designing bank regulation and supervision

Central Bank supervision is one of the pillars of capital regulation. Based on a unique database built using supervision data from the Central Bank of Brazil, we evaluate the effectiveness of the Central Bank's supervision over banks given the Central Bank's proprietary credit rating and signaling requests for higher capital buffers. We also examine the main determinants of capital buffer management in addition to supervision. We find evidence that (i) Brazilian Central Bank supervision imposes excess capital buffer needs on banks, especially small and midsize banks; (ii) market discipline may play no role in driving capital ratios; and (iii) the business cycle has a negative influence on bank capital cushions, suggesting pro-cyclical capital management. We conclude that supervision plays a major role in markets where market discipline is weak and for smaller banks which act on pro-cyclical way

There seems to be a consensus among regulators and scholars that in order to improve the functioning of a banking system it is necessary to raise the level of bank information disclosure. However, its influence on bank competition – which is an important factor affecting the efficiency and stability of the banking system – is left out of consideration. To test whether greater bank information disclosure is associated with both lower market power and lower concentration in the banking markets, we use country-level data covering the years 1998, 2001, 2005 and 2010. Our findings show that countries with higher levels of bank transparency have lower levels of bank concentration, while the link between transparency and market power is less pronounced. We also show that the reduction of competition due to stricter disclosure requirements depends on bank credit risks and the relationship is U-shaped

We analyze how capital requirements from environmental risk exposure affect bank lending to the corporate sector, and how these effects transmit to real economic activity and to greenhouse gas emissions. To do so, we exploit the introduction of a policy in Brazil that required banks to incorporate environmental risks in their capital assessments. Using comprehensive credit data, we find that the policy induces large banks to reallocate their lending away from exposed sectors. The credit contraction has no substantial impact on the real activity and greenhouse gas emissions of these sectors, as smaller banks expand their lending afterwards. However, the policy triggers a moderate labor reallocation from small firms (i.e., those with higher costs of switching lenders) and into large firms within environmentally exposed sectors

We examine the impact of bank liquidity creation on systemic risk and its heterogeneous impact over the network connectedness. We find that excessive liquidity creation increases the systemic risk with a “U shape” relationship, while internal and external liquidity creation drives systemic risk in a different way. Network connectedness of banks strengthens the relationship between liquidity creation and systemic risk. Our results provide supporting evidence on regulating bank liquidity creation to enhance the financial stability

In order to incentivize stronger issuer due diligence effort, European and U.S. authorities are amending securitization-related regulations to force issuers to retain an economic interest in the securitization products they issue. This paper contributes to the process by exploring the economics of equity and mezzanine tranche retention in the context of systemic risk, moral hazard, accounting frictions and funding distortions. It shows that loan screening activity is maximized when the loan originating bank retains the equity tranche. However, in case capital structure irrelevance does not hold a profit maximizing bank is likely to favor retention of the less risky mezzanine tranche. From a regulator's perspective this is a problem because the implied loan screening activity is substantially lower in this case. Policy attention is even more warranted if performing due diligence is costly, the economic outlook is positive or loan profitability is high

This paper presents a model of the portfolio and financing adjustments of U.S. banks over the business cycle. At the core of the model is a moral hazard problem between depositors/bank regulators and stockholders. The solution to this problem takes the form of shared management of the bank. Stockholders manage the bank's portfolio and the regulator manages the financing of the portfolio. The model predicts that portfolio adjustments are made to conform to the risk aversion of shareholders and financing adjustments are made to offset changes in portfolio risk. Regression evidence for 1955–2000 fails to reject these predictions