Abstract We study capital requirement regulation in a dynamic quantitative model in which nonfinancial firms, as well as households, hold deposits. A novel general equilibrium channel that operates through firms deposits mitigates the cost of increasing capital requirements. In the calibrated model, (a) the optimal capital requirement is 7.3 percentage points higher than in a comparable model in which all the deposits are held by households, and (b) setting the capital requirement higher than the true optimum is not as costly as one would gauge from the comparable model. We also provide some independent evidence that supports our novel channel.

Abstract We show that widely used macroprudential regulations that rely on historical cost accounting (HCA) to insulate banks’ balance sheets from financial market volatility significantly affect the transmission of monetary policy onto bank lending. Using detailed supervisory data from Italian banks, we find that HCA mutes the transmission of quantitative easing and other monetary policies that affect the long end of the yield curve, weakening the effectiveness of interventions aimed at reducing firm credit constraints. We suggest alternative policies that have the benefits of HCA but allow monetary policy to pass through.