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Review of Economic Studies Vol. 91 No. 5 2024

Capital Regulation and Shadow Finance: A Quantitative Analysis

Hyunju Lee1; Sunyoung Lee2; Radoslaw Paluszynski1

1 Department of Economics, University of Houston , USA · 2 Department of Finance, Seoul National University , South Korea

Abstract

This article studies the effects of higher bank capital requirements. Using new firm-lender matched credit data from South Korea, we document that Basel III coincided with a 25% decline in credit from regulated banks, and an increase of similar magnitude from non-bank (shadow) lenders. We use our data to estimate the effect of capital requirements on bank credit, and the spillover effect of the reform on non-bank lending. We then build a general equilibrium model with heterogeneous banks and firms that replicates these micro estimates. We find that Basel III can account for most of the observed decrease in regulated bank lending and about three quarters of the increase in shadow lending. The latter is driven exclusively by general equilibrium effects of the reform.

DOI
10.1093/restud/rdad105
Volume
91
Issue
5
Pages
3047-3084
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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