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Review of Financial Studies Vol. 30 No. 10 2017

How Excessive Is Banks’ Maturity Transformation?

Anatoli Segura; Javier Suarez

Abstract

We quantify the gains from regulating maturity transformation in a model of banks that finance long-term assets with nontradable debt. Banks choose the amount and maturity of their debt by trading off investors’preferences for short maturities with the risk of systemic crises. Pecuniary externalities make unregulated debt maturities inefficiently short. In calibrating the model to eurozone banking data for 2006, we find that lengthening the average maturity of wholesale debt from 2.8 to 3.3 months would produce welfare gains with a present value of euro 105 billion, while the lengthening induced by the NSFR would be too drastic.

Volume
30
Issue
10
Pages
3538-3580
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib

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