This discussion was prepared for the 84th Meeting of the Carnegie-Rochester-NYU Conference Series on Public Policy "Monetary Policy: An Unprecedented Predicament" held on November 14-15, 2014, at Carnegie Mellon University.

Adopted in part as a response to the 2007-08 financial crisis, the Basel III accord is the most recent revision to international capital standards for banks. Basel III primarily relies on methods similar to those of Basel II for assessing the relative risks of different types of assets. The main...