deposits excessively fragile in which case there is a role for outside bank capital. Greater bank capital reduces liquidity … creation by the bank but enables the bank to survive more often and avoid distress. A more subtle effect is that banks with … different amounts of capital extract different amounts of repayment from borrowers. The optimal bank capital structure trades …

Banks are optimally opaque institutions. They produce debt for use as a transaction medium (bank money), which requires … that information about the backing assets - loans - not be revealed, so that bank money does not fluctuate in value …-insensitive assets. For the economy as a whole, firms endogenously separate into bank finance and capital market/stock market finance …

behavior. By paying out dividends, a bank transfers value to its shareholders away from creditors, among whom are other banks …. This way, one bank's dividend payout policy affects the equity value and risk of default of other banks. When such negative … externalities are strong and bank franchise values are not too low, the private equilibrium can feature excess dividends relative to …

The regulation of bank capital as a means of smoothing the credit cycle is a central element of forthcoming macro …--on both questions, using a unique dataset. In the UK, regulators have imposed time-varying, bank-specific minimum capital …