We survey 149 leading academic researchers on bank capital regulation. The median (average) respondent prefers a 10% (15%) minimum non-risk-weighted equity-to-assets ratio, which is considerably higher than the current requirement. North Americans prefer a significantly higher equity-to-assets...

We examine the effect of the full set of bank capital regulations (capital stringency) on loan growth, using bank-level data for a maximum of 125 countries over the period 1998-2011. Contrary to standard theoretical considerations, we find that overall capital stringency only has a weak negative...

This paper shows that local banking market conditions affect mortality rates in the United States. Exploiting the staggered relaxation of branching restrictions in the 1990s across states, we find that banking deregulation decreases local mortality rates. This effect is driven by a decrease in...