We develop a partial adjustment model in order to estimate the factors contributing to banks' internal target capital ratio, lending policy and holding of securities. The model is estimated on a panel of listed euro area banks and country specific macrovariables. Firstly, banks' internal target...

How do banks respond to changes in capital requirements as a result of the stress tests? Does the disclosure of stress test results matter? To answer these questions, we study the impact of European stress tests on banks’ lending, their corresponding risk-taking, the ensuing effect on their...

The paper shows that mispriced deposit insurance and capital regulation were of second order importance in determining the capital structure of large U.S. and European banks during 1991 to 2004. Instead, standard cross-sectional determinants of non-financial firms' leverage carry over to banks,...

Following the financial crisis, the share of non-performing loans has significantly increased, while the regulatory guidelines on the Internal-Ratings Based (IRB) approach for capital adequacy calculation related to defaulted exposures remains too general. As a result, the high-risk nature of...

We contribute to the empirical literature on the impact of non-performing loan (NPL) ratios on aggregate banking sector variables and the macroeconomy by estimating a panel Bayesian VAR model for twelve euro area countries. The model is estimated assuming a hierarchical prior that allows for...

We study the effects of the diversification of funding sources on the financing conditions for firms. We exploit a regulatory reform which took place in Italy in 2012, i.e., the introduction of “minibonds”, which opened a new market-based funding opportunity for unlisted firms. Using the...

We provide evidence that a weak banking sector has contributed to low productivity growth following the European sovereign debt crisis. An unexpected increase in capital requirements for a subset of Portuguese banks in 2011 provides a natural experiment to study the effects of reduced bank...

Basel III has introduced a non-risk-weighted leverage ratio requirement (LRR) which complements the internal ratings based (IRB) capital requirements. It provides a backstop against model risk which arises if some loans get incorrectly rated and become toxic. We study the effects of the LRR on...

How do near-zero interest rates affect optimal bank capital regulation and risk-taking? I study this question in a dynamic model, in which forward-looking banks compete imperfectly for deposit funding, but households do not accept negative deposit rates. When deposit rates are constrained by the...

This paper assesses the usefulness of private credit variables and other macrofinancial and banking sector indicators for the setting of Basel III/CRD IV countercyclical capital buffers (CCBs) in a multivariate early warning model framework, using data for 23 EU Members States from 1982 Q2 to...