The author focuses on the relative emphasis that the structure of regulatory capital places on formulas and on supervision. The two are not viewed as mutually exclusive, but as elements to which capital policy implicitly assigns relative weights. He shows that in U.S. regulatory practice, these...

This paper was presented at the conference "Financial services at the crossroads: capital regulation in the twenty-first century" as part of session 6, "The role of capital regulation in bank supervision." The conference, held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on February 26-27, 1998, was...

Paper for a conference sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York entitled Financial Innovation and Monetary Transmission

The current review of the 1988 Basel Capital Accord has put the spotlight on the ratios used to assess banks’ capital adequacy. This article examines the effectiveness of three capital ratios—the first based on leverage, the second on gross revenues, and the third on risk-weighted...

Bank supervisors have made significant strides since 1980 in the area of capital requirements, and they are currently pursuing further refinements. This article looks beyond such developments at longer term supervisory goals. Abstracting to some extent from the current regulatory framework, the...