We evaluate how a country's governance structure for macroprudential policy affects its implementation of Basel III macroprudential capital buffers. We find that the probabilities of using the countercyclical capital buffer (CCyB) are higher in countries that have financial stability committees...

We investigate the connections between bank capital regulation and the prevalence of lightly regulated nonbanks (shadow banks) in the U.S. corporate loan market. For identification, we exploit a supervisory credit register of syndicated loans, loan-time fixed-effects, and shocks to capital...

We examine the effects of a 2012 regulatory reform that mandated fee and performance disclosures for the investment options in 401(k) plans. We show that participants became significantly more attentive to expense ratios and short-term performance after the reform. The disclosure effects are...

Focusing on downgrades as stress events that drive the selling of corporate bonds, we document that the illiquidity of stressed bonds has increased after the Volcker Rule. Dealers regulated by the Rule have decreased their market-making activities while non-Volcker-affected dealers have stepped...

In January 2006, federal regulators issued guidance requiring banks with specific high concentrations of commercial real estate (CRE) loans to tighten managerial controls. This paper shows that banks with concentrations in excess of the thresholds set in the guidance subsequently experienced...

The use of stress testing for macroprudential objectives is advanced by modeling spillovers within the financial sector or between the real and financial sectors. In this chapter, we discuss several macroprudential elements that capture these spillovers and how they might be added to stress test...

This paper uses data from the Financial Accounts of the United States to map out the regulatory boundaries of assets held by U.S. financial institutions from a macroprudential perspective. We provide a quantitative measure of the regulatory perimeter—the boundary between the part of the...

The concentration of risk within financial system is considered to be a source of systemic instability. We propose a theory to explain the structure of the financial system and show how it alters the risk taking incentives of financial institutions. We build a model of portfolio choice and...

This paper examines how the quality of firm information disclosure affects shareholders' use of dividends to mitigate agency problems. Managerial compensation is linked to firm value. However, because the manager and shareholders are asymmetrically informed, the manager can manipulate the firm's...

Detractors have warned that Private Equity (PE) funds tend to over-lever their portfolio companies because of an option-like payoff, building up default risk and debt overhang. This paper argues PE-ownership leads to substantially higher levels of optimal (value-maximizing) leverage, by reducing...