We develop a model of the joint capital structure decisions of banks and their borrowers. Strikingly high bank leverage … emerges naturally from the interplay between two sets of forces. First, seniority and diversification reduce bank asset … underlie our structural model, we can quantify the impact capital regulation and other government interventions have on bank …

When a bank experiences a negative shock to its equity, one way to return to target leverage is to sell assets. If … asset sales occur at depressed prices, then one bank's sales may impact other banks with common exposures, resulting in … explains how the distribution of bank leverage and risk exposures contributes to a form of systemic risk. We compute bank …

The first part of this paper provides a historical perspective on bank risks. Five-year moving average measures of … outside New York banks from 1950-1976.We use a carefully constructed series of bank balance sheet data to compute correlations … proposed in Sharpe (quot;Bank Capital Adequacy, Deposit Insurance and Security Values,quot; June 1978) to gain information …

We study a modification of the Diamond and Dybvig (1983) model in which the bank may hold a liquid asset, some … depositors see sunspots that could lead them to run, and all depositors have incomplete information about the bank's ability to … survive a run. The incomplete information means that the bank is not automatically incentivized to always hold enough liquid …

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 …

issuance of common stock was negative due to repurchases. We assume that, in the absence of capital requirements, a bank has an … optimal capital structure that depends on its business model. Capital requirements can impose constraints on bank decisions …. If a bank's optimal capital structure also meets regulatory capital requirements with a sufficient buffer, the bank is …