Auditing is introduced into a model of bank capital regulation. Deterministic and stochastic auditing strategies are studied. Contrary to intuition, auditing of bank risk should be focused on the safest banks because they hold the least amount of capital. Risky banks, which hold more capital,...

This paper compares alternative procedures to mitigate the procyclicality of the new risk-sensitive bank capital regulation (Basel II). We estimate a model of the probabilities of default (PDs) of Spanish firms during the period 1987-2008, and use the estimated PDs to compute the corresponding...

We provide a critical assessment of the countercyclical capital buffer in the new regulatory framework known as Basel III, which is based on the deviation of the credit-to-GDP ratio with respect to its trend. We argue that a mechanical application of the buffer would tend to reduce capital...