In the last two decades U.S. banks have become systematically less profitable and riskier as nonbank competition has eroded the profitability of banks' traditional activities. Bank failures, insignificant from 1934, the date the Glass-Steagall Act was passed, until 1980, rose exponentially in...

We study optimal capital requirement regulation in a dynamic quantitative model in which nonfinancial firms, as well as households, hold deposits. Firms hold deposits for precautionary reasons and to facilitate the acquisition of production inputs. Our theoretical analysis identifies a novel...