"To understand the 2008 financial crisis, Neil Fligstein looks to the business models of the big US banks. He shows how firms got hooked on mortgages-originating them, securitizing them, selling those securities, and even buying the same securities. In time their addiction nearly collapsed the...

This paper examines capital adequacy regulation in Germany. After a short overview about financial regulation in Germany in general, the paper focuses on the most important development in the area of capital adequacy regulation from the 1930s up to the financial crisis. Two main trends are...

To calculate regulatory capital ratios, banks have to apply adjustments to book equity. These adjustments vary with a bank's solvency position: Low solvency banks report values of Tier 1 regulatory capital that exceed book equity. These banks benefit from regulatory adjustments to inflate...

This paper reviews the cost-benefit analysis, or “regulatory impact analysis” (RIA), in US bank regulators’ risk-based capital (RBC) rule proposals. We review the principles of cost-benefit analysis and its application by US bank regulators. We provide a brief background on RBC rules and...