The paper studies risk mitigation associated with capital regulation, in a context when banks may choose tail risk assets. We show that this undermines the traditional result that higher capital reduces excess risk-taking driven by limited liability. When capital raising is costly, poorly...

This study examines the effect of regulatory independence of the central bank in shaping the impact of electoral cycles on bank lending behaviour in Africa. It employs the dynamic system Generalized Method of Moments (SGMM) Two-Step estimator for a panel dataset of 54 African countries over the...

With falling home prices and home foreclosures currently acknowledged as a severe problem in the U.S., more attention needs to be paid to the contributing phenomenon of residential developers undergoing liquidation, which has left behind a trail of partially-completed or abandoned properties. In...

This paper investigates regulations for a bank that is covered by deposit insurance in a dynamic setting where bankruptcy entails social costs. Regulatory policy operates through rules governing the bank's capital structure and asset allocation that may be adjusted each period. Throughout, the...

Bank regulators consider minimum capital standards essential for promoting well-functioning banking systems. Despite their existence, however, such standards have been insufficient to prevent periodic disruptions in the banking sectors of various countries. The most recent disruption was the...

Hub-and-spoke regulation, where a central regulator with legal power over firms delegates monitoring to local supervisors, can improve information collection, but can also lead to agency problems and capture. We document that following the closure of a US bank regulator's field offices, the...

Many economists and policy-makers believe that bailouts of systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs), though unavoidable ex post, are inefficient ex ante: The expectation of such bailouts is said to lead to moral hazard in the form of excessive risk taking. We argue that this view...

This paper evaluates the incentives that banks have to herd. It includes a complete literature review of papers from the last fifteen years, and a model of several banks and infinite time periods. The literature review looks at recent academic papers that have examined the different causes of...

Past papers show that public bailouts increase the moral hazard of rescued banks. What happens to other banks in the banking sector? Using a hand-collected dataset of European banks from 2007 to 2017 and adopting a dynamic difference-in-differences approach, we document that public bailouts...

Reforming regulation of the financial sector is currently among the most immediate concerns of domestic and international policymakers. Proposals for such reform are proliferating, and the official sector appears committed to adopting at least some meaningful reforms in the near-term. Broadly...