The paper attempts to investigate the influence of the 1988 Basel Accord on bank behavior and monetary policy. It is argued that the Accord was successful in that it forced commercial banks in all of G-10 countries to maintain higher capital ratios. Tentative research suggests, however, that –...

The New Basel Accord aims to ensure that international banks’ regulatory capital reflects more closely the credit quality of their loan portfolios. This means that capital charges will be higher for lending to low credit quality borrowers. Some have argued that this increased risk sensitivity...

The recent financial crisis has highlighted once more that interconnectedness in the financial system is a major source of systemic risk. I suggest a practical way to levy regulatory capital charges based on the degree of interconnectedness among financial institutions. Namely, the charges are...

We identify different sources of risk as important determinants of banks' corporate structures when expanding into new markets. Subsidiary-based corporate structures benefit from greater protection against economic risk because of affiliate-level limited liability, but are more exposed to the...

This paper analyzes optimal bank capital requirements when regulation can be differentiated according to banks’ heterogeneous risk-assessment capabilities. The new Basel II Accord provides the opportunity to do by introducing distinct regulatory systems for banks authorized to apply internal...

The paper addresses the issue of monetary policy transmission through the banking sector in the presence of a bank capital regulation. A model of bank behavior is presented, which shows how a monetary policy shock affects both deposit and lending, in the short run (when equity capital is assumed...

This study investigates the hypothesis that stricter capital adequacy requirements introduced under the 1988 Basel Accord caused Japanese banks to restrict loan growth. Using a panel of Japanese bank balance sheets for fiscal years 1982-1999, this study finds that the 1988 Basel Accord...

One of the implications of the creation of Basel Committee on Banking Supervision was the implementation of Value-at-Risk (VaR) as the standard tool for measuring market risk. Since then, the capital requirements of commercial banks with trading activities are based on VaR estimates. Therefore,...