After the Latin American Debt Crisis of 1982, the official response worldwide turned to minimum capital standards to promote stable banking systems. Despite their existence, however, such standards have still not prevented periodic disruptions in the banking sectors of various countries. After...

Selling (buying) a country’s equity index in exchange for equity investments elsewhere during a stock market crash (boom) is analogous to exercising an option to exchange an underperforming country (global benchmark) index for a global benchmark (country) index. This can be shown by extending...

This study reports estimates of the marginal benefits and costs of increasing the regulatory minimum bank equity-to-asset “leverage ratio” from 4 to 15 percent. Benefits arise from reducing the probability of a banking crisis. Costs arise from reduced lending, should banks pass off higher...

The delayed end to Zimbabwe's hyperinflation in 2009 gave rise to an official dollarization. Before then, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) operated on the correct side of the inflation tax Laffer curve. Estimated seignorage maximizing rates derive from Bayesian, time-varying parameter,...

Recent studies suggest liquidity regulation contributed to the rise in excess reserves, but capital regulations may matter, too. We use a simple model to show that banks may tilt portfolios away from higher risk-weighted assets like loans and toward lower risk-weighted assets like reserves and...