44 posts on "Bank Capital"
December 18, 2019
Banking System Vulnerability: Annual Update
A key part of understanding the stability of the U.S. financial system is to monitor leverage and funding risks in the financial sector and the way in which these vulnerabilities interact to amplify negative shocks. In this post, we provide an update of four analytical models, introduced in a Liberty Street Economics post last year, that aim to capture different aspects of banking system vulnerability.
Posted at 7:00 am in Bank Capital, Banks, Financial Institutions, Financial Intermediation, Liquidity, Systemic Risk | Permalink
October 11, 2018
What Happens When Regulatory Capital Is Marked to Market?
Minimum equity capital requirements are a key part of bank regulation. But there is little agreement about the right way to measure regulatory capital. One of the key debates is the extent to which capital ratios should be based on current market values rather than historical “accrual” values of assets and liabilities. In a new research paper, we investigate the effects of a recent regulatory change that ties regulatory capital directly to the market value of the securities portfolio for some banks.
October 10, 2018
Why Do Banks Target ROE?
Nonfinancial corporations focus on the growth in earnings per share (EPS) to benchmark their performance. Banks used to follow a similar practice, but starting in the late 1970s they began to emphasize return on equity (ROE) instead. In this blog post, we outline findings from our recent staff report, which argues that banks had an incentive to make this change when their charter values eroded owing to increased competition, and the incentive to change was magnified by risk-insensitive deposit insurance.
October 3, 2018
The Cost of Regulatory Capital
Banks contend that equity capital is expensive and that an increase in capital requirements will adversely impact bank services, including the volume and cost of mortgages and corporate loans. For example, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said in 2017 that “It is clear that the banks have too much capital…and more of that capital can be safely used to finance the economy.” In a recent staff report, we compare the different treatments of short-term credit commitments under the Basel I and Basel II Accords to assess the effect of capital regulation on banks’ cost of capital. Our results suggest that banks are willing to pay at least $0.04 to reduce their regulatory capital by one dollar.
October 1, 2018
Regulatory Changes and the Cost of Capital for Banks
In response to the financial crisis nearly a decade ago, a number of regulations were passed to improve the safety and soundness of the financial system. In this post and our related staff report, we provide a new perspective on the effect of these regulations by estimating the cost of capital for banks over the past two decades. We find that, while banks’ cost of capital soared during the financial crisis, after the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act (DFA), banks experienced a greater decrease in their cost of capital than nonbanks and nonbank financial intermediaries (NBFI).
August 8, 2018
How Do the Fed’s MBS Holdings Affect the Economy?
In our previous post, we discussed the meaning of the term “credit allocation” and how it relates to the Federal Reserve’s holdings of agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS). We concluded that the Fed’s MBS holdings do not pose significant credit risk but that the Fed does influence the relative market price of credit when it purchases agency MBS, and this indirectly influences decisions by investors. Today, we take the next step and discuss how the Fed’s MBS purchases affect the U.S. economy and, in particular, how the effect of MBS purchases can differ from the effect of purchases of Treasury securities.
October 18, 2017
What Explains Shareholder Payouts by Large Banks?
On June 28, the Federal Reserve released the latest results of the Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR), the supervisory program that assesses the capital adequacy and capital planning processes of large, complex banking companies.
September 6, 2017
What Drives International Bank Credit?
A major question facing policymakers is how to deal with slumps in bank credit.
Posted at 7:00 am in Bank Capital, Banks, Credit, Crisis, Financial Markets, International Economics | Permalink
June 22, 2016
The Rapidly Changing Nature of Japan’s Public Debt
Japan’s general government debt-to-GDP ratio is the highest of advanced economies, due in part to increased spending on social services for an aging population and a level of GDP that has not increased for two decades.
Posted at 7:00 am in Bank Capital, Exchange Rates, Fiscal Policy, Monetary Policy | Permalink | Comments (6)
September 21, 2015
Are BHCs Mimicking the Fed’s Stress Test Results?
Angela Deng, Beverly Hirtle, and Anna Kovner In March, the Federal Reserve and thirty-one large bank holding companies (BHCs) disclosed their annual Dodd-Frank Act stress test (DFAST) results. This is the third year in which both the BHCs and the Fed have published their projections. In a previous post, we looked at whether the Fed’s […]
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