The Right Balance for Banks

The Right Balance for Banks

Theory and Evidence on Optimal Capital Requirements

The global financial crisis produced an important agreement among regulators in 2010–11 to raise capital requirements for banks to protect them from insolvency in the event of another emergency. In this book, William R. Cline, a leading expert on the global financial system, employs sophisticated economic models to analyze whether these reforms, embodied in the Third Basel Accord, have gone far enough. He calculates how much higher bank capital reduces the risk of banking crises, providing a benefit to the economy. On the cost side, he estimates how much higher capital requirements raise the lending rate facing firms, reducing investment in plant and equipment and thus reducing output in the economy. Applying a plausible range of parameters, Cline arrives at estimates for the optimal level of equity capital relative to total bank assets. This study also challenges the recent "too much finance" literature, which holds that in advanced countries banking sectors are already too large and are curbing growth.
  • Cover
  • Half title page
  • Full title page
  • Copyright
  • Contents
  • Preface
  • PIIE's Board of Directors as of 2017
  • Acknowledgments
  • Chapter 1
  • Chapter 2
    • Appendix 2A
  • Chapter 3
    • Appendix 3A
    • Appendix 3B
    • Appendix 3C
    • Appendix 3D
    • Appendix 3E
  • Chapter 4
    • Appendix 4A
  • Chapter 5
    • Appendix 5A
  • Chapter 6
    • Appendix 6A
    • Appendix 6B
    • Appendix 6C
  • Chapter 7
  • References
  • Index
  • Other Publications from the PIIE
  • Sales Reps
  • Back cover