Bank Capital Regulation in General Equilibrium

47 Pages Posted: 13 Jul 2000 Last revised: 31 Oct 2022

See all articles by Gary B. Gorton

Gary B. Gorton

Yale School of Management; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Yale University - Yale Program on Financial Stability

Andrew Winton

University of Minnesota - Twin Cities - Carlson School of Management; Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) - Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance (SAIF)

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Date Written: August 1995

Abstract

We study whether the socially optimal level of stability of the banking system can be implemented with regulatory capital requirements in a multi-period general equilibrium model of banking. We show that: (i) bank capital is costly because of the unique liquidity services provided by demand deposits, so a bank regulator may optimally choose to have a risky banking system; (ii) even if the regulator prefers more capital in the system, the regulator is constrained by the private cost of bank capital, which determines whether bank shareholders will agree to meet capital requirements rather than exit the industry.

Suggested Citation

Gorton, Gary B. and Winton, Andrew, Bank Capital Regulation in General Equilibrium (August 1995). NBER Working Paper No. w5244, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=225308

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