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Working Paper
Bank regulation under fire sale externalities
This paper examines the optimal design of and interaction between capital and liquidity regulations in a model characterized by fire sale externalities. In the model, banks can insure against potential liquidity shocks by hoarding sufficient precautionary liquid assets. However, it is never optimal to fully insure, so realized liquidity shocks trigger an asset fire sale. Banks, not internalizing the fire sale externality, overinvest in the risky asset and underinvest in the liquid asset in the unregulated competitive equilibrium. Capital requirements can lead to less severe fire sales by ...
Working Paper
Derivatives Pricing under Bilateral Counterparty Risk
We consider risk-neutral valuation of a contingent claim under bilateral counterparty risk in a reduced-form setting similar to that of Duffie and Huang [1996] and Duffie and Singleton [1999]. The probabilistic valuation formulas derived under this framework cannot be usually used for practical pricing due to their recursive path-dependencies. Instead, finite-difference methods are used to solve the quasi-linear partial differential equations that equivalently represent the claim value function. By imposing restrictions on the dynamics of the risk-free rate and the stochastic intensities of ...
Working Paper
How do Capital Requirements Affect Loan Rates? Evidence from High Volatility Commercial Real Estate
We study how bank loan rates responded to a 50% increase in capital requirements for a subcategory of construction lending, High Volatility Commercial Real Estate (HVCRE). To identify this effect, we exploit variation in the loan terms determining whether a loan is classified as HVCRE and the time that a treated loan would be subject to the increased capital requirements. We estimate that the HVCRE rule increases loan rates by about 40 basis points for HVCRE loans, indicating that a one percentage point increase in required capital raises loan rates by about 9.5 basis points.
Working Paper
Embedded Supervision: How to Build Regulation into Blockchain Finance
The spread of distributed ledger technology (DLT) in finance could help to improve the efficiency and quality of supervision. This paper makes the case for embedded supervision, i.e., a regulatory framework that provides for compliance in tokenized markets to be automatically monitored by reading the market?s ledger, thus reducing the need for firms to actively collect, verify and deliver data. After sketching out a design for such schemes, the paper explores the conditions under which distributed ledger data might be used to monitor compliance. To this end, a decentralized market is modelled ...
Working Paper
Model Risk of Risk Models
This paper evaluates the model risk of models used for forecasting systemic and market risk. Model risk, which is the potential for different models to provide inconsistent outcomes, is shown to be increasing with and caused by market uncertainty. During calm periods, the underlying risk forecast models produce similar risk readings, hence, model risk is typically negligible. However, the disagreement between the various candidate models increases significantly during market distress, with a no obvious way to identify which method is the best. Finally, we discuss the main problems in risk ...
Working Paper
Stochastic Intensity Models of Wrong Way Risk: Wrong Way CVA Need Not Exceed Independent CVA
Wrong way risk can be incorporated in Credit Value Adjustment (CVA) calculations in a reduced form model. Hull and White [2012] introduced a CVA model that captures wrong way risk by expressing the stochastic intensity of a counterparty's default time in terms of the financial institution's credit exposure to the counterparty. We consider a class of reduced form CVA models that includes the formulation of Hull and White and show that wrong way CVA need not exceed independent CVA. This result is based on some general properties of the model calibration scheme and a formula that we derive for ...
Working Paper
Liquidity Regulation and Financial Intermediaries
We document several effects of the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) rule on dealers' financing and intermediation of securities. For identification, we exploit the fact that the US implementation is more stringent than that in foreign jurisdictions. In line with LCR incentives, US dealers reduce their reliance on repos as a way to finance inventories of high-quality assets and increase the maturity of lower-quality repos relative to foreign dealers; additionally, US dealers cut back on trades that downgrade their own collateral. Dealers are nevertheless still providing significant maturity ...
Working Paper
THE IMPACTS OF FINANCIAL REGULATIONS: SOLVENCY AND LIQUIDITY IN THE POST-CRISIS PERIOD
This paper discusses the new financial regulations in the post?financial crisis period, focusing on capital and liquidity regulations. Basel III and the capital stress tests introduced new requirements and new definitions while retaining the structure of the pre-2010 requirements. The total number of requirements increased, making it difficult to determine which constraints are binding. We find that the new common equity tier 1 (CET1) and Level 1 high-quality liquid assets (HQLAs) are the binding constraints at large U.S. banks, especially for banks that are active in capital markets ...
Journal Article
The Evolution of US Bank Capital around the Implementation of Basel III
Following the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2008, the capital standards for banks operating in the United States were tightened as US banking regulators implemented the Basel III framework. This Economic Commentary briefly presents the key elements of Basel III relevant to bank capital and analyzes the timing of the evolution of regulatory capital ratios for US bank holding companies during that time. It shows that, on average, banks’ capital ratios increased notably between 2009 and 2012, plateauing before the new rules came into force. While larger and better-capitalized banks ...
Working Paper
Efficient Monte Carlo Counterparty Credit Risk Pricing and Measurement
Counterparty credit risk (CCR), a key driver of the 2007-08 credit crisis, has become one of the main focuses of the major global and U.S. regulatory standards. Financial institutions invest large amounts of resources employing Monte Carlo simulation to measure and price their counterparty credit risk. We develop efficient Monte Carlo CCR estimation frameworks by focusing on the most widely used and regulatory-driven CCR measures: expected positive exposure (EPE), credit value adjustment (CVA), and effective expected positive exposure (EEPE). Our numerical examples illustrate that our ...