Banks and Market Liquidity

I study a model of market-liquidity provision by levered intermediaries that, besides operating trading desks, run deposit-taking franchises. Levered intermediaries' heightened incentive to absorb risk helps to counteract liquidity-provision frictions that, in an unlevered economy, would lead to price distortions and suppressed levels of asset origination ex ante. However, liquidity provision may also overshoot, leading to unhealthy price bubbles and causing asset origination to become excessive. Capital requirements are no panacea: They can spur risk taking and make bubbles bubblier. Ring fencing of trading activities can be, but is not necessarily, undesirable.