When financial regulators require banks to hold a higher ratio of equity capital to debt funding, banks incur short-term costs as they adjust their balance sheets and lose some of the advantages associated with their existing funding mix. They then seek to maintain post-tax income by, for...

This paper provides an overview of the dramatic changes in the UK banking sector over the 1989–2013 period, seen through the lens of a newly assembled database built from banks' regulatory reports. This database, which we refer to as the Historical Banking Regulatory Database (HBRD), covers...

In 2010, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision published an assessment of the long-term economic impact (LEI) of stronger capital and liquidity requirements. This paper considers this assessment in light of estimates from later studies of the macroeconomic benefits and costs of higher...

The financial crisis prompted widespread interest in developing a better understanding of how capital regulation drives bank behavior. This paper uses a unique, comprehensive database of regulatory capital requirements on all UK banks to examine their effects on capital, lending and balance...