Deposit Rate Ceilings Research Articles

Risk shifting and the allocation of capital: A Rationale for macroprudential regulation

Abstract This paper reconsiders the risk-shifting problem of banks and presents a novel rationale for macroprudential regulation. The interplay between this agency problem and equilibrium investment creates a welfare-reducing pecuniary externality that causes capital misallocation and excessive bank risk taking. Therefore, the banking sector tends to be too large, under-capitalized, and inefficiently risky. This distortion is independent of typical frictions like government guarantees or default costs. Macroprudential regulation with capital requirements or deposit rate ceilings corrects misallocation thereby magnifying rent opportunities for banks to reduce risk shifting. Regulation is, however, no Pareto improvement and causes redistribution from households to bank owners.

The Financial Origins of the Rise and Fall of American Inflation

We propose and test a new explanation for the rise and fall of the Great Inflation, a defining event in macroeconomics. We argue that its rise was due to the imposition of binding deposit rate ceilings under the law known as Regulation Q, and that its fall was due to the removal of these ceilings once the law was repealed. Deposits were the dominant form of saving at the time, hence Regulation Q suppressed the return to saving. This drove up aggregate demand, which pushed up inflation and further lowered the real return to saving, setting off an inflation spiral. The repeal of Regulation Q broke the spiral by sending deposit rates sharply higher. We document that the rise and fall of the Great Inflation lines up closely with the imposition and repeal of Regulation Q and the enormous changes in deposit rates and quantities it produced. We further test this explanation in the cross section using detailed data on local deposit markets and inflation. By exploiting four different sources of geographic variation, we show that the degree to which Regulation Q was binding has a large impact on local inflation, consistent with the hypothesis that Regulation Q explains the observed variation in aggregate inflation. We conclude that in the presence of financial frictions the Fed may be unable to control inflation regardless of its policy rule.

The welfare costs of bank regulation by deposit rate ceilings

In a transparent and parsimonious moral hazard setting, various types of inefficiencies of deposit rate ceilings are identified. Welfare with ceilings may be lower than welfare without these and a more risky environment may render deposit rate ceilings impotent.

Bank Regulation When Both Deposit Rate Control and Capital Requirements are Socially Costly

We provide a welfare comparison of the two types of banking regulation commonly used to address moral hazard problems, deposit rate ceilings and minimum capital requirements. It is well understood that interference with the price mechanism may lead to inefficiencies -- in the case of a deposit rate ceiling, the expected consequence is financial repression and possibly migration of depositors to unregulated financial institutions. As was already pointed out by Besanko and Thakor (1992), minimum capital requirements are, however, likely to have similar effects, since banks will pass the costs of this regulation on to depositors in the form of lower interest rates. Possibly for this reason there seem to be no theoretical studies supporting the reforms in the 80's and 90's, which saw deposit rate ceilings being replaced by minimum capital requirements. Either the two instruments are considered for all practical purposes equivalent or the conclusion is in favor of deposit regulation. In our model, while both types of regulation may depress deposit rates, there is a real trade-off between the two: capital regulation is costly because the opportunity costs of capital is higher than the return from normal banking activities while deposit rate ceilings may result in an inefficiently high number of banks. We show that, depending on the opportunity costs of banking capital and on the severity of the moral hazard problem they seek to address, each of the two regulatory instruments may welfare dominate the other.

Bank regulation when both deposit rate control and capital requirements are socially costly

AbstractThe bank regulation reforms in the 1980s and 1990s saw deposit rate ceilings being replaced by minimum capital requirements. However, there seem to be no theoretical studies supporting these reforms; either the two instruments are considered for all practical purposes equivalent, or the conclusion is in favor of deposit regulation. In our model there is a real tradeoff between the two: capital regulation is costly because the opportunity costs of capital are higher than the return from normal banking activities, while deposit rate ceilings may result in an inefficiently large number of banks. We show that, depending on the opportunity costs of banking capital and on the severity of the moral hazard problem they seek to address, each of the two regulatory instruments may welfare‐dominate the other.

Chaotic banking crises and regulations

We study a model where limited liability and enforcement permits bank owners to shift the risk of their asset portfolios to the depositors. Incentive-compatible equilibria require the franchise value of the bank to exceed the value that the bank owners can obtain by undertaking excessively risky investments, and defaulting on deposits when investment returns are low. Our model generates multiple stationary equilibria as well as chaotic equilibria that can lead to coordination failures, making bank runs, bank defaults, and banking crises more likely. We suggest that banking regulations, including leverage limits, central bank credit policies, as well as restrictions on bank size and deposit rate ceilings can be instituted not only to enhance stable franchise values and sound asset portfolios, but also to eliminate multiple and complex equilibria.

Deposit interest rate ceilings as credit supply shifters: Bank level evidence on the effects of Regulation Q

Abstract How did deposit interest rate ceilings, an important feature of the U.S. regulatory regime until the mid-1980s, affect individual banks’ lending and the transmission of monetary policy to credit? I estimate the effect of deposit rate ceilings inscribed in Regulation Q on commercial banks’ credit growth using a historical bank level data set starting in 1959. Banks’ credit growth contracted sharply when legally fixed deposit rate ceilings were binding. Interaction terms with monetary policy suggest that the policy impact on bank level credit growth was non-linear and significantly larger when rate ceilings were in place. Bank size and capitalization mitigate these effects. At the bank level, short-term interest rates exceeding the legally fixed deposit rate ceilings identify policy induced credit supply shifts that disappeared with deposit rate deregulation and thus weakened the bank lending channel substantially since the early 1980s.

From Basel to bailouts: forty years of international attempts to bolster bank safety

This article reinterprets the origin and evolution of the Basel Accords. We argue that the Basel I paradigm was very different from the regulatory approaches that had been applied successfully in most European countries since the Second World War. Banking systems relied on a multitude of tools including entry restrictions, liquidity rules, reserve requirements, deposit rate ceilings, lending and investment restrictions, combined with hands-on supervision and discretional interventions. By focusing exclusively on capital adequacy and credit risk, Basel I shifted attention in a very different and somewhat unexpected direction. The Basel regulations are often understood as a reaction to the bank failures of the 1970s and 1980s, but in fact their capital adequacy rules would not have prevented these failures. Indeed, even today, several of these risks are still not addressed by Basel updates, suggesting that the original and current proposals have a rather different raison d’être, placating political constituencies and banking interests.

Interest Rate Liberalization in China

Embarking on interest rate liberalization reforms nearly two decades ago, China has made significant progress. Our paper takes a closer look at interest rate liberalization in China, and reviews historical progress and current efforts that Chinese authorities have made to date. Similar to international experiences, the process of market-based interest rate reform is to liberalize interest rates of the money market and bond market prior to those charged for deposits and loans. In gradually liberalizing the loan and deposit rates, reform measures are introduced on foreign currencies before domestic currency, on loans before deposits, and on long-term and large-value loans and deposits before short-term and small-value instruments. Until now, the authorities has yet to take the final and most critical step — removing deposit rate ceilings — to reach full interest rate liberalization. Our paper also explains why the pace of interest rate liberalization is too slow, and points out the main barrier to the further liberalization. In addition, the appendix of this paper provides a chronicle of interest rate liberalization during the period from the beginning of the reform to 2014.

Deposit Interest Rate Ceilings as Credit Supply Shifters: Bank Level Evidence on the Effects of Regulation Q

Shocks emanating from and propagating through the banking system have recently gained interest in the macroeconomics literature, yet they are not a feature unique to the 2008/09 financial crisis. Banking disintermediation shocks occured frequently during the Great Inflation era due to fixed deposit rate ceilings. I estimate the effect of deposit rate ceilings inscribed in Regulation Q on the transmission of federal funds rate changes to bank level credit growth using a historic bank level data set spanning half a century from 1959 to 2013 with about two million observations. Measures of the degree of bindingness of Regulation Q suggest that individual banks? lending growth was smaller the more binding the legally fixed rate ceiling. Interaction terms with monetary policy suggest that the policy impact on bank level credit growth was non-linear at the ceiling ?kink? and significantly larger when rate ceilings were in place. At the bank level, short-term interest rates exceeding the legally fixed deposit rate ceilings identify bank loan supply shifts that disappeared with deposit rate deregulation and thus weakened the credit channel of monetary transmission since the early 1980s.

The History of Cyclical Macroprudential Policy in the United States

Since the financial crisis of 2007-2009, policymakers have debated the need for a new toolkit of cyclical policies to constrain the build-up of risks in financial markets, for example, by dampening credit fueled asset bubbles. These discussions tend to ignore America's long and varied history with many of the instruments under consideration to smooth the credit cycle, presumably because of their sparse usage in the last three decades. We provide the first comprehensive survey and historic narrative of these efforts. The tools whose background and use we describe include underwriting standards, reserve requirements, deposit rate ceilings, credit growth limits, supervisory pressure, and other financial regulatory policy actions. The contemporary debates over these tools highlighted a variety of concerns, including speculation, undesirable rates of inflation, and high levels of consumer spending, among others. Ongoing statistical work suggests that macroprudential tightening lowers consumer debt but macroprudential easing does not increase it.

The History of Cyclical Macroprudential Policy in the United States

Since the financial crisis of 2007-2009, policymakers have debated the need for a new toolkit of cyclical 'macroprudential' policies to constrain the build-up of risks in financial markets, for example, by dampening credit-fueled asset bubbles. These discussions tend to ignore America's long and varied history with many of the instruments under consideration to smooth the credit cycle, presumably because of their sparse usage in the last three decades. We provide the first comprehensive survey and historic narrative of these efforts. The tools whose background and use we describe include underwriting standards, reserve requirements, deposit rate ceilings, credit growth limits, supervisory pressure, and other financial regulatory policy actions. The contemporary debates over these tools highlighted a variety of concerns, including 'speculation,' undesirable rates of inflation, and high levels of consumer spending, among others. Ongoing statistical work suggests that macroprudential tightening lowers consumer debt but macroprudential easing does not increase it.

Deposit rate ceilings and monetary transmission in the US

Establishing the existence and nature of changes in the conduct and transmission of monetary policy is key in understanding the remarkable macroeconomic performance of the US since the mid-1980s. This paper presents evidence on a phenomenon of disintermediation occurring during the major recessions in the 1960s and 1970s, but absent ever since, and shows that disintermediation is closely linked to the existence of deposit rate ceilings under regulation Q. In a monetary DSGE model that incorporates deposit rate ceilings as occasionally binding constraints, the regulation alters the behavior of money aggregates and exacerbates the drop in economic activity following a monetary tightening. The results of a threshold VAR lend support to the main theoretical predictions of the model.

Deposit Rate Ceilings as a Tool of Prudential Regulation

Deposit Rate Ceilings as a Tool of Prudential Regulation

Capital requirements, market power, and risk-taking in banking

This paper presents a dynamic model of imperfect competition in banking where the banks can invest in a prudent or a gambling asset. We show that if intermediation margins are small, the banks' franchise values will be small, and in the absence of regulation only a gambling equilibrium will exist. In this case, either flat-rate capital requirements or binding deposit rate ceilings can ensure the existence of a prudent equilibrium, although both have a negative impact on deposit rates. Such impact does not obtain with either risk-based capital requirements or nonbinding deposit rate ceilings, but only the former are always effective in controlling risk-shifting incentives.

Deposit Rate Regulation and Risk Taking by Banks

In this paper we assess the effects of deposit rate regulation on banks risk taking activities within a multi-period theoretical framework, which we have developed in the spirit of Crouhy and Galai (1991), or Hellmann et. al. (2000). After setting out the main characteristics of the model, we report results of numerical simulations and illustrate how different types of deposit rate ceilings affect a bank's optimal strategy. We particularly focus our analysis on the impact of the risky asset's volatility and of changes in the competitive environment in which banks operate.

Liberalization, Moral Hazard in Banking, and Prudential Regulation: Are Capital Requirements Enough?

In a dynamic model of moral hazard, competition can undermine prudent bank behavior. While capital-requirement regulation can induce prudent behavior, the policy yields Pareto-inefficient outcomes. Capital requirements reduce gambling incentives by putting bank equity at risk. However, they also have a perverse effect of harming banks' franchise values, thus encouraging gambling. Pareto-efficient outcomes can be achieved by adding deposit-rate controls as a regulatory instrument, since they facilitate prudent investment by increasing franchise values. Even if deposit-rate ceilings are not binding on the equilibrium path, they may be useful in deterring gambling off the equilibrium path. (JEL G2, E4, L5)

Bank Entry Into the Venture Capital Industry

Bank Entry Into the Venture Capital Industry

Deposit Rate Ceilings and the Market Value of Banks: The Case of France, 1971-1981

The objective of this paper is to develop an empirical methodology to assess the relationship between the market value and the asset-liability structure of banks. A simple bank valuation model is suggested and empirically tested on a sample of French banks. The paper attempts to evaluate the effect of corporate taxation, the rent on deposits subject to interest rate ceilings, and the determinants of the 1974 drop in banks' market values. Copyright 1992 by Ohio State University Press.

Modeling Structural and Temporal Variation in the Market's Valuation of Banking Firms

This paper decomposes both the market sensitivity and the interest-rate sensitivity of bank stock into on-balance-sheet and off-balance-sheet components. It derives these constituent and often-offsetting sensitivities from a nonstationary three-equation model that employs accounting and capital-market information to explain cross-sectional and temporal variation in the value of stockholder equity. To control statistically for heteroskedasticity and intrasample differences in unbooked capital positions, the model is estimated separately for three size classes of large U.S. banks. Parameter estimates confirm the importance of hidden or unbooked capital at these banks. For the nation's very largest banks, shifts in the value of these parameters are consistent with the view that the capitalized value of federal deposit-insurance guarantees burgeoned in the 1980s with interest volatility, demonstrations of regulatory forbearance, and relaxation of deposit-rate ceilings.