We examine the effect of the full set of bank capital regulations (capital stringency) on loan growth, using bank-level data for a maximum of 125 countries over the period 1998-2011. Contrary to standard theoretical considerations, we find that overall capital stringency only has a weak negative effect on loan growth. In fact, this effect is completely offset if banks hold moderately high levels of capital. Interestingly, the components of capital stringency that have the strongest negative effect on loan growth are those related to the prevention of banks to use as capital borrowed funds and assets other than cash or government securities. In contrast, compliance with Basel guidelines in using Basel-and credit-risk weights has a much less potent effect on loan growth.
We show that borrowing firms benefit substantially from important enforcement actions issued on U.S. banks for safety and soundness reasons. Using hand-collected data on such actions from the main three U.S. regulators and syndicated loan deals over the years 1997-2014, we find that enforcement actions decrease the total cost of borrowing by approximately 22 basis points (or $4.6 million interest for the average loan). We attribute our finding to a competitionreputation effect that forces banks to lower their cost of credit, irrespective of other changes in their business models after the enforcement action.
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