These pages assemble writings on excessive indebtedness (i.e., leverage) in the financial sector, and on capital regulation (i.e., the regulation of the funding mix) of banks and other financial firms.
The pieces are aimed at multiple audiences and vary in length and presumed knowledge on the part of readers.
To make these pages useful, we first describe the main writings and relate them to one another, then provide a page with links to additional pieces grouped by topic.
Anat R. Admati, Peter M. DeMarzo, Martin Hellwig, and Paul Pfleiderer. First draft August 2010. Revised October 2013.
Aimed primarily at policymakers, this paper takes on claims made in the popular press, by bankers, and by academics and others, suggesting that any benefits to requiring more equity funding by banks must be traded off against the “expense” of doing so. The paper discusses why such claims are either fallacious (Section 3), irrelevant (confusing private costs to banks or their shareholders with costs to society, in Section 4), or consist of unsupported myths that are inadequate for guiding policy (Sections 5-7). The paper also discusses alternatives to equity (Section 8), the impact of leverage requirements on lending (Section 9), and additional claims related to the debate on capital regulations.
November 9, 2010.
Letter signed by 20 academics endorsing the key policy comments made in Fallacies, Irrelevant Facts, and Myths in the Discussion of Capital Regulation: Why Bank Equity is Not Socially Expensive.
Anat R. Admati, Peter M. DeMarzo, Martin Hellwig, and Paul Pfleiderer. July 31, 2013.
A technical academic paper that explore the implications of high indebtedness on shareholders’ incentives regarding additional indebtedness and risk. The paper has important implications for capital regulation.
Anat R. Admati and Martin Hellwig. Princeton University Press. 2013.
The Bankers New Clothes: What’s Wrong with Banking and What to Do about It is an accessible book that requires no prior background in economics. It contains expanded material on banking, capital regulation, and related politics, while especially the discussion of some of the academic myths in banking discussed in the latter paper. (See preface of paperback.)
“The Compelling Case for Stronger and More Effective Leverage Regulation in Banking,” Anat R. Admati. Revised September 30, 2014.
Martin Hellwig
Director of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn
