Bank Capital and Lending: An Analysis of Commercial Banks in the United States

Karmakar, Sudipto and Mok, Junghwan (2013): Bank Capital and Lending: An Analysis of Commercial Banks in the United States.

Abstract

This paper empirically evaluates the impact of bank capital on lending patterns of commercial banks in the United States. We construct an unbalanced quarterly panel of around seven thousand medium sized commercial banks over sixty quarters, from 1996 to 2010. Using two different measures of capital namely the capital adequacy ratio and tier 1 ratio, we find a moderate relationship between bank equity and lending. We also use an innovative instrumenting methodolgy which helps us overcome the endogeneity issues that are common in such analyses. Our results are broadly consistent with some other recent studies that have analyzed US banking data.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Bank Capital Buffers, Regulation, Risk Weighted Assets
• Subjects: G - Financial Economics > G2 - Financial Institutions and Services > G21 - Banks ; Depository Institutions ; Micro Finance Institutions ; Mortgages; G - Financial Economics > G2 - Financial Institutions and Services > G28 - Government Policy and Regulation; G - Financial Economics > G3 - Corporate Finance and Governance > G32 - Financing Policy ; Financial Risk and Risk Management ; Capital and Ownership Structure ; Value of Firms ; Goodwill

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