IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/restud/v93y2026i1p106-143..html

A Q-Theory of Banks

Author

Listed:
  • Juliane Begenau
  • Saki Bigio
  • Jeremy Majerovitz
  • Matias Vieyra

Abstract

Bank capital requirements are based on book values, which are slow to reflect losses. In this article, we develop a dynamic model of banks to study the interaction of regulation and delayed accounting. Our model explains four stylized facts: book and market values diverge during crises, the market-to-book ratio predicts future profitability, book leverage constraints rarely bind strictly even as market leverage fans out during crises, and banks delever gradually after net-worth shocks. We show how delayed accounting can allow the regulator to achieve better outcomes than immediate (mark-to-market) accounting. In an estimated version of the model, the optimal regulation couples faster loan-loss recognition with a modest relaxation of the book leverage constraint.

Suggested Citation

  • Juliane Begenau & Saki Bigio & Jeremy Majerovitz & Matias Vieyra, 2026. "A Q-Theory of Banks," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 93(1), pages 106-143.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:restud:v:93:y:2026:i:1:p:106-143.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/restud/rdaf035
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Kirstin Hubrich & Daniel F. Waggoner, 2022. "The Transmission of Financial Shocks and Leverage of Financial Institutions: An Endogenous Regime-Switching Framework," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2022-5, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    3. Barbaro, Bianca & Tirelli, Patrizio, 2021. "Forbearance vs foreclosure in a general equilibrium model," Working Paper Series 2531, European Central Bank.
    4. Reiter, Michael & Zessner-Spitzenberg, Leopold, 2023. "Long-term bank lending and the transfer of aggregate risk," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    5. Faria-e-Castro, Miguel & Paul, Pascal & Sánchez, Juan M., 2024. "Evergreening," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
      • Miguel Faria-e-Castro & Pascal Paul & Juan M. Sanchez, 2021. "Evergreening," Working Papers 2021-012, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revised Aug 2023.
      • Miguel Faria-e-Castro & Pascal Paul & Juan M. Sanchez, 2023. "Evergreening," Working Paper Series 2022-14, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    6. Christian Bittner & Rustam Jamilov & Farzad Saidi, 2025. "Assortative Matching, Interbank Markets, and Monetary Policy," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2025_642, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • G33 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Bankruptcy; Liquidation
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:restud:v:93:y:2026:i:1:p:106-143.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/restud .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.