IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecb/ecbwps/20263188.html

A structural model of capital buffer usability

Author

Listed:
  • Lang, Jan Hannes
  • Menno, Dominik

Abstract

Under which conditions do usability constraints for regulatory capital buffers emerge? To answer this question, we build a non-linear structural banking sector model with a minimum capital requirement that banks are not allowed to breach, and a capital buffer requirement (CBR) that banks can breach but if they do so potential stigma applies. We prove that even very low stigma costs induce large buffer usability constraints, i.e. when faced with losses banks will deleverage significantly to avoid that their capital ratio falls below the CBR. Our findings imply that non-releasble regulatory capital buffers are unlikely to fully achieve their macro stabilisation goal to support aggregate loan supply when the banking system faces losses. JEL Classification: D21, E44, E51, G21, G28

Suggested Citation

  • Lang, Jan Hannes & Menno, Dominik, 2026. "A structural model of capital buffer usability," Working Paper Series 3188, European Central Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecb:ecbwps:20263188
    Note: 2731285
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ecb.europa.eu//pub/pdf/scpwps/ecb.wp3188~28f203e31a.en.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Markus K. Brunnermeier & Yuliy Sannikov, 2014. "A Macroeconomic Model with a Financial Sector," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(2), pages 379-421, February.
    2. Miller, Merton H & Rock, Kevin, 1985. "Dividend Policy under Asymmetric Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(4), pages 1031-1051, September.
    3. Berger, Allen N. & Bouwman, Christa H.S., 2013. "How does capital affect bank performance during financial crises?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(1), pages 146-176.
    4. Guillaume Arnould & Giuseppe Avignone & Cosimo Pancaro & Dawid Żochowski, 2022. "Bank funding costs and solvency," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(10), pages 931-963, July.
    5. Iftekhar Hasan & Liuling Liu & Gaiyan Zhang, 2016. "The Determinants of Global Bank Credit-Default-Swap Spreads," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 50(3), pages 275-309, December.
    6. Benes, Jaromir & Kumhof, Michael, 2015. "Risky bank lending and countercyclical capital buffers," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 58-80.
    7. Forti, Cristiano & Schiozer, Rafael F., 2015. "Bank dividends and signaling to information-sensitive depositors," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 1-11.
    8. Lang, Jan Hannes & Menno, Dominik, 2025. "The state-dependent impact of changes in bank capital requirements," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    9. Bessler, Wolfgang & Nohel, Tom, 1996. "The stock-market reaction to dividend cuts and omissions by commercial banks," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(9), pages 1485-1508, November.
    10. Rafael Repullo & Javier Suarez, 2013. "The Procyclical Effects of Bank Capital Regulation," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(2), pages 452-490.
    11. Schroth, Josef, 2021. "Macroprudential policy with capital buffers," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 296-311.
    12. Andreeva, Desislava & Bochmann, Paul & Couaillier, Cyril, 2020. "Financial market pressure as an impediment to the usability of regulatory capital buffers," Macroprudential Bulletin, European Central Bank, vol. 11.
    13. Dean Corbae & Pablo D'Erasmo, 2021. "Capital Buffers in a Quantitative Model of Banking Industry Dynamics," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(6), pages 2975-3023, November.
    14. Altavilla, Carlo & Bochmann, Paul & De Ryck, Jeroen & Dumitru, Ana-Maria & Grodzicki, Maciej & Kick, Heinrich & Fernandes, Cecilia Melo & Mosthaf, Jonas & O’Donnell, Charles & Palligkinis, Spyros, 2021. "Measuring the cost of equity of euro area banks," Occasional Paper Series 254, European Central Bank.
    15. Gambacorta, Leonardo & Shin, Hyun Song, 2018. "Why bank capital matters for monetary policy," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 35(PB), pages 17-29.
    16. Alejandro Van der Ghote, 2021. "Interactions and Coordination between Monetary and Macroprudential Policies," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(1), pages 1-34, January.
    17. Jose M. Berrospide & Arun Gupta & Matthew P. Seay, 2024. "The Usability of Bank Capital Buffers and Credit Supply Shocks at SMEs during the Pandemic," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 20(3), pages 185-255, July.
    18. Tom D. Holden & Paul Levine & Jonathan M. Swarbrick, 2020. "Credit Crunches from Occasionally Binding Bank Borrowing Constraints," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 52(2-3), pages 549-582, March.
    19. Zhiguo He & Arvind Krishnamurthy, 2013. "Intermediary Asset Pricing," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(2), pages 732-770, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lang, Jan Hannes & Menno, Dominik, 2025. "The state-dependent impact of changes in bank capital requirements," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    2. Chen, David Xiao & Friedrich, Christian, 2023. "The countercyclical capital buffer and international bank lending: Evidence from Canada," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    3. policy, Work stream on macroprudential & Albertazzi, Ugo & Martin, Alberto & Assouan, Emmanuelle & Tristani, Oreste & Galati, Gabriele & Vlassopoulos, Thomas, 2021. "The role of financial stability considerations in monetary policy and the interaction with macroprudential policy in the euro area," Occasional Paper Series 272, European Central Bank.
    4. Tripathy, Niranjan & Wu, Da & Zheng, Yi, 2021. "Dividends and financial health: Evidence from U.S. bank holding companies," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    5. Jermann, Urban & Xiang, Haotian, 2025. "Rules versus discretion in capital regulation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    6. Jochen Mankart & Alexander Michaelides & Spyros Pagratis, 2020. "Bank capital buffers in a dynamic model," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 49(2), pages 473-502, June.
    7. Schroth, Josef, 2021. "Macroprudential policy with capital buffers," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 296-311.
    8. policy, Work stream on macroprudential & Policy, Monetary & Stability, Financial & Albertazzi, Ugo & Martin, Alberto & Assouan, Emmanuelle & Tristani, Oreste & Galati, Gabriele & Vlassopoulos, Thomas , 2023. "The role of financial stability considerations in monetary policy and the interaction with macroprudential policy in the euro area," Occasional Paper Series 272, European Central Bank.
    9. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95, May.
    10. Albertazzi, Ugo & Ponte Marques, Aurea & Abbondanza, Aurora & Travaglini, Giulia Leila, 2025. "The impact of capital requirements on bank capital," Working Paper Series 3128, European Central Bank.
    11. Jonathan Acosta-Smith & Jozef Barunik & Eddie Gerba & Petros Katsoulis, 2024. "Moderation or indulgence? Effects of bank distribution restrictions during stress," Bank of England working papers 1053, Bank of England.
    12. Gambacorta, Leonardo & Oliviero, Tommaso & Shin, Hyun Song, 2020. "Low price-to-book ratios and bank dividend payout policies," CEPR Discussion Papers 15615, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    13. Mendicino, Caterina & Nikolov, Kalin & Ramirez, Juan-Rubio & Suarez, Javier & Supera, Dominik, 2020. "Twin defaults and bank capital requirements," Working Paper Series 2414, European Central Bank.
    14. Coimbra, Nuno, 2020. "Sovereigns at risk: A dynamic model of sovereign debt and banking leverage," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    15. Sanders, Emiel & Simoens, Mathieu & Vander Vennet, Rudi, 2024. "Curse and blessing: The effect of the dividend ban on euro area bank valuations and syndicated lending," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    16. Kim, Dohan, 2025. "The Asymmetric Bank Distress Amplifier of Recessions," Policy Research Working Paper Series 11170, The World Bank.
    17. Che Johari, Edie Erman & Chronopoulos, Dimitris K. & Scholtens, Bert & Sobiech, Anna L. & Wilson, John O.S., 2020. "Deposit insurance and bank dividend policy," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 48(C).
    18. Lubberink, Martien, 2022. "Max headroom: Discretionary capital buffers and bank risk," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    19. Matyska, Branka, 2021. "Salience, systemic risk and spectral risk measures as capital requirements," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Theory
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • E51 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Money Supply; Credit; Money Multipliers
    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ecb:ecbwps:20263188. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Official Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/emieude.html .

    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.