Multinational banks: Supranational resolution regimes and the importance of capital regulation

The lack of coordination in the resolution of multinational banks has led to demands for the increased centralization of resolution regimes. However, as this paper argues, the anticipation of resolution procedures affects the incentives of host countries to impose capital standards on their resident banks. Critically, it is shown that overall welfare can even be decreased by introducing a centralized resolution regime without fully centralizing capital requirements. As, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, only countries that are not part of a supranational resolution regime unilaterally and significantly increased the capital requirements for their largest resident banks, this paper can help to understand and study the heterogeneity of the observed regulatory approaches.