Capital, Portfolio, and Growth: Bank Behavior Under Risk-Based Capital Guidelines

This paper examines banks' capital, portfolio and growth decisions from 1986 to 1995, when risk-based capital guidelines were proposed and implemented. Overall, we observe complementarity between equity financing and risk. We find no systematic differences in pre- and postregulation behavior consistent with banks reacting to risk-based capital standards implementation. We do find significant differences, however, between low-capital banks and other banks. For example, increases in equity generally do not lead to increases in assets unless the bank has low capital. We also find that the impact of regulatory variables, such as the ratio of equity to total assets or the of ratio risk-weighted assets to total assets, have the predicted, significant effects for low-capital banks but not necessarily for other banks.