The Costs and Benefits of Liquidity Regulations: Lessons from an Idle Monetary Policy Tool
48 Pages Posted: 25 Jul 2019 Last revised: 21 Oct 2019
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The Costs and Benefits of Liquidity Regulations: Lessons from An Idle Monetary Policy Tool
Date Written: 2019-05-28
Abstract
We investigate how liquidity regulations affect banks by examining a dormant monetary policy tool that functions as a liquidity regulation. Our identification strategy uses a regression kink design that relies on the variation in a marginal high-quality liquid asset (HQLA) requirement around an exogenous threshold. We show that mandated increases in HQLA cause banks to reduce credit supply. Liquidity requirements also depress banks' profitability, though some of the regulatory costs are passed on to liability holders. We document a prudential benefit of liquidity requirements by showing that banks subject to a higher requirement before the financial crisis had lower odds of failure.
Keywords: Monetary Policy, Bank Failure, Bank Lending, Liquidity Regulation, Required Reserves
JEL Classification: G21, E58, E51, G28, E52
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation