The Effects of Higher Bank Capital Requirements on Credit in Peru

Download or read book The Effects of Higher Bank Capital Requirements on Credit in Peru written by Xiang Fang and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2018-10-01 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper offers novel evidence on the impact of raising bank capital requirements in the context of an emerging market: Peru. Using quarterly bank-level data and exploiting the adoption of bank-specific capital buffers, we find that higher capital requirements have a short-lived, negative impact on bank credit in Peru, although this effect becomes statistically insignificant in about half a year. This finding is robust to estimating different specifications to address concerns about the exogeneity of capital requirements. The fact that the reform was gradual and pre-announced and that banks were highly profitable at the time could explain the short-lived effects on credit.