Regulatory Competition and Bank Risk Taking

How damaging is competition between bank regulators? This paper models regulators that compete because they want to supervise more banks. Both banks' risk profiles and their access to wholesale funding are endogenous, leading to rich interactions. The sensitivity of regulatory standards to bank moral hazard, adverse selection, liquidity risk and the degree of regulatory bias is investigated. A calibration suggests that regulatory reform can halve bank default rates. The paper also shows how a decline in regulators' monitoring capacity gives rise to a gradual rise in bank risk, followed by a sudden interbank crisis.