Essays on Post-Crisis Commercial Banking

This dissertation seeks to contribute to the understanding of the effect of regulation on bank behavior. Following the 2007-2009 financial crisis and the subsequent recession, bank regulators proposed a drastic overhaul of the financial system and their regulatory powers. Commercial banks, in particular, were required to hold higher levels of capital and liquidity and were subject to increased oversight of their business activities. Each chapter of this dissertation examines the effects of a particular aspect of these regulatory changes. Chapter 2 finds that U.S.-based capital and liquidity buffers may help to mitigate the effects of shocks originating abroad on U.S. loan markets. It finds that banks more closely tied to their foreign parents exhibit greater reductions in commercial loan exposures than banks with U.S.-based buffers. Chapter 3 examines the effect of regulatory guidance issued just prior to the crisis that targeted commercial real estate lending. Similar guidance has become more commonplace following the financial crisis. The results indicate that while the affected banks reduced lending in the targeted asset class, there were spillovers into other loan categories, suggesting that "macroprudential" regulations targeting specific asset buildups may have unintended consequences. Finally, Chapter 4 examines the effect of including fluctuations in the price of securities in banks' regulatory capital. This study finds that securities price volatility rises during times of interest rate and macroeconomic instability, suggesting that regulators may be prudent to require banks to hold capital against such price variations. Overall, the dissertation contributes to the understanding of the various and wide-ranging regulatory changes that regulators have implemented since the financial crisis. This is achieved by exploiting previously unused historical information, in the form of data or pre-crisis era regulatory actions, which shed light on the outcomes that we may expect from these new regulations.