The Real Effects of Bank Capital Requirements

We measure the impact of bank capital requirements on corporate borrowing and investment using loan-level data. The Basel II regulatory framework makes capital requirements vary across both banks and across firms, which allows us to control for firm-level credit demand shocks and bank-level credit supply shocks. We find that a 1 percentage point increase in capital requirements reduces lending by 10%. Firms can attenuate this reduction by substituting borrowing across banks, but only partially. The resulting reduction in borrowing capacity impacts investment, but not working capital: Fixed assets are reduced by 2.6%, but lending to customers is unaffected