Inconsistent Regulators: Evidence From Banking / Sumit Agarwal, David Lucca, Amit Seru, Francesco Trebbi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Agarwal, Sumit.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Lucca, David.

Seru, Amit.

Trebbi, Francesco.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w17736.

NBER working paper series no. w17736

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2012.

Summary:

US state chartered commercial banks are supervised alternately by state and federal regulators. Each regulator supervises a given bank for a fixed time period according to a predetermined rotation schedule. We use unique data to examine differences between federal and state regulators for these banks. Federal regulators are significantly less lenient, downgrading supervisory ratings about twice as frequently as state supervisors. Under federal regulators, banks report higher nonperforming loans, more delinquent loans, higher regulatory capital ratios, and lower ROA. There is a higher frequency of bank failures and problem-bank rates in states with more lenient supervision relative to the federal benchmark. Some states are more lenient than others. Regulatory capture by industry constituents and supervisory staff characteristics can explain some of these differences. These findings suggest that inconsistent oversight can hamper the effectiveness of regulation by delaying corrective actions and by inducing costly variability in operations of regulated entities.

Notes:

Print version record

January 2012.