Caution: Do Not Cross! Distance to Regulatory Capital Buffers and Corporate Lending in a Downturn
研究发现，疫情期间银行因担心触及监管资本缓冲而顺周期减少企业贷款，尤其是资本缓冲空间小、未使用信贷额度大的银行，企业难以从其他银行完全弥补缺口，但公共担保缓解了此行为。
Abstract While banks are expected to draw down regulatory capital buffers in case of need during a crisis, we find that banks kept at a safe distance from regulatory buffers during the pandemic by procyclically reducing corporate lending. By exploiting granular credit register data, we show that banks with little capital headroom above their buffers reduced credit supply and that this behavior was amplified for banks that entered the crisis with larger undrawn credit lines. Affected firms were unable to fully rebalance their borrowing needs with other banks, although public guarantees mitigated banks' procyclical behavior and its real effect at the firm level. These findings raise concerns that the capital buffers introduced by Basel III may not be as countercyclical as intended.