银行资本结构决定的特殊性与资本充足率监管

对银行的资本管制已逐渐发展成为银行监管体系的核心 ,但是 ,对于为什么银行需要接受资本充足性的管制则缺乏理论上的探讨。本文从一般的资本结构决定理论出发 ,探讨银行资本结构决定中的特殊性 ,并由此说明资本充足率监管的重要性。本文的结论是 ,由于银行的主要债权人———存款者受到政府的保护 ,其对银行股东的制约减弱了 ,使得银行倾向于持有较少的资本 ,并选择更高风险的投资。这意味着银行失败可能性的增加和政府救助成本的上升。资本充足率监管是监管者为了减小其存款保险 (显性的或隐性的 )的运行成本而采取的制度安排。

The regulation of capital adequacy plays a central role in bank supervision. However, the reason for it has not been well explained theoretically. Based on the theory of capital structure, this essay makes clear the particularity of bank capital structure and the importance of capital regulation. Because the bank's principal debtor, namely the depositors are under the government's protection, they lack the incentive to monitor the bank effectively, which makes the bank tend to hold less capital and take more risks. That leads to increasing bank failures and the government's bailout expenditure. The regulator imposes capital adequacy requirements on the bank to restrict the cost of deposit insurance, explicit or implicit.