OECD Argues that Capital Requirements Based on Risk Weightings Will Encourage Regulatory Circumvention

As the debate over the impact of bank capital requirements on economic growth continues, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (“OECD”) has released a working paper which argues that the use of risk-weights provides incentives for firms to circumvent regulations through innovation, and that tighter capital requirements based on risk-weightings will reinforce these incentives, which is surely an undesirable unintended consequence of new rules. Thus, capital regulation should move away from risk-weighting, the paper suggests, which may then redirect banks’ attention back to core economic functions. The paper argues that this readjustment will impose minimal macroeconomic costs, with a -0.02 percentage impact on GDP for every one percent increase in bank equity, relative to a risk-weighted regime.

Originally Published: 
16/12/2011