Bank capital for market risk: a study in incentive compatible regulation
Traditionally, government regulation in the United States follows a straightforward command approach. The government states the desired activities of the regulated firm, the allowable actions, and the prohibited actions. The firm is punished if it violates these strictures. Regulatory economists have identified many problems with this approach. First, there is the problem of asymmetry in information: Regulations cannot be enforced if they require information from the firm that the regulator cannot elicit reliably and at reasonable cost.
Assessing market and credit risk of country funds: A value-at-risk analysis
The paper presents a treatment for the measurement and disclosure of market and credit risks in the context of capital adequacy regulation. The proposed approach is in conformity with the Basle Committee's latest proposal on risk measurement, and is based on the Value-at-Risk (VaR) methodology. This approach is applied to investments in close-end country funds of emerging markets. For 13 .such funds listed in the New York Stock Exchange during the period October 1994 to December 1997, the average VaR estimate is found to be well above the capital adequacy ratio of 8% required by most regulatory authorities and to be sensitive to the emergence of increased financial turbulence.
Computing Multi-Period, Information-Constrained Optima
This paper presents a detailed theoretical derivation and justification for methods used to compute solutions to a multi-period (including infinite-period), continuum-agent, unobservedeffort economy. Actual solutions are displayed illustrating cross-sectional variability in consumption and labour effort in the population at a point in time and variability for a typical individual over time. The optimal tradeoff between insurance and incentives is explored and the issue of excess variability is addressed by consideration of the analogue full-information economy and various restricted-contracting regimes.