Basel II's New Standardized Approach: Possible Effects of Implementation
Basel II’s New Standardized Approach: Possible Effects of Implementation Katherine Wyatt New York State Banking Department Abstract The New York State Banking Department surveyed 33 institutions in 2001 and 2002 for a study of the possible effects of the Standardized Approach of the proposed New Capital Accord. Previously, the BIS Quantitative Impact Studies have focused on internationally active banks; this study provides information on the possible impact of the New Accord on domestic banks with asset size between $1 billion and $40 billion. These institutions are often grouped with community banks. The Department found that implementation of the most recent version of the Standardized Approach could lead to an average decrease of 7% in required capital for credit risk, but adding the proposed operational risk charge could bring the total capital charge on average to an increase of 12%. In addition, the estimated impact of the New Standardized Approach varies widely across institutions in the study: the change in minimum capital required for credit risk ranges from a decrease of 23% to an increase of 6%. The Basic Indicator charge for operational risk ranges from 5% of minimum regulatory capital for one savings bank to 83% of minimum required capital for a specialty bank. In this paper, we present a breakdown of the effects of the various elements of the proposed Standardized Approach, and consider a modified approach. We also analyze Call Report data for the survey banks to determine their “complexity profile” and review possible changes to their capital ratios.
CP3's Standardized Approach for Credit Risk and Current Capital Requirements
This paper reports estimated risk-weighted assets at 27 New York banks after applying the provisions of the Standardized Approach, both singly and in combination. The provisions that lead to estimated decreases in risk-weighted assets had greater impact than provisions that lead to estimated increases. This finding implies that using Standardized Approach elements to make capital requirements more risk-sensitive will lead to lower levels of required capital, unless regulators also impose a capital charge for operational risk. The effect of the different provisions varied across the 27 institutions, but the results, on average, are consistent with those reported in the third Quantitative Impact Study.
Strategy and Manipulation in Medieval Elections
There are many goals in developing electoral protocols, including a desire for a system which is transparent, in that it is clear what the rule or procedure to follow is; nonmanipulable, in that it is not in a person’s best interest to misrepresent their preferences; honest, in the sense that it elects the ‘right’ candidate; and not open to strategizing, i.e., bribery or collusion. However, these desiderata are in tension with each other: Often, transparent electoral procedures are the least strategy resistant, and many honest procedures encourage manipulation. Thus a balance between these different goals must be sought. In modern times, since the seminal result on vote manipulation, the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem [5, 6], much attention has been devoted to developing voting rules where manipulation is never in the best interest of the voters [4] or which are computationally too complex for the average bounded agent to be able to manipulate [1]. This focus on computational aspects of electoral methods is one of the hallmarks of modern studies on voting. But pursuit of these goals is not restricted to modern times: Those participating in elections in the Middle Ages also sought transparency, non-manipulability, honesty, and strategyproofness in so far as these properties can be consistently expressed in a single procedure. However, given the lack of computational sophistication in the Middle Ages, alternate approaches were needed in order to promote honesty, discourage strategizing, etc. These approaches can be classified as either external (constraints introduced outside of the electoral procedure, such as incentives for coming to consensus quickly) or internal (constraints introduced within the electoral procedure, such as voting rules which cannot be manipulated without adverse effects, or which are too difficult for the average bounded agent to manipulate). Surveying examples of both approaches in the context of medieval ecclesiastical and secular elections provides an interesting comparison to modern electoral procedures. Elections in the Middle Ages were used for the same reasons that they are today: To select suitable candidate(s) for a particular office, duty, or obligation. However, it is important to note that the term electio was used in the Middle Ages in a broader sense than our modern ‘election’. Its primary sense was ‘selection’ or ‘choice’, and only secondarily ‘election’ in the modern sense. Thus, many records which purportedly discuss elections are not discussing elections of the type which interests us. We can identify four categories of medieval electoral processes: (1) Election by an external authority having no direct interest in the election; (2) Indirect election, where electors name other electors who then select or elect the officials; (3) Election by lot; and (4) Election by ballot. Elections of the first and third types are generally computationally uninteresting; the first type corresponds to dictatorial voting rules, and the third type collapses to probability theory. In general, interesting voting methods are found only in the fourth type, election by ballot, though they can also occur in indirect election.