Regulating Credit Booms from Micro and Macro Perspectives

Abstract

This study examines how micro-and macro-prudential policies work and interact with each other over the credit cycles using a dynamic general equilibrium model of financial intermediaries. Micro-prudential policies restrict the excess risk-taking of individual institutions, while taking real interest rates (prices) as given. By contrast, macro-prudential policies control the aggregate credit supplied (equilibrium outcome) by internalizing prices or the general equilibrium effect. The proposed model indicates that: (i) micro-prudential policy alone cannot completely remove inefficient credit cycles; (ii) when macro-prudential policy is conducted jointly with the micro-prudential one, policymakers can improve banks' credit quality and remove inefficient credit cycles completely without sacrificing the total credit supply; and (iii) the contributions of microand macro-prudential policies to the improvement in social welfare are roughly comparable.