Why Do We Need Countercyclical Capital Requirements?

We show that risk-based capital requirements can eliminate the market failure, caused by asymmetric information between entrepreneurs and banks, which distorts the efficient allocation of low-risk and high-risk investment projects among entrepreneurs. If project success probabilities decline in recessions, optimal capital requirements will have to be lower because the size of the market failure changes. This provides a new rationale for keeping risk-based capital requirements higher in good times and lowering them in bad times.