The authors evaluate the capital and RBC ratios of US commercial banks from 2001 through 2011 and find the standard capital ratio to be a significantly better predictor of bank performance than the RBC ratio. The results have significant implications for US banking regulation.

The Industry-specific Regulatory Constraint Database (IRCD) is a new database that quantifies federal regulation. IRCD offers a novel and objective measure of the accumulation of regulations in the economy overall and for all the different industries in the U.S. IRCD uses text analysis to count the number of binding constraints in the text of federal regulations, which are codified in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). In addition, it measures the degree to which different groups of regulations target specific industries.

The U.S. economy has not been healthy since 2001 when 9/11 pushed the country into a recession. As the accompanying data tell us, real GDP growth has risen to meet the long-term average of 3.11 percent just once since 2001, and that was in 2004. The combination of wars, financial collapse, natural disasters, and political games has taken a heavy toll on economic growth. No one is talking about 3 percent or better growth anytime in the foreseeable future. But it’s not just about Democrats and Republicans. It’s about something deep in the economy.

Our research demonstrates that prices and trading are very sensitive to rules and rule changes. In other words, subtle institutional choices can have real economic consequences. In the following sections, we describe relevant institutions and related research. Next, we present our hypotheses, data, empirical model, and results. The last section presents conclusions.