Tractable bank capital structure: optimal control under Basel III constraints

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Bayraktar, Erhan, Chevalier, Etienne, Vath, Vathana Ly, Wang, Yuqiong
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Bayraktar, Erhan
Chevalier, Etienne
Vath, Vathana Ly
Wang, Yuqiong
author_facet Bayraktar, Erhan
Chevalier, Etienne
Vath, Vathana Ly
Wang, Yuqiong
contents Banks must optimize risky investments, dividend payouts, and capital structure under tight Basel III solvency and liquidity constraints, while costly equity issuance serves as a distress-recovery tool. We formulate this as a stochastic control problem that reduces the high-dimensional balance-sheet dynamics to a tractable one-dimensional process in the leverage ratio, with state-dependent investment limits. The resulting policy is simple and interpretable: pay dividends at an upper reflection barrier and, when needed, recapitalize only at the distress boundary, jumping to a unique target level. We characterize these thresholds analytically and show their sensitivity to regulatory parameters. From a regulatory viewpoint, we solve an outer optimization problem that maps the efficient frontier between shareholder value and survival probability (via Monte Carlo), with and without leverage caps. Results highlight that tightening solvency requirements often yields the best safety-profitability trade-off.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_14557
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Tractable bank capital structure: optimal control under Basel III constraints
Bayraktar, Erhan
Chevalier, Etienne
Vath, Vathana Ly
Wang, Yuqiong
Optimization and Control
Mathematical Finance
93E20, 91G80
Banks must optimize risky investments, dividend payouts, and capital structure under tight Basel III solvency and liquidity constraints, while costly equity issuance serves as a distress-recovery tool. We formulate this as a stochastic control problem that reduces the high-dimensional balance-sheet dynamics to a tractable one-dimensional process in the leverage ratio, with state-dependent investment limits. The resulting policy is simple and interpretable: pay dividends at an upper reflection barrier and, when needed, recapitalize only at the distress boundary, jumping to a unique target level. We characterize these thresholds analytically and show their sensitivity to regulatory parameters. From a regulatory viewpoint, we solve an outer optimization problem that maps the efficient frontier between shareholder value and survival probability (via Monte Carlo), with and without leverage caps. Results highlight that tightening solvency requirements often yields the best safety-profitability trade-off.
title Tractable bank capital structure: optimal control under Basel III constraints
topic Optimization and Control
Mathematical Finance
93E20, 91G80
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.14557