Securities Law Commons^™

Drastic Times Call For Drastic Risk Measures: Why Value-At-Risk Is (Still) A Flawed Preventative Of Financial Crises And What Regulators Can Do About It, Andrew L. Mcelroy

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

Bank regulators recently proposed the most fundamental reforms to U.S. banking law in decades, yet the value-at-risk statistic--replete with known deficiencies--remains the basis of the capital adequacy requirement. Consequently, there exists an unresolved tension in the law: the purpose of the banking rules is to require riskier financial institutions to hold additional capital, yet the value-at-risk statistic used to make this assessment induces a perverse incentive to hold the riskiest securities. Overlaid on this framework is the wide latitude afforded to banks in designing their value-at-risk models. This Article explores foreseeable issues with the regulatory reliance on value-at-risk. Moreover, it …