IS BASEL THE RIGHT GATEWAY FOR A MORE EFFICIENT DEBT MARKET? AN INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON

Current literature does not agree on the impact that Basel regulation is having onto the banking system, small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) and the single country economies. Moreover, recent crises cast some doubts on the efficacy of the regulation itself. With this paper, we investigate this issue by comparing the credit allocation capabilities of different countries. In particular, we compare two Anglo-Saxon Countries (the USA and the UK) with a group of eight European Countries where Basel rules are fully implemented. We find that, without the competition of well-developed risk capital markets, Basel regulation struggles to be effective.