We assess if capital ratios reduced the occurrence of banking crises in the European Union from 1998 to 2017. We use a Probit model and estimate the effect of two measures: the bank capital to total assets ratio and the bank regulatory capital to Risk Weighted Assets (RWA). We found that both measures affect negatively the probability of crisis. This result is robust to the exclusion of outliers, to the inclusion of various control variables for banking, financial and macroeconomic risks. Finally, we show that while the bank regulatory capital to RWA has always a negative effect on the probability of crisis, the bank capital to total assets ratio is only significant above a threshold, estimated between 10% and 12%.

我们评估了资本比率是否减少了 1998 年至 2017 年欧盟银行业危机的发生。我们使用 Probit 模型并估计了两个措施的影响：银行资本与总资产之比和银行监管资本与风险加权资产之比（ RWA）。我们发现这两种措施都会对危机发生的可能性产生负面影响。该结果对于排除异常值以及包含银行、金融和宏观经济风险的各种控制变量而言是稳健的。最后，我们表明，虽然银行监管资本对 RWA 始终对危机概率产生负面影响，但银行资本与总资产比率仅显着高于阈值，估计在 10% 到 12% 之间。