Regulation of financial institutions has two key purposes: Solvency (prudential regulation) and consumer protection. Prudential regulation is implemented mainly by capital requirements, but governments also provide insurance for customer deposits, as a backup tool. In this article, we discuss the critical conditions for deposit insurance and capitalization to act as substitutes for each other, under cyclical economic environment. We make two assumptions. The first one is that deposit insurance is fairly priced and there is no moral hazard. The second one is that insurance creates incentives for moral hazard among insured banks, resulting in increased risk taking. We also discuss the critical conditions for deposit insurance and capitalization to be complementary under different proportions of deposit insurance.

Using data from the Japanese government bonds and stock markets, this study examines the predictability of Japanese recessions based on a probit model with instrument variables. By decomposing the term spread into the expected short-term interest rate and the term premium, this study analyzes the relationship between the components of the term spread and recessions. The results show that the predictive power of the term spread for recessions has declined since 1999—when Japan began employing an unconventional monetary policy. Additionally, stock market capitalization relative to nominal GDP is a useful predictor of recessions.