We analyze the effect of regulatory capital constraints on financial stability in a large homogeneous banking system using a mean-field game (MFG) model. Each bank holds cash and a tradable risky asset. Banks choose absolutely continuous trading rates in order to maximize expected terminal equity, with trades subject to transaction costs. Capital regulation requires equity to exceed a fixed multiple of the position in the tradable asset; breaches trigger forced liquidation. The asset drift depends on changes in average asset holdings across banks, so aggregate deleveraging creates contagion effects, leading to an MFG. We discuss the coupled forward–backward PDE system characterizing equilibria of the MFG, and we solve the constrained MFG numerically. Experiments demonstrate that capital constraints accelerate deleveraging and limit risk-bearing capacity. In some regimes, simultaneous breaches trigger liquidation cascades.

The last part of the presentation is devoted to the mathematical analysis of a model with time-smoothed contagion as in, e.g., Hambly, Ledger and Sojmark (2019) or Campi and Burzoni (2024). We characterize optimal strategies for a given evolution of the system and establish the existence of an MFG equilibrium.