The Cross Section of Bank Value

We study the determinants of value creation within U.S. commercial banks. We focus on three theoretically-motivated drivers of bank value: screening and monitoring, "safe" deposit production, and synergies between deposit-taking and lending. To assess the relative contributions of each, we develop novel measures of banks' deposit productivity and asset productivity and use these measures to evaluate the cross-section of bank value. We find that variation in deposit productivity explains the majority of variation in bank value, consistent with theories emphasizing safe-asset production. We also find evidence of meaningful value creation from synergies between deposit-taking and lending. Overall, our findings suggest that banks are primarily "special" due to their unique liability structure rather than their ability to screen and monitor borrowers