Liquidity risk in banking has been attributed to transactions deposits and their potential to spark runs or panics. We show instead that transactions deposits help banks hedge liquidity risk from unused loan commitments. Bank stock-return volatility increases with unused commitments, but the...

This paper argues that banks have a unique ability to hedge against market-wide liquidity shocks. Deposit inflows provide funding for loan demand shocks that follow declines in market liquidity. Consequently, one dimension of bank specialness' is that banks can insure firms against systematic...