Bank failures began to rise in 2007 and more than 350 were closed by the end of 2011. A number of observers have asserted that the ability of banks to switch among competing supervisors was an important contributing factor, but the issue has not been carefully investigated in empirical work....

Because California was a pioneer in the development of intrastate branching, we use its experience during the 1920s and 1930s to assess the effects of the expansion of large-scale, branch-banking networks on competition and the stability of banking systems. Using a new database of individual...

We analyze the effect of a U.S. subprime mortgage regulation on the availability of mortgagecredit. Due to all subprime mortgage originators being affected by the regulation studied,there is no natural control group. We use a pro t maximization assumption to construct acontrol group. We nd no...