This paper reviews what economists have learned about Internet banking. The paper begins by surveying evidence regarding the fundamental motivations for banks to offer services via the Internet and for their customers to utilize the services. It considers the experience of and future prospects...

This policy brief evaluates the banking and policy implications of 2006 Congressional legislation authorizing the Federal Reserve to pay interest on reserves held at Federal Reserve banks beginning in October 2011. This upcoming policy change has received remarkably little attention from the...

This paper reviews academic studies of bank capital regulation in an effort to evaluate the intellectual foundation for the imposition of the Basel I and Basel II systems of risk-based capital requirements. The theoretical literature yields general agreement about the immediate effects of...

Since passage of the Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, the government has been explicitly and implicitly regulating the compensation of top managers at a number of U.S. banks. In addition, bank regulators have added evaluations of bank management compensation packages to the list of factors...

Building on the literature emphasizing banks’ monitoring functions, recent contributions to the literature examining the effects of capital regulation have focused attention on the influences of capital requirements on bank incentives to monitor loans for moral hazard risks. Empirical evidence...

This policy brief examines issues associated with the design and implementation of regulatory policymaking in interconnected financial markets. The policy brief explains why international interdependence among nations’ financial markets and regulations can provide an incentive for national...

This policy brief assesses the implications of Basel II for bank regulatory compliance costs. In spite of widespread complaints by bankers about the costs of complying with Basel II rules, the academic literature has given surprisingly little attention to quantifying these costs. The brief...

This policy brief reviews recent studies that have sought to apply analysis of network externalities and the theory of two-sided markets to card payment networks, and it evaluates the public policy implications of this body of work. Three general conclusions emerge from the bulk of the research...

This paper discusses and critically appraises recent developments in the definition, measurement, and regulation of systemic risks. Although the issue of systemic risks has been subjected to considerable study, there is not widespread agreement on how to define this concept. Initial efforts to...

This brief evaluates the supervisory-process and market-discipline pillars of the Basel II bank regulatory framework. It reviews and critiques their fundamental features and reaches three conclusions. First, the supervisory-process pillar provides too much scope for supervisory discretion and...