This paper investigates what factors determine whether a commercial banker is on the board of a non-financial firm. We consider the tradeoff between the benefits of direct bank monitoring to the firm and the costs of active bank involvement in firm management. Given the different payoff...

This paper examines the key forces behind deregulation in order to assess the relative importance of alternative theories of regulatory entry and exit. We focus on bank branching deregulation across the states which began a quarter century ago and cumulated in federal deregulation in 1994. The...

This paper investigates the frequency of connections between banks and non-financial firms through board linkages and whether those connections affect lending and borrowing behavior. Although a board linkages may reduce the costs of information flows between the lender and borrower, a board...

This paper provides a positive political economy analysis of the most important revision of the U.S. supervision and regulation system during the last two decades, the 1991 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act (FDICIA). We analyze the impact of private interest groups as well as...

This paper investigates private-interest, public-interest, and political-institutional theories of regulatory change to analyze state-level deregulation of bank branching restrictions. Using a hazard model, we find that interest group factors related to the relative strength of potential winners...

Today's financial system is dominated by markets with institutions connected by short-term financing, securitization, derivatives, and other means. Yet regulations have focused on depositories, leaving regulators unprepared for the 2008 crisis. We suggest two key principles for regulatory...