The U.S. business cycle expansion that started in March 1991 is the longest on record. This paper uses statistical techniques to examine whether this expansion is a onetime unique event or whether its length is a result of a change in the stability of the U.S. economy. Bayesian methods are used...

"This paper develops a new approach to change-point modeling that allows for an unknown number of change points in the observed sample. Our model assumes that regime durations have a Poisson distribution. The model approximately nests the two most common approaches: the time-varying parameter...

We use daily data on bank reserves and overnight interest rates to document a striking pattern in the high-frequency behavior of the U.S. market for federal funds: depository institutions tend to hold more reserves during the last few days of each "reserve maintenance period", when the...

In moral hazard models, bank shareholders have incentives to transfer wealth from the deposit insurer - that is, maximize put option value - by pursuing riskier strategies. For safe banks with large charter value, however, the risk-taking incentive is outweighed by the possibility of losing...