This paper studies the effects of deposit insurance on bank behavior using individual bank data from Kansas in the 1920s. Kansas banks were severely stressed by the collapse of agricultural prices in 1920 and resulting increase in farm mortgage defaults. Because membership in the state deposit...

Since 1990, federal bank supervisors have publicly announced formal enforcement actions. This change in regime provides a natural laboratory to test two propositions: (1) claims by economists that putting confidential supervisory information in the public domain will enhance market discipline...

This article examines the contribution of government policies to the high number of bank failures in the United States during the l920s. I consider the state of Kansas, which had a system of voluntary deposit insurance and where branch banking was strictly prohibited, and find that bank failure...

This paper models an economy in which risk-averse savers and risk-neutral entrepreneurs make investment decisions. Aggregate investment in high-yielding risky projects is maximized when risk-neutral agents bear all nondiversifiable risks. A role of banks is to assume nondiversifiable risks by...

This paper examines the effects of the estimated probability of bank failure on the growth rates of large time deposits and interest rates on those deposits. While riskier banks paid higher interest rates, they attracted less large time deposits in the second half of the 1980s. These results...

This paper recognizes two main factors that cause the capital requirement to affect the weighted average cost of capital and hence the investment behavior of banks: underpriced debt resulting from the deposit insurance and information asymmetry between managers and the stock market. For a bank...

Does growing commercial-bank reliance on Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLBank) advances increase expected losses to the Bank Insurance Fund (BIF)? Our approach to this question begins by modeling the link between advances and expected losses. We then quantify the effect of advances on default...

The sharp increase in depository institution failures in recent years has drawn attention to the moral hazard created by under-priced deposit insurance. To identify possible reforms, researchers have begun to consider alternative deposit insurance arrangements. This paper contributes to that...

Excess capacity, or “overbanking,” was cited by contemporaries as leading cause of bank failure during the 1920s. Many states that had high numbers of banks per capita in 1920 had high bank failure rates subsequently. This article finds that the number of banks per capita was highest in...

Central banks and private banks alike have advocated greater use of interbank netting agreements in recent years in order to reduce potential for transmitting economic shocks through interbank markets. This paper provides a model of an interbank payment market and shows that one sideeffect of...