their investors. We show the bank has to have a fragile capital structure, subject to bank runs, in order to perform these … functions. Far from being an aberration to be regulated away, the funding of illiquid loans by a bank with volatile demand … such as narrow banking and bank capital requirements …

We study a modification of the Diamond and Dybvig (1983) model in which the bank may hold a liquid asset, some … depositors see sunspots that could lead them to run, and all depositors have incomplete information about the bank's ability to … survive a run. The incomplete information means that the bank is not automatically incentivized to always hold enough liquid …

This paper provides the first comprehensive econometric analysis of the causes of bank distress during the Depression …. We assemble bank-level data for virtually all Fed member banks, and combine those data with county-level, state … bank failure. We construct a model of bank survival duration using these fundamental determinants of bank failure as …

We study information acquisition and dynamic withdrawal decisions when a spreading rumor exposes a solvent bank to a … run. Uncertainty about the bank's liquidity and potential failure motivates depositors who hear the rumor to acquire … additional noisy signals. Depositors with less informative signals may wait before gradually running on the bank, leading to an …

This paper identifies how bank branching benefited local economies during the Great Depression. Using archival data and … narrative evidence, I show how Bank of America's branch network in 1930s California created an internal capital market to … competing banking offices. The bank's presence caused smaller city property value contractions and stronger recoveries through …

-1994, 2005-2014) and differ in bank regulations, especially concerning capital requirements and enforcement. In contrast to the … forces beyond formal regulations incentivize bank managers to deleverage when their banks are in distress …

Motivated by public policy debates about bank consolidation and conflicting theoretical predictions about the … relationship between the market structure of the banking industry and bank fragility, this paper studies the impact of bank … concentration, bank regulations, and national institutions on the likelihood of suffering a systemic banking crisis. Using data on …