We investigate how bank migration across state lines over the last quarter century has affected the size and covariance of business fluctuations across states. Starting with a two-state version of the unit banking model in Holmstrom and Tirole (1997), we conclude that the theoretical effect of...

This paper summarizes the effects of deregulation of restrictions on bank entry and expansion on the real economy. The evidence suggests that following state-level deregulation of restrictions on branching, state economic growth accelerated. This better growth performance was especially...

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...

We test how active management of bank credit risk exposure through the loan sales market affects capital structure, lending, profits, and risk. We find that banks that rebalance their C&I loan portfolio exposures by both buying and selling loans – that is, banks that use the loan sales market...

This paper argues that banks have a unique ability to hedge against systematic liquidity shocks. Deposit inflows provide a natural hedge for loan demand shocks that follow declines in market liquidity. Consequently, one dimension of bank “specialness” is that banks can insure firms against...

Property-liability insurance is distributed by two different types of firms, those that distribute their product through independent agents, who represent more than one insurer,and direct writing insurers that distribute insurance through exclusive agents, who represent only one insurer. This...

This paper examines the role of capital in financial institutions. As the introductory article to a conference on the role of capital management in banking and insurance, it describes the authors' views of why capital is important, how market-generated capital requirements' differ from...

We investigate the effects of technological change, deregulation, and dynamic changes in competition on the performance of U.S. banks. Our most striking result is that during 1991-1997, cost productivity worsened while profit productivity improved substantially, particularly for banks engaging...

Over the past several years, substantial research effort has gone into measuring the efficiency of financial institutions. Many studies have found that inefficiencies are quite large, on the order of 20% or more of total banking industry costs and about half of the industry's potential profits....

We investigate the sources of recent changes in the performance of U.S. banks using concepts and techniques borrowed from the cross-section efficiency literature. Our most striking result is that during 1991-1997, cost productivity worsened while profit productivity improved substantially,...