We use unique data on work hours of Federal Reserve bank supervisors and a structural model to provide new insights on the impact of bank supervision, the efficiency of the allocation of supervisory resources, and the shape of supervisory preferences. We find that supervision has an economically...

We explore the impact of supervision on the riskiness, profitability, and growth of U.S. banks. Using data on supervisors' time use, we demonstrate that the top-ranked banks by size within a supervisory district receive more attention from supervisors, even after controlling for size,...

We measure bank supervision using the database of supervisory issues, known as matters requiring attention or immediate attention, raised by Federal Reserve examiners to banking organizations. The volume of supervisory issues increases with banks' asset size, especially for the largest and most...

We build a structural model of Chapter 13 bankruptcy that captures salient features of personal bankruptcy under Chapter 13. We estimate our model using a novel data set that we construct from bankruptcy court dockets recorded in Delaware in 2001 and 2002. Our estimation results highlight the...

Auto lenders were perhaps the biggest winners of the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform. Cars depreciate quickly, so borrowers often owe more than their car is worth. Prior to the Reform, these borrowers could reduce the principal on their auto loan to the market value of the car through a “cramdown” in...