A discussion of the use of municipal debt issues to fund publicly supported stadiums, focusing on the role of federal tax exemption as a hidden subsidy in reducing local funding costs and on the rationale for seeking public subsidies of private, local facilities.

An examination of the banking reform efforts under way in Mexico, emphasizing how incentive effects can drive up the cost of these efforts and ultimately boost the cost of resolving the nation's debt problem.

A discussion of leveraged buyouts and their dramatic impact on traditional corporate structure and relationships among stockholders, bondholders, and employees.

A presentation of some of the options for recapitalizing the Savings Association Insurance Fund, with particular emphasis on merging it into the FDIC's Bank Insurance Fund.

An outline of three possible options for capitalizing the Savings Association Insurance Fund, which is in danger of suffering a huge premium disadvantage compared to banks insured by the Bank Insurance Fund, and a recommendation that any solution should first consider the policy objectives for...

An argument that recent growth in the number of banking offices (head offices plus their branches) does not necessarily mean that banking services have increased.

An assessment of banks' changing involvement in highly leveraged transactions through the use of regulatory data collected in 1991 and 1992, which reveal that overall bank exposure to highly leveraged activities currently poses little threat to bank capital or to the bank insurance fund.

An analysis of the relationship between stock-market gyrations and business fixed investment, using the q theory (the ratio of the market value of financial liabilities to the replacement value of physical assets).

Like the bank notes that circulated in this country from 1863 to 1913, stored-value cards substitute the liabilities of private banks for government and central-bank liabilities. This shift may have important implications for the federal budget, the money supply, and monetary policy.

An investigation of one of the reasons why electronic payments have not yet supplanted cash and checks in retail transactions: Consumers willingness to use an innovation depends on the number of merchants who have already adopted it, and merchants willingness to invest in the innovation depends...