In this paper, we exploit a natural experiment in which thrifts in several states witnessed an exogenous reduction in supervisory attention to assess the effect of supervision on financial institutions' willingness to take risk. We show that the affected institutions took on much more risk than...

"We find that the risk-sensitivity of bank holding company subordinated debt spreads at issuance increased with regulatory reforms that were designed to reduce conjectural government guarantees, but declined somewhat with subsequent reforms that were aimed in part at reducing regulatory...