We test three hypotheses regarding changes in supervisory toughness' and their effects on bank lending. The data provide modest support for all three hypotheses that there was an increase in toughness during the credit crunch period (1989-1992), that there was a decline in toughness during the...

This paper investigates the impact on bank stock prices of emerging market currency crises and bailouts. The stock market distinguishes between banks with exposure to a crisis country and other banks. In general, banks with exposures to a crisis country are affected adversely by currency events...

Based on archival and survey data we show that the maturity of U.S. business loans has been continuously increasing since the mid-1930s when banks invented the term loan. Concurrently, bank innovation first involved the invention of credit analysis and covenant design. Later, bank innovation...

We develop a theory of bank board risk committees. With this theory, such committees are valuable even though there is no expectation that bank risk is lower if the bank has a well-functioning risk committee. As predicted by our theory (1) many large and complex banks voluntarily chose to have a...

This paper surveys the theory on zombie lending incentives and the consequences of zombie lending for the real economy. It also offers a historical perspective by reviewing the growing empirical evidence on zombie lending along three dimensions: (i) the role of under-capitalized banks, (ii)...

Financial network structure is an important determinant of systemic risk. This paper examines how the U.S. interbank network evolved over a long and important period that included two key events: the founding of the Federal Reserve and the Great Depression. Banks established connections to...

We characterize how U.S. global systemically important banks (GSIBs) supply short-term dollar liquidity in repo and foreign exchange swap markets in the post-Global Financial Crisis regulatory environment and serve as the "lenders-of-second-to-last-resort". Using daily supervisory bank balance...

This paper studies liquidity risk at the six largest U.S. banks. The starting point is the stress tests performed under the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) regulation, which compare a bank's liquid assets to its loss of cash in a stress scenario that regulators say is based on the 2008 financial...

This paper studies the domestic and international effects of the transition to an interstate banking system implemented by the U.S. since the late 1970s in a dynamic, stochastic, general equilibrium model with endogenous producer entry. Interstate banking reduces the degree of local monopoly...

The largest commercial bank stocks, ranked by total size of the balance sheet, have significantly lower risk-adjusted returns than small- and medium-sized bank stocks, even though large banks are significantly more levered. We uncover a size factor in the component of bank returns that is...