The number of newly chartered, or 'de novo,' commercial banks in the U.S. has increased every year since 1994. These new banks are potentially important for preserving competition and providing credit in consolidating banking markets. However, like other new business ventures, newly chartered...

This paper address the relationship between the aging process at new and relatively young banks and the tendency of banks to make loans to small businesses. Defining small business loans as Camp;I loans that are under $1 million in size, we analyze a sample of banks that had assets of less than...

The roles of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have become increasingly controversial in the modern world of residential mortgage finance. We describe the special features of these two companies and their roles in the mortgage markets. We then discuss the controversies that surround them and offer...

This paper examines two major forces that may soon increase competition in the U.S. secondary conforming mortgage market: 1) the expansion of Federal Home Loan Bank mortgage purchase programs, and 2) the adoption of revised risk-based capital requirements for large U.S. banks (Basel II). We...

The roles of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have become increasingly controversial in the modern world of residential mortgage finance. We describe the special features of these two companies and their roles in the mortgage markets. We then discuss the controversies that surround them and offer...

This paper examines two major forces that may soon increase competition in the U.S. secondary conforming mortgage market: 1) the expansion of Federal Home Loan Bank mortgage purchase programs, and 2) the adoption of revised risk-based capital requirements for large U.S. banks (Basel II). We...

The commercial banking business has changed dramatically over the past 30 years, due in large part to technological change. The paper first describes the role of the financial system in economies and how technological change and financial innovation can affect social welfare. We then survey the...

The appropriate regulatory structure for the three housing government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) raises interesting issues of political economy, as well as being an active concern for the Congress and the Bush Administration. In this paper, we review recent events, including severallegislative...

Financial innovation has been described as the life blood of efficient and responsive capital markets. Yet, there have been few quantitative investigations of financial innovation and the diffusion of these new technologies. Of the latter, there have been only three prior quantitative studies,...

This paper reviews the extant empirical studies of financial innovation. Adopting broad criteria, we found just two-dozen studies (24), over half of which (14) had been conducted since 2000. Since some financial innovations are examined by more than one study, only 14 distinct phenomena have...