The author identifies the characteristics of banks and securities firms that appear to contribute to competitive success in the international arena. She bases her findings on studies of several bank product markets and a statistical analysis of the performance of fifty-one large financial...

The rising share of U.S. corporate loans booked by foreign-owned banks and the withdrawal of U.S. banks from foreign lending raise concerns about the competitiveness of U.S. banks. This article investigates how differential capital costs may have placed U.S. banks at a disadvantage relative to...

During the 1980s, U.S. commercial banks faced increased competition in their lending activity from large finance companies. This article analyzes the differential performance of banks and finance companies in various segments of the consumer and business credit markets. In particular, it...

This article describes a newly constructed data set of all U.S. state banks from 1782 to 1861. It contains the names and locations of all banks and branches that went into business and an estimate of when each operated. The compilation is based on reported balance sheets, listings in banknote...

This article reexamines the conventional wisdom that commercial banking is in severe decline. A careful reading of the evidence does not support it. True, on-balance sheet assets held by commercial banks have declined as a share of total intermediary assets. But this measure ignores the...

From the early years of Sproul's presidency until the Treasury-Federal Reserve Accord of 1951, Federal Reserve policy was subordinated to the Treasury's wartime and postwar financing needs. In this 1955 speech, Sproul speaks of the resurgence of flexible monetary policy. He invites the academic...

During the 1882_1914 period, U.S. national banks could issue circulating notes backed by specified government securities. Earlier attempts to explain yields on those securities by costs of note issue discovered a paradox: yields were too high. We point out two previously ignored sources of...

This article argues that the poor performance of the U.S. banking industry in the 1980s was due mainly to the risk-taking of the largest banks, which was encouraged by the U.S. government's too-big-to-fail policy. The article documents the recent trend toward riskier bank portfolios and the...