During 2007-10, failures eliminated 318 U.S. commercial banks and savings institutions, about 4 percent of the total number of banks operating at the end of 2006. The assets and deposits of many failed banks were acquired by institutions that already had offices in markets served by the failed...

How do occupational credit unions set deposit rates? This article shows that the answer to this question will depend on (i) who actually makes business decisions in credit unions (who is in control), and (ii) whether local deposit market competition is important. It is not obvious who controls...

One interesting aspect of the financial services industry is that for-profit institutions, such as commercial banks, compete directly with not-for-profit financial intermediaries, such as credit unions. In this article, William R. Emmons and Frank A. Schmid analyze the competition between banks...

In 1913, Congress purposefully created the Federal Reserve as an independent central bank, which created a fundamental tension: how to ensure the Fed remains accountable to the electorate without losing its independence. Over the years, there have been changes in the Fed’s structure to improve...

This paper provides a simple two-depositor, two-stage model to understand how a bank’s withdrawal history affects an individual’s decision about withdrawals, which could possibly trigger bank runs. Individual depositors have private information about their personal consumption types and...