Many large U.S. bank holding companies (BHCs) continued to pay dividends during the recent financial crisis, even as financial market conditions deteriorated, large losses accumulated, and emergency capital and liquidity were being provided by the official sector. In contrast, share repurchases...

Banks face two different kinds of moral hazard problems: asset substitution by shareholders (e.g., making risky, negative net present value loans) and managerial rent seeking (e.g., investing in inefficient “pet” projects and consuming perquisites that yield private benefits). The privately...

Using data from bank holding company regulatory reports, we examine the relationshipbetween stock repurchases and financial performance for a large sample of bank holding companies over the years 1987 to 1998. The primary result is that higher levels of repurchases in one year are associated...

This study examines the determinants of CEO compensation using data from a nationally representative sample of privately held U.S. corporations. We find that (i) the pay-size elasticity is much larger for privately held firms than for the publicly traded firms on which previous research has...

The globalization of banking in the United States is influencing the monetary transmission mechanism both domestically and in foreign markets. Using quarterly information from all U.S. banks filing call reports between 1980 and 2006, we show that globalized banks activate internal capital...

We study a contracting model of leverage and balance sheet size for financial intermediaries that fund their activities through collateralized borrowing. Leverage and balance sheet size increase together when measured risks decrease. When the loss distribution is exponential, the behavior of...

As banking has become more globalized, so too have the consequences of shocks originating in home and host markets. Global banks can provide liquidity and risk-sharing opportunities to the host market in the event of adverse host-country shocks, but they can also have profound effects across...

This study analyzes differences by gender in the ownership of privately held U.S. firms and examines the role of gender in the availability of credit. Using data from the nationally representative Surveys of Small Business Finances, which span a period of sixteen years, we document a series of...

Following a scarcity of dollar funding available internationally to banks and financial institutions, in December 2007 the Federal Reserve began to establish or expand Temporary Reciprocal Currency Arrangements with fourteen foreign central banks. These central banks had the capacity to use...

The small decline in the value of mortgage-related assets relative to the large total losses associated with the financial crisis suggests the presence of financial amplification mechanisms, which allow relatively small shocks to propagate through the financial system. We review the literature...