Current methods of failed bank resolution are unnecessarily expensive for taxpayers and impose substantial costs on borrowers at failed banks. This situation is due to distorted incentives imbedded in the standard contract between the government and acquirers of failed banks, which result in...

The article is organized as follows: Section I briefly describes the features of various types of reverse mortgages offered in the private and public sectors. Section II surveys the ~elevant literature that has focused on the savings patterns of the elderly and their demand for reverse mortgage...

The dramatic 70 percent decline in Japanese commercial real estate prices from their peak in 1990 provides a natural experiment to test the extent to which a loan supply shock can affect real economic activity. Because the shock was external to U.S. credit markets, yet connected through the...

Recent papers have shown conditions under which vertical, mergers can result in anticompetitive foreclosure of unintegrated rivals. These models imply that a necessary but not sufficient condition for anticompetitive foreclosure is that unintegrated rivals are less profitable after a vertical...

Even in a world with rational expectations, it has been well established theoretically that if the central bank possesses information superior to that available to the public, there is room for effective and socially beneficial countercyclical monetary policy. This paper tests whether...

A key provision of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act of 1991 (FDICIA) was prompt corrective action (PCA). PCA emphasized early intervention by bank supervisors and was intended to limit forbearance by making supervisory intervention more timely and less discretionary....

This paper provides evidence that the Federal Reserve has an informational advantage over the public that can be exploited to improve activist monetary policy. The informational advantage derives from the Fed?s role as a bank supervisor, and it is shown to be of sufficient duration to be...

Japanese banks are among the world's largest global financial intermediaries, with a significant presence in many regions, particularly the United States and Southeast Asia. In addition to being among the world's largest banks, they have some of the world's largest problems. Recent studies have...

The success in marketing original issue high-yield bonds has generated significant interest in their default experience. Studies comparing defaults to the par value of outstanding issues such as Altman (1987), Altman and Nammacher (1985), and Weinstein (1987) have found relatively low default...

Evidence of an operative credit channel has been inconclusive. The inability to clearly distinguish the effects of shocks to loan supply from those to loan demand has made it difficult to quantify the importance of this transmission mechanism to the economy. This paper provides an innovative...