Deposits held at Federal Reserve Banks are an essential input to the business activity of most depository institutions in the United States. Managing these deposits is an important and complex inventory problem, for two reasons. First, Federal Reserve regulations require that depository...

Portfolio choice by full-scale optimization applies the empirical return distribution to a parameterized utility function, and the maximum is found through numerical optimization. Using a portfolio choice setting of three UK equity indices we identify several utility functions featuring loss...

We estimate a mortgage default model with national data on conventional mortgages that were current from 1986 to 1992. Our analysis confirms the results of previous analyses of Federal Housing Authority mortgages: Black households have higher marginal default rates, controlling for differences...

It is not uncommon to observe negative interest rates during uncertain times, when investors flee to safety. But the existence of negative market yields provides no support for policies in which central banks set negative interest rates on deposits held at a central bank.

Has the competitive balance tilted away from banks and toward credit unions, given the latter’s tax exemption and more-recent ability to draw members from wider pools? Whether it has or not, both industries have seen similar trend growth over the past 15 years—and, in fact, have come to...

Springfield, Mo., a city with a common name, has an economy with familiar successes and challenges. The health care sector is booming, and the cost of living is somewhat low, as are wages. But labor productivity seems to be subpar, and the poverty rate is above average.

Home to Walmart and several other large companies, this region has experienced unusually strong growth in population and income over the past half-century. Although the area was not immune to the Great Recession, Northwest Arkansas could be on the verge of another spurt, given that its economy...

Louisville is the focus in the first installment of this new data-driven feature in The Regional Economist. Unlike many other older cities, Louisville has smoothly transitioned from the industrial economy to the service economy, thanks in no small part to its strong health-care and food-service...