Over the past two decades the United States has experienced substantial increases in the number of bank failures, however, surprisingly few banks have failed during the 2001 recession. This paper explores the relationship between economic cycles and bank health. We find that economic forecasts...

Greater transparency and disclosure of bank activities will not prevent banking crises unless appropriate monetary, fiscal, and regulatory policies are also adopted. Nonetheless, greater disclosure of banking problems can reduce the costs of banking crises, even if transparency is not a panacea...

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...

In testimony on February 3, 1992 before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs of the United States Senate, Richard F. Syron, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, proposed a mechanism to help relieve current credit availability problems by making existing FDIC...

The failure of the Rhode Island Share and Deposit Indemnity Corporation (RISDIC), a private insurance fund, and the closure of its 45 remaining member institutions froze the accounts of 300,000 individuals and 10 percent of all deposits in the state. While the closure of two institutions...