It has been argued that underpriced federal deposit insurance provides incentive for insured institutions to increase the value of shareholder equity by expanding into activities that shift risk onto the deposit insurer. Derivative instruments have been used by firms to change their risk...

This article examines the major differences in the accounting and stock market characteristics of banking organizations that use derivatives relative to those that do not.

Profitability is a central concern when governments provide guarantees to increase the flow of funds to disadvantaged groups. We examine the profitability of small business investment companies (SBICs) that are chartered and regulated by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) to finance...

Using a unique transactions-level dataset, this paper examines the investment choices of small business investment companies (SBICs), which are private venture capital firms licensed and regulated by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). SBICs make debt and equity investments in small...

This article examines the primary motivation of the bank merger waves in the 1990s. Our investigation of the factors that determine bid premiums paid for target banks focuses on the importance of the financial characteristics of the targets, composition of their boards of directors, and the...

Contagion usually refers to the spillover of the effects of shocks from one or more firms to other firms. Most studies of contagion limit their analysis to how shock affect firms in the same industry, or "intra-industry" contagion. The purpose of this paper is to explore and document the likely...

The product mix changes that have occurred in banking organizations during the 1990s provide a natural experiment for investigating how firms adjust their executive compensation contracts as their mix of businesses changes. Deregulation and new technology have eroded banking organizations’...