Risk-based capital (RBC) is an important component of deposit insurance reform. This paper provides an empirical analysis of the new 1992 RBC bank standards, applying them to data on virtually all U.S. banks from 1982 to 1989. The data reveal strong associations between several measures of...

A presentation of a theoretical model of regional banking using plausible information asymmetries to explain how local bank capital may affect the funding of regional investments, concluding that regional banking conditions can affect the efficiency of investment and the level of future...

The 1980 Monetary Control Act requires Reserve Banks to recover their costs of providing payments services over time, including a normal return on capital-that is, the same after-tax return on equity that a private firm would require. To date, this private-sector adjustment factor has been...

This paper examines two proposals to correct the risk-taking incentives embedded in the current deposit insurance system and to provide protection to the deposit insurance fund. the first would require banks to issue subordinated debt, and the second would require bank stockholders to post...

The author develops an empirical model to value a financial institution's capital for regulatory purposes, which when estimated for a sample of failed and nonfailed institutions, reveals the need for a market-value accounting approach to capital.

The authors examine whether credit-spread curves, engendered by a mandatory subordinated-debt requirement for banks, would help predict bank risk. They extract the credit-spread curves each quarter for each bank in our sample, and analyze the information content of credit-spread slopes. They...

To examine whether mandating banks to issue subordinated debt would enhance market monitoring and control risk-taking, the authors extract the credit-spread curve for each banking firm in their sample. After controlling for changes in market and liquidity variables, they find that changes in...

Banks face two 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 or simply being lazy and uninnovative). The privately-optimal level of bank leverage is...

An analysis of the impact of depositor preference laws on the cost of debt capital for banks and on the value of FDIC deposit guarantees. The authors find that depositor preference laws increase the value of uninsured deposit claims and reduce the size of the FDIC subsidy, but will not affect...

A model of bank asset sales in which information asymmetries create the incentive for unregulated banks to originate and sell loans to other banks, rather than fund them with deposit liabilities. Private information implies that bankers can fund local loans only to the extent that their capital...