In August 2007 the United Kingdom experienced its first bank run in over 140 years. Although Northern Rock was not a particularly large bank (it was at the time ranked 7th in terms of assets) it was nevertheless a significant retail bank and a substantial mortgage lender. In fact, ten years...

In August 2007 the United Kingdom experienced its first bank run in over 140 years. Although Northern Rock was not a particularly large bank (it was at the time ranked 7th in terms of assets) it was nevertheless a significant retail bank and a substantial mortgage lender. In fact, ten years...

This Article will appear in a May 2009 symposium issue of the Florida International University Law Review on the global financial crisis. This Article argues that the current global financial crisis, which was first called the “subprime crisis,” demonstrates the need to revisit the division...

We study retail deposit withdrawals from commercial banks which were differentially exposed to distress during the 2007-2009 financial crisis. We show that the propensity of households to withdraw deposits increases with the severity of bank distress. Withdrawal risk is, however, substantially...

The removal of geographic restrictions on banking activities can provide credit to a larger population. Economic hardships, however, can force some of the borrowers to default on their loans and file for bankruptcy to overcome financial distress. Using data aggregated at the US county-level, we...

In this paper we test the hypothesis that credit policies are pro-cyclical. Our approach is based on a stochastic frontier analysis of borrower data, as in Chen and Wang (2008). We extend the applicability of the approach, and propose a novel test specification which is informative of many types...

This paper studies the secular increase in U.S. household debt and its relation to growing income inequality and financial fragility. We exploit a new household-level data set that covers the joint distributions of debt, income, and wealth in the United States over the past seven decades. The...

This paper studies the secular increase in U.S. household debt and its relation to growing income inequality and financial fragility. We exploit a new household-level dataset that covers the joint distributions of debt, income, and wealth in the United States over the past seven decades. The...

This paper studies the secular increase in U.S. household debt and its relation to growing income inequality and financial fragility. We exploit a new household-level dataset that covers the joint distributions of debt, income, and wealth in the United States over the past seven decades. The...

I analyze the role that asset markets play in the performance and stability of the run-prone banking sector. Banks insure consumers against privately observed liquidity shocks. Asset market investments insure consumers against losses from bank runs. If the probability of a run is small, then...