The U.S. banking industry is experiencing a renewed focus on retail banking, a trend often attributed to the stability and profitability of retail activities. This paper examines the impact of banks' retail intensity on performance from 1997 to 2004 by developing three complementary definitions...

The recent banking crisis has revealed the existence of strong resiliency factors in the retail banking business model. On average, retail banks suffered less than other financial institutions from unexpected market changes. This paper proposes a new methodology to measure retail banks’...

U.S. banks have increasingly diversified into activities traditionally considered as non-core for the banking sector. This paper investigates whether diversification influences banks' investment (credit) policy and profitability. Diversified banks appear to benefit from “coinsurance,” supply...

This paper illustrates channels by which regulations that require banks to hold liquid assets can either increase or decrease a bank's incentive to take risk with its remaining ineligible assets. A greater capacity to respond to liquidity stress increases the potential profits a bank would put...

We examine changes in risk following US bank mergers in the period 1981-2014. Short-run increases in acquirer risk following mergers occur only in the first few mergers undertaken by the same acquirer, and only in systematic risk. The equity volatility of acquirers does not increase. Using a new...

The bail-in tool as implemented in the European bank resolution framework suffers from severe shortcomings. To some extent, the regulatory framework can remedy the impediments to the desirable incentive effect of private sector involvement (PSI) that emanate from a lack of predictability of...

We develop a methodology to measure the capital shortfall of commercial banks in a market downturn, which we call stressed expected loss (SEL). We simulate a market downturn as a negative shock on interest rate and credit market risk factors that reflect the banks' market-sensitive assets. We...

Our concern in this paper is two-fold: first to see whether the determinants of bank distress and failure have been any different in the GFC from previous years: second to see whether simple measures of capital adequacy outperform their risk-weighted counterparts as predictors, despite the focus...

This paper analyzes the contagion effects associated with the failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and identifies bank-specific vulnerabilities contributing to the subsequent declines in banks' stock returns. We find that uninsured deposits, unrealized losses in held-to-maturity securities, bank...

This paper analyzes the contagion effects associated with the failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and identifies bank-specific vulnerabilities contributing to the subsequent declines in banks' stock returns. We find that uninsured deposits, unrealized losses in held-to-maturity securities, bank...