This is the second article in a series which explores the changing role of banks in the financial intermediation process. It accompanies a Liberty Street Blog series. Both discuss the complexity of the credit intermediation chain associated with securitization and note the growing participation...

Cara S. Lown explores the banking industry's role in the economy and finds evidence supporting the idea that fluctuations in bank credit are related to fluctuations in economic activity. She also finds that bank asset holdings adjust before changes in economic activity and that the banking...

Financial institutions often do not charge explicit fees for the services they provide, but are instead compensated by the spread between interest rates on loans and deposits. The lack of explicit fees in lending makes it difficult to measure the output of banks and other financial institutions....

The largest national banks apparently have turned the corner on asset quality issues, but this improving trend has not yet emerging across the Eighth District.

This paper provides a simple two-depositor, two-stage model to understand how a bank’s withdrawal history affects an individual’s decision about withdrawals, which could possibly trigger bank runs. Individual depositors have private information about their personal consumption types and...