In 1865, the first minority bank in the United States was established. Over time, banks owned or controlled by minorities have grown in number. Yet, one hundred and fifty years later, they still account for only 2.8 percent of all banks. The contribution of this paper is fourfold. First, it...

This paper evaluates whether reform efforts addressing “too big to fail” actually enhance the stability of the financial system, and whether trade-offs exist between stability and efficiency. We also present and discuss various measures of bank size and complexity since such measures are...

We analyze the optimal capital structure of a nation from a corporate finance perspective. In particular, we draw an analogy between a nation's fiat money and corporate equity following Bolton and Huang (2018). Based on dynamic capital structure theory, we develop a stochastic model to determine...

Natural disasters are not rare and costless events. Indeed, the evidence indicates there has been an acceleration in the number of disasters and the associated costs over the past century. Such disasters can cause severe property damage in the communities affected. Typically, insurance policies...