Many consumers who lack checking accounts are paying relatively high costs to access the nation's payments system. Legislation aimed at opening the system to these unbanked individuals has centered on requiring commercial banks to offer low-cost 'lifeline' accounts. But will cost savings alone...

Over the past decade, commercial banks have devoted many resources to developing internal models to better quantify their financial risks and assign economic capital. These efforts have been recognized and encouraged by bank regulators. Recently, banks have extended these efforts into the field...

Over the past decade, commercial banks have devoted many resources to developing internal models to better quantify their financial risks and assign economic capital. These efforts have been recognized and encouraged by bank regulators; for example, the 1997 Market Risk Amendment (MRA) formally...

[...]In this article, we explore the relationship betweenfranchise value and risk taking over the 1986-94 period.We extend Keeley’s empirical analysis by estimating theeffect of franchise value on a variety of measures of bankrisk. We find an inverse relationship between franchisevalue and an...