The roles of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have become increasingly controversial in the modern world of residential mortgage finance. We describe the special features of these two companies and their roles in the mortgage markets. We then discuss the controversies that surround them and offer...

This paper discusses the technological change and financial innovation that commercial banking has experienced during the past twenty-five years. The paper first describes the role of the financial system in economies and how technological change and financial innovation can improve social...

Questions of whether the evolution of the financial services industry results in more efficient intermediaries, better prices and service quality for consumers, and greater bank safety and soundness cannot be answered without addressing the cost and revenue efficiencies of the industry. Most...

This article develops a new method of estimating inefficiencies in joint production and shows that unlike the approaches utilized in the previous studies of inefficiency, this method maintains a consistent relationship between the error term of a profit function and the error terms of its price...

U.S. commercial banks are increasingly using credit scoring models to underwrite small business credits. This paper discusses this technology, evaluates the research findings on the effects of this technology on small business credit availability, and links these findings to a number of research...