We construct a degree-of-total-leverage framework to test whether and how shifts in product mix affect earnings volatility at 472 U.S. commercial banks between 1988 and 1995. Our framework, which accounts for cost and revenue synergies not captured in most previous studies, conceptually links...

An important question for bank regulatory policy is whether supervisory examinations of large commercial banking firms - institutions that are already actively followed by many investors and their private sector agents - produce useful information that is not already reflected in market prices....

We test whether relatively small US commercial banks that use traditional banking business models are more likely to survive during both good and bad economic climates. Our concept of bank survival is derived from Stigler (1958), and includes any bank that did not fail, was not acquired, and was...

This study examines whether and how the terms of CEO compensation contracts at large, publicly traded commercial banks between 1994 and 2006 influenced, and were influenced by, the risk-profiles of these firms. We find evidence linking contractual risk-taking incentives, which we proxy with...

The Basel III Accord imposes minimum liquidity standards on bank balance sheets that are already constrained by minimum capital standards. It is not clear whether or how banks' behaviors will change in this new joint-constraint regime. To gain some insight, we study the balance sheet liquidity...

Credit unions are exempt from paying income taxes, and these tax savings are supposed to subsidize the provision of financial services to credit union members. In this paper, we investigate whether the entire credit union tax subsidy is being passed along to credit union members — in the form...