The subprime crisis highlights how little we know about bank governance. This paper addresses a long-standing gap in the literature by analyzing the relationship between board governance and performance using a sample of banking firm data that spans 34 years. We find that board independence is...

We analyze a range of corporate governance variables as they pertain to a sample of bank holding companies (BHCs) and manufacturing firms. We find that BHCs have larger boards and that the percentage of outside directors on these boards is significantly higher; also, BHC boards have more...

The authors analyze a range of corporate governance variables as they pertain to a sample of bank holding companies (BHCs) and manufacturing firms. They find that BHCs have larger boards and that the percentage of outside directors on these boards is significantly higher; also, BHC boards have...

The Federal Reserve requires U.S. commercial banks andother depository institutions to hold a minimum level ofreserves in proportion to certain liabilities. On occasion, thecentral bank has reduced reserve requirements—such as in1990, when requirements on large time deposits were dropped,and...

Several authors have documented a reduced variability ofoutput and inflation in the United States since the beginningof the 1980s.1 In fact, a comparison of the 1980:1-2001:2 periodwith the two preceding decades shows that the standarddeviation of quarterly output growth has fallen 30...

Asset market values react to economic news and policychanges, and consumers react to changes in asset marketvalues. The consumption-wealth channel of monetary policyspells out this mechanism: changes in monetary policy affectasset values, which in turn affect consumer spending onnondurable goods...

[...]In the first half of the paper, we review the significantchanges in the housing finance system over the past thirty yearsand discuss the implications of these changes for the cost andavailability of mortgage credit. In the second half, we present atwo-part econometric analysis of the...

The volatility of real GDP growth in the United States hasfallen by half since the early 1980s relative to the priorpostwar experience.1 Inflation also stabilized around then(although only when compared with a shorter period ofvolatility in the 1970s). Some studies have argued that animprovement...