The market share of U.S. business loans made by foreign-owned banks has increased dramatically since 1980. At the same time, foreign direct investment in the U.S. rose, so that much of the increase in foreign-owned U.S.-based bank lending to businesses in the U.S. could conceivably be accounted...

Remarks before the Missouri Bankers Association Senior Bank Management Conference, Acapulco, Mexico, Jan. 12, 1999

This paper studies how a bank’s diversification affects its own risk taking behavior and the risk taking of competing, nondiversified banks. By combining theories of bank organization, market structure and risk taking, I show that greater geographic diversification of banks changes a bank’s...