This paper finds that banks and non-banks respond differently to increased competition in consumer credit markets. Increased competition and the greater threat of failure induces banks to specialize more in relationship business lending, and surviving banks are more profitable. However,...

This note is the third part in a three part series. Part 1 provides some historical background and discusses key institutional characteristics of the Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLB) System. Part 2 highlights some of the recent trends in the FHLB system and potential drivers of those trends. This...

This note is the second part in a three part series. Part 1 provides some historical background and discusses key institutional characteristics of the Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLB) System. This note discusses recent trends in the FHLB system and potential drivers of those trends

The Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) system was founded in 1932 to support mortgage lending by thrifts and insurance companies. Over time, the system has grown into a provider of funding for a larger range of financial institutions, including commercial banks and insurance companies

The Federal Home Loan Banks are the less well-known siblings of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Since these government-sponsored enterprises were created in 1932, changes in housing finance markets have rendered largely irrelevant their original purpose of increasing the availability of mortgages....

We examine the role of institutional investors in monetary policy transmission to asset markets by exploiting a discontinuous threshold in the tax treatment of municipal bonds. As bonds approach the threshold, mutual funds, the primary institutional traders in the market, dispose of the bonds at...