The dramatic rise in credit card charge-offs in the midst of a vigorous expansion suggests that bank card borrowers have become inherently riskier. This paper investigates how the mix of credit card borrowers has changed in recent years, and how those changes affect delinquency risk. The new...

Following the investment-cash flow literature, we test whether bank lending is constrained by the availability of insured deposits--a necessary condition for the existence of bank lending channel of monetary policy. We treat insured deposits as a type of "internal fund," similar to cash flows....

We investigate how bank migration across state lines over the last quarter century has affected the size and covariance of business fluctuations across states. Starting with a two-state version of the unit banking model in Holmstrom and Tirole (1997), we conclude that the theoretical effect of...

We investigate how integration of bank ownership across states has affected economic volatility within states. In theory, bank integration could cause higher or lower volatility, depending on whether credit supply or credit demand shocks predominate. In fact, year-to-year fluctuations in a...

We investigate how bank migration across state lines over the last quarter century has affected the size and covariance of business fluctuations within states. Starting with a two-state version of the unit banking model in Holmstrom and Tirole (1997), we conclude that the theoretical effect of...