Interest paid by U.S. state and local bonds is tax-exempt, making these bonds attractive to investors - though a tax rule limits arbitrage opportunities by restricting associated interest expense deductions. Prior to 1986, U.S. banks were not subject to the interest deduction limitation, making...

Studies of intermediated arbitrage argue that bank balance sheets are an important consideration, yet little evidence exists on banks' positioning in this context. Using confidential supervisory data (covering $25 trillion in daily notional exposures) we examine banks' positions in connection...

We use the term structure of bank CD rates to examine whether maturity-transformation risk is priced into the rates banks offer customers. We find that depositors pay a significant cost for the liquidity provided by bank deposits. This cost is strongly related to the amount of...

Offering health coverage to informal workers and their families is an ongoing and major challenge in most Sub-Saharan countries. As anchoring insurance to employment contracts is not possible and the demand for insurance is too low to deploy voluntarily sustainable schemes, alternative...

Private firms establish relationships with banks in local markets to obtain adequate financing for their operations through credit and loans. As major banks reduced their branch networks in recent years, many firms have lost access to their local bank. We evaluate the impact of a large number of...

Offering health coverage to informal workers and their families is an ongoing and major challenge in most Sub-Saharan countries. As anchoring insurance to employment contracts is not possible and the demand for insurance is too low to deploy voluntarily sustainable schemes, alternative...