The U.S. financial system has changed significantly over the last several decades without any major structural changes to the decentralized financial regulatory system, despite numerous proposals. In the past decade, many countries have chosen to consolidate their regulators into a newly formed...

Failure rates of small commercial banks during the banking crisis of the late 1980s were about 7.6%, which is significantly higher than the 5.7% failure rate during the recent crisis. We compare failure rates in the two periods using a statistical model that allows us to decompose the effect of...

Banks may receive a subsidy from deposit insurance or from other components of the government-provided banking safety net. Extension (leakage) of a subsidy to banks' nonbank affiliates will only serve to enlarge it. But subsidy enlargement, since it entails expanded risks to taxpayers and...

Movements in the monetary aggregates affect the price level, interest rates, real output, and employment. For that reason they are among the most closely-watched financial statistics. This article provides a practical introduction and guide to the various monetary aggregates

Although the profitability of U.S. small banks shrank in the 1980s, two percent of these banks remained highly profitable by emphasizing basic banking, namely acquiring low-cost funds and making low-risk investments

Short-term municipal securities are defined by two characteristics. First, they are issued by state and local governments and the special districts and statutory authorities they establish. Second, they either have original maturities of less than three years or have longer final maturities but...