Search Results
Working Paper
The consolidation of the financial services industry: causes, consequences, and implications for the future
This article designs a framework for evaluating the causes, consequences, and future implications of financial consolidation, reviews the extant research literature within the context of this framework (over 250 references), and suggests fruitful avenues for future research. The evidence is consistent with increases in market power from some types of consolidation; improvements in profit efficiency and diversification of risks, but little or no cost efficiency improvements; relatively little effect on the availability of services to small customers; potential improvements in payments system ...
Journal Article
Securitization, loan sales, and the credit slowdown
Household and business lending has slowed sharply in recent years, but the anemic growth in loans booked at depository institutions, mortgage companies, and finance companies may overstate the decline in credit originated by these institutions. This article reports measures of credit growth that include "off-balance-sheet lending"loans that were originated by intermediaries but are absent from their balance sheets because of direct loan sales or the issuance of asset-backed securities. The authors also compare the relative volume of off-balance-sheet lending by types of intermediaries.
Journal Article
Historical patterns and recent changes in the relationship between bank holding company size and risk
What is the relationship between a bank holding company's size and the risk it takes? The authors find that although the level of risk at large and small bank holding companies has not differed significantly, important distinctions exist in the nature of that risk. Historically, large companies' diversification advantages were offset by lower capital ratios and the pursuit of risk-enhancing activities. More recently, however, differences between the capital ratios and activities of large and small companies have narrowed. As a result, an inverse relationship between risk and bank holding ...
Report
Bank loan sales: a new look at the motivations for secondary market activity
Bank lending traditionally involves the extension of credit that is held by the originating bank until maturity. Loan sales allow banks to deviate from this pattern by transferring loans in part or in their entirety from their own books to those of another institution. This paper uses a new methodology to test the validity of two hypotheses regarding banks' motivations for selling and buying loans: (1) the comparative advantage hypothesis, that banks with a comparative advantage in originating loans sell and those with a comparative advantage in funding loans buy, and (2) the diversification ...
Journal Article
Recent trends in commercial bank loan sales
The dollar volume of commercial bank loan sales rose rapidly in the mid-1980s but has declined equally rapidly over the past few years. This article provides insight into these loan sales trends by looking beyond the aggregate data and separately examining the sales activities of the largest loan sellers and those of all other banks.
Report
Agency problems and risk taking at banks
The moral hazard problem associated with deposit insurance generates the potential for excessive risk taking on the part of bank owners. The banking literature identifies franchise value--a firm's profit-generating potential--as one force mitigating that risk taking. We argue that in the presence of owner/manager agency problems, managerial risk aversion may also offset the excessive risk taking that stems from moral hazard. Empirical models of bank risk tend to focus either on the disciplinary role of franchise value or on owner/manager agency problems. We estimate a unified model and find ...