Search Results
Journal Article
The role of community banks in the U.S. economy
The U.S. banking system is unusual in consisting not only of some very large banks but also a large number of relatively small community banks. This bifurcated banking system in the United States has served the economy well. Over time, with regulatory change and financial innovation, large banks have become complex organizations engaged in a wide range of activities. They provide a variety of services to their customers, but often rely on hard financial information, computer models, and centralized decision-making as the basis for conducting business. In contrast, small banks have focused ...
Journal Article
Causes of the recent increase in bank security holdings
While bank security holdings have increased sharply in recent years, there is widespread disagreement about the significance of the increase. Some analysts argue that the increase is not a cause for concern because it results from temporary factors such as the business cycle. Others argue that the increase represents a permanent shift in bank portfolio preferences from loans to securities, which could cause banks to look more like mutual funds. If the latter view is true, small firms that rely on banks for credit may be unable to fund new investment. Moreover, monetary policy may be less able ...
Journal Article
Has multi-market banking changed the response of small business lending to local economic shocks?
The consolidation of the U.S. banking industry has greatly increased the importance of large multi-market banking organizations relative to smaller, single-market banks. An issue that has not received much attention is how multi-market banking has affected the response of local bank lending to local economic shocks. When an area is hit particularly hard by a recession, is bank lending now more likely to decline in the area, exacerbating the downturn? Or is bank lending now more likely to remain unchanged, moderating the downturn? The answer is important to local communities because it affects ...
Journal Article
The transformation of banking and its impact on consumers and small businesses
The banking industry has undergone profound changes during the last decade. The most obvious change has been the large number of bank mergers, which have increased both the average size of banks and the area over which they operate. Other changes may also prove dramatic but are at this point just getting under way?the growth of Internet banking and the combination of banking with other financial services, such as insurance and securities underwriting.> The implications of these changes for the profitability and safety of banks have been widely discussed, but what do they mean for local ...
Journal Article
Banking performance in the Tenth District states
The average profitability of banks in Tenth District states edged up in 1987 after five years of decline. Agricultural banks showed the greatest recovery, combining faster loan growth with lower loan losses and higher profits.
Journal Article
Deposit insurance and the deregulation of deposit rates
Journal Article
Banking performance in Tenth District states
Working Paper
The cross-market spillover of economic shocks through multi-market banks
This paper investigates the mortgage lending of banks operating in multiple U.S. metropolitan areas during the housing market collapse of 2007-2009. Some metro areas in the U.S. suffered much greater mortgage defaults than others. We use this regional variation to identify whether high mortgage delinquencies in some markets affected multi-market banks' mortgage lending in other markets. Our results show that multi-market banks reduced local mortgage lending in response to delinquencies in other markets, consistent with the view that local economic shocks can be transmitted to other regions ...