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Journal Article
Are small rural banks vulnerable to local economic downturns?
A potentially troubling characteristic of the U.S. banking industry is the geographic concentration of many banks? offices and operations. Historically, banking laws have prevented U.S. banks from branching into other counties and states. A potential adverse consequence of these regulations was to leave banks?especially small rural banks?vulnerable to local economic downturns. If geographic concentration of bank offices leaves banks vulnerable to local economic downturns, we should observe a significant correlation between bank performance and the local economy. Looking at Eighth District ...
Working Paper
Did FDICIA enhance market discipline on community banks? a look at evidence from the jumbo-CD market
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act of 1991 (FDICIA) directed the FDIC to resolve bank failures in the least costly manner, shifting more of the failure-resolution burden to jumbo-CD holders. We examine the sensitivity of jumbo-CD yields and runoffs to failure risk before and after FDICIA. We also examine the economic significance of estimated risk sensitivities before and after the Act, looking at the implied impact of risk on bank funding costs and profits. The evidence indicates that yields and runoff were sensitive to risk before and after FDICIA, but that this ...
Journal Article
How Cyber Deposits Affect Perceived Competition in Banking Markets
Online-only branches can distort the measurement of concentration in local banking markets.
Journal Article
The role of supervisory screens and econometric models in off-site surveillance
Off-site surveillance involves using financial ratios to identify banks likely to develop safety-and-soundness problems. Bank supervisors use two tools to flag developing problems: supervisory screens and econometric models. Despite the statistical dominance of models, supervisors continue to rely heavily on screens. We use data from the 1980s and 1990s to compare, once again, the performance of the two approaches to off-site surveillance. Our study explicitly addresses supervisors' criticisms of econometric models. In particular, we offer a new econometric model - one designed to forecast ...
The Rise of Cyber Branches in Banking
Banks are increasingly using online-only branches, or “cyber” branches, to gather deposits nationwide, leading to difficulties when measuring market concentration.
Journal Article
Trends in community banks' net interest margins
Net interest margins are clearly under pressure at community banks, but this trend is not new. It is a product of a highly competitive banking industry and a direct result of today?s lower lending levels and abundant balance sheet liquidity. The net interest margin is the difference between interest income and interest expense. Interest income and interest expense fluctuated considerably through the business cycle, but the long-term trend indicates that asset yields are falling faster than deposit and other funding costs.
Journal Article
Federal Reserve lending to troubled banks during the financial crisis, 2007-2010
Numerous commentaries have questioned both the legality and appropriateness of Federal Reserve lending to banks during the recent financial crisis. This article addresses two questions motivated by such commentary: Did the Federal Reserve violate either the letter or spirit of the law by lending to undercapitalized banks? Did Federal Reserve credit constitute a large fraction of the deposit liabilities of failed banks during their last year before failure? The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act of 1991 (FDICIA) imposed limits on the number of days that the Federal Reserve ...
Working Paper
Can feedback from the jumbo-CD market improve bank surveillance?
We examine the value of jumbo certificate-of-deposit (CD) signals in bank surveillance. To do so, we first construct proxies for default premiums and deposit runoffs and then rank banks based on these risk proxies. Next, we rank banks based on the output of a logit model typical of the econometric models used in off-site surveillance. Finally, we compare jumbo-CD rankings and surveillance-model rankings as tools for predicting financial distress. Our comparisons include eight out-of-sample test windows during the 1990s. We find that rankings obtained from jumbo-CD data would not have improved ...
Journal Article
Why Are More Credit Unions Buying Community Banks?
This trend is growing but remains small because of regulatory and business-model challenges.
Journal Article
Market Concentration and Its Impact on Community Banks
This article explores the effect that market concentration has on the ability of community banks to expand in their small markets, especially rural ones. For small banking markets, a community bank is often prevented from selling to a crosstown rival because of market concentration regulations, even if it might be in the best interest of consumers for other reasons. For example, compared to an in-market community bank, a large out-of-market bank holding company may have less interest in local institutions and less knowledge about market conditions and the reputation and quality of local ...