Search Results
Working Paper
What was behind the M2 breakdown?
A deterioration in the link between the M2 monetary aggregate and GDP, along with large errors in predicting M2 growth, led the Board of Governors to downgrade the M2 aggregate as a reliable indicator of monetary policy in 1993. In this paper, we argue that the financial condition of depository institutions was a major factor behind the unusual pattern of M2 growth in the early 1990s. By constructing alternative measures of M2 based on banks and thrifts capital positions, we show that the anomalous behavior of M2 in the early 1990s disappears. Specifically, after accounting for the effect of ...
Discussion Paper
Depositor Discipline of Risk-Taking by U.S. Banks
The recent financial crisis caused the largest rise in the number of bank failures since the unprecedented banking crisis of the 1980s and early 1990s. This post examines how depositors responded to the amplified risks of bank failure over the last three decades. We show that uninsured depositors discipline troubled banks by withdrawing their funds. Focusing on the recent financial crisis, we find that banks experienced an outflow of uninsured time deposits after the near-failure of Bear Stearns and bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. This depositor risk sensitivity subsided after the Federal ...
Report
The information value of the stress test and bank opacity
We investigate whether the ?stress test,? the extraordinary examination of the nineteen largest U.S. bank holding companies conducted by federal bank supervisors in 2009, produced the information demanded by the market. Using standard event study techniques, we find that the market had largely deciphered on its own which banks would have capital gaps before the stress test results were revealed, but that the market was informed by the size of the gap; given our proxy for the expected gap, banks with larger capital gaps experienced more negative abnormal returns. Our findings suggest that the ...
Report
Do mergers improve the x-efficiency and scale efficiency of U.S. banks?: Evidence from the 1980s
A central issue currently debated among bank analysts and economists is whether mergers enhance the efficiency of surviving banks. This paper investigates the postmerger performance of acquiring banks that participated in a merger during 1980-90. The evidence suggests that acquiring banks failed to improve postmerger X-efficiency. However, we find that acquiring banks experienced moderate gains in profitability and scale efficiency relative to a control sample. The second part of the paper uses regression analysis to identify factors influencing the performance of bank merger survivors. The ...
Journal Article
A disaggregate analysis of discount window borrowing
Discount window borrowing is an important source of liquidity for depository institutions. This article estimates the demand for adjustment credit of 240 commercial banks during 1981-90. By focusing on the borrowing behavior of individual banks, the authors are able to clarify some anomalies exhibited by borrowed reserves at the aggregate level.
Journal Article
Trends in financial market concentration and their implications for market stability
The link between financial market concentration and stability is a topic of great interest to policymakers and other market participants. Are concentrated markets - those where a relatively small number of firms hold large market shares - inherently more prone to disruption? This article considers that question by drawing on academic studies as well as introducing new analysis. Like other researchers, the authors find an ambiguous relationship between concentration and instability when a large firm in a concentrated market fails. In a complementary review of concentration trends across a ...
Report
Modelling the instability of mortgage-backed prepayments
Prepayment plays a critical role in the performance of mortgage-backed securities. For this reason, market participants have devoted substantial resources to developing formal mathematical models of mortgage prepayment. Despite their considerable efforts, however, the forecasting effectiveness of these propriety models has been unreliable. This paper investigates the structure of the prepayment function. We demonstrate that the prepayment function is nonlinear and heteroskedastic. In particular, we find that prepayments are increasingly more volatile at higher interest rate spreads. Our ...