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Working Paper
Computing moral-hazard problems using the Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition algorithm
Linear programming is an important method for computing solutions to private information problems. The method is applicable for arbitrary specifications of the references and technology. Unfortunately, as the cardinality of underlying sets increases the programs quickly become too large to compute. This paper demonstrates that moral-hazard problems have a structure that allows them to be computed using the Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition algorithm. This algorithm breaks the linear program into subproblems, greatly increasing the size of problems that may be practically computed. Connections to ...
Working Paper
Federal Reserve Structure, Economic Ideas, and Monetary and Financial Policy
The decentralized structure of the Federal Reserve System is evaluated as a mechanism for generating and processing new ideas on monetary and financial policy. The role of the Reserve Banks starting in the 1960s is emphasized. The introduction of monetarism in the 1960s, rational expectations in the 1970s, credibility in the 1980s, transparency, and other monetary policy ideas by Reserve Banks into the Federal Reserve System is documented. Contributions by Reserve Banks to policy on bank structure, bank regulation, and lender of last resort are also discussed. We argue that the Reserve Banks ...
Working Paper
Banker Compensation, Relative Performance, and Bank Risk
A multi-agent, moral-hazard model of a bank operating under deposit insurance and limited liability is used to analyze the connection between compensation of bank employees (below CEO) and bank risk. Limited liability with deposit insurance is a force that distorts effort down. However, the need to increase compensation to risk-averse employees in order to compensate them for extra bank risk is a force that reduces this effect. Optimal contracts use relative performance and are implementable as a wage with bonuses tied to individual and firm performance. The connection between pay for ...
Working Paper
Bank capital regulation with and without state-contingent penalties
A moral hazard model with exogenous bank franchise value is used to analyze bank capital regulation. Banks choose their capital structure as well as the riskiness and mean of their portfolio. The portfolio mean is determined by the level of costly screening. Screening and portfolio risk are private information, so there are two dimensions to the moral hazard problem. Deposit insurance gives banks an incentive to hold less capital, and to choose a higher-risk, lower-mean portfolio. To mitigate these incentives, capital requirements with and without ex post fines are studied. We find an ...
Briefing
The costs and benefits of bank supervisory disclosure
Bank examinations, like the recent "stress test," yield information of interest to the market. Releasing those results may increase transparency. For routine annual bank exams, however, doing so could impede a supervisor's ability to collect information.
Working Paper
Origins of Too-Big-to-Fail Policy
This paper traces the origin of the too-big-to-fail problem in banking to the bailout of the $1.2 billion Bank of the Commonwealth in 1972. It describes this bailout and those of subsequent banks through that of Continental Illinois in 1984. Motivations behind the bailouts are described with a particular emphasis on those provided by Irvine Sprague in his book Bailout. During this period, market concentration due to interstate banking restrictions is a factor in most of the bailouts, and systemic risk concerns were raised to justify the bailouts of surprisingly small banks. Sprague?s ...
Journal Article
The Failure of the Bank of the Commonwealth: An Early Example of Interest Rate Risk
This Economic Commentary describes the collapse and subsequent bailout of the Detroit-headquartered Bank of the Commonwealth in 1972. Commonwealth failed because it invested heavily in long-duration, fixed-rate municipal securities in the mid-1960s in a bet that interest rates would decline. Instead, with the beginning of the Great Inflation of 1965–1980, rates rose. Liquidity problems then ensued, and the bank approached failure. Unable to find an acquirer because of Michigan’s banking restrictions, regulators instead bailed out the bank because of fears of contagion. This article also ...
Journal Article
A primer on moral-hazard models
Briefing
Did Banking Reforms of the Early 1990s Fail? Lessons from Comparing Two Banking Crises
New Richmond Fed research on community and midsize banks evaluates the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act (FDICIA) and Basel I by comparing failures in the 1986-92 period to those in 2007-13. Banks greatly increased commercial real estate lending between the two banking crises, but higher capital mitigated this risk. Failure rates in the recent crisis were mainly driven by the severity of the economic shocks. However, higher capital did not help contain FDIC losses, which were much larger in the recent crisis. One possible explanation is limitations in the accounting ...