Search Results
Working Paper
Does credit supply affect small-firm finance?
States were granted authority to limit interstate branching following passage of Federal legislation in 1994, relaxing restrictions on geographical expansion by banks. We show that differences in state?s branching restrictions affect credit supply. In states more open to branching, small firms borrow at interest rates 25 to 45 basis points lower than firms operating in less open states. Firms in open states also are more likely to borrow from banks. Despite this evidence that interstate branch openness expands credit supply, we find no effect of variation in state restrictions on branching on ...
Working Paper
Do Small Businesses Still Prefer Community Banks?
We formulate and test hypotheses about the role of bank type ? small versus large, single-market versus multimarket, and local versus nonlocal banks ? in banking relationships. The conventional paradigm suggests that "community banks" ? small, single market, local institutions ? are better able to form strong relationships with informationally opaque small businesses, while "megabanks" ? large, multimarket, nonlocal institutions ? tend to serve more transparent firms. Using the 2003 Survey of Small Business Finance (SSBF), we conduct two sets of tests. First, we test for the type of bank ...
Working Paper
When good investments go bad: the contraction in community bank lending after the 2008 GSE takeover
In September 2008, the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were placed into conservatorship and dividend payments on common and preferred shares were suspended. As a result, share prices fell to nearly zero and many banks across the country lost the value of their investments in the preferred shares. We estimate more than 600 depository institutions in the United States were exposed to at least $8 billion in investment losses from these securities. In addition, fifteen failures and two distressed mergers either directly or indirectly resulted from the takeover. ...
Working Paper
Measuring the Implementation of the FSB Key Attributes of Effective Resolution Regimes for Financial Institutions in the European Union
There are lingering concerns about the health of European banks and extensive market commentary about whether post-crisis regulatory reforms in Europe have adequately addressed these concerns. In June 2012, European policymakers released the broad outlines of a proposal for a "European banking union" to strengthen the banking sector and help assuage concerns of investors and depositors, however, uncertainty remains regarding how the new EU bank resolution regime, the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD), will work in practice. This paper addresses whether the BRRD has fulfilled the ...
Working Paper
Liquidity Risk and U.S. Bank Lending at Home and Abroad
While the balance sheet structure of U.S. banks influences how they respond to liquidity risks, the mechanisms for the effects on and consequences for lending vary widely across banks. We demonstrate fundamental differences across banks without foreign affiliates versus those with foreign affiliates. Among the nonglobal banks (those without a foreign affiliate), cross-sectional differences in response to liquidity risk depend on the banks' shares of core deposit funding. By contrast, differences across global banks (those with foreign affiliates) are associated with ex ante liquidity ...
Discussion Paper
How Do Liquidity Conditions Affect U.S. Bank Lending?
The recent financial crisis underscored the importance of understanding how liquidity conditions for banks (or other financial institutions) influence the banks' lending to domestic and foreign customers.
Journal Article
Profits and balance sheet developments at U.S. commercial banks in 2008
Reviews recent developments in the balance sheets and in the profitability of U.S. commercial banks. The article discusses how developments in the U.S. banking industry in 2008 and early 2009 were related to changes in financial markets and in the broader economy.
Journal Article
The importance of payments-driven revenues to franchise value and in estimating bank performance
This paper examines how the production of payment services impacts the franchise value of banks. It also explores whether analysis are incorrectly measuring the performance of the banking sector and failing to realize the full importance of payments-driven revenues to banks. In initial empirical analysis, we find limited evidence to suggest that higher payments-driven revenues are associated with higher franchise value. We find, also, that estimates of productive efficiency change dramatically for a small number of banks heavily involved in payments services. We find evidence to suggest that ...
Journal Article
Estimating the volume of payments-driven revenues
This paper estimates the volume of payments-driven revenues at the top 40 domestic BHCs and builds on the statistical summaries that Radecki (1999) compiles from the top 25 BHCs in 1996. We replicate Radecki's 1996 results, but find that they overstate payments-driven revenues by including entire revenue sources that are not entirely payments-driven. We offer a modified definition of payments-driven revenue and re-estimate BHC payments-driven revenue for the top 40 BHCs. Our modified estimation method suggests that on average 16 percent of the operating revenue of the top 40 BHCs is derived ...
Journal Article
Against the tide—currency use among Latin American immigrants in Chicago
While the U.S. continues to transition away from cash toward electronic payment methods, some population segments continue to rely heavily on cash. In this study of foreign-born Latin Americans in Chicago, the authors find that the dramatic increase in the number of immigrants is supporting a growing demand for currency, notably in the $100 denomination.