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Journal Article
Do capital markets predict problems in large commercial banks?
In the present climate of intense debate over deposit insurance reform, the nature and limits of market discipline become especially important. The widely accepted argument for greater reliance on market discipline is that it will restrain managerial risk-taking and reduce potential losses to the deposit insurance fund. Opponents of this view favor the traditional reliance on supervision by the bank regulatory agencies as the primary method to maintain the safety and soundness of the banking system and the integrity of the deposit insurance fund. ; This article attempts to shed some empirical ...
Journal Article
The key to unlocking old money
Working Paper
Reverse mortgages and the liquidity of housing wealth
The article is organized as follows: Section I briefly describes the features of various types of reverse mortgages offered in the private and public sectors. Section II surveys the ~elevant literature that has focused on the savings patterns of the elderly and their demand for reverse mortgage products. Section III describes the sample of the elderly drawn from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). Section IV analyzes the potential demand for reverse mortgages on the basis of age, fertility history, income, housing wealth, liquid wealth, and debt. Section V discusses the ...
Journal Article
Value at risk: new approaches to risk management
Managing risk has always been an integral part of banking. In the past two years an approach to risk management called "Value at Risk" has been accepted by both practitioners and regulators as the "right" way to measure risk, becoming a de facto industry standard. Yet, the danger is that overreliance on value at risk can give risk managers a false sense of security or lull them into complacency. Value at risk is only one of many tools of managing risk, and it is based on a number of unrealistic assumptions. There is no generally accepted way to calculate it, and various methods can yield ...
Journal Article
New England banks and the Texas experience
New England banks are currently suffering from problems similar to those that caused the demise of many Texas banks. In both cases, a boom in the real-estate sector was followed by a sharp contraction caused by weakness in the leading sectors of the economy. In both cases, banks had greatly expanded their real-estate lending, and the declining real-estate prices produced substantial loan losses. ; This study suggests, however, that these similarities do not imply that New England will go on to repeat the Texas experience. The author finds that New England does not suffer from construction ...
Journal Article
Managing risk in the 90's: what should you be asking about derivatives?
Derivatives are the fastest-growing financial instruments of our time. When used strategically, they can be very effective tools to mitigate risks. When used to speculate, that is, to bet on the inefficiency of financial markets, they can be trouble, especially if you are unaware that you are betting.> On April 28,1995 the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston held an educational forum entitled "Managing Risk in the '90s: What Should You Be Asking about Derivatives?" The daylong forum, presented by experts from nonfinancial corporations, investment and commercial banks, pension funds, issuers of ...
Journal Article
Model error
Modern finance would not have been possible without models. Increasingly complex quantitative models drive financial innovation and the growth of derivatives markets. Models are necessary to value financial instruments and to measure the risks of individual positions and portfolios. Yet when used inappropriately, the models themselves can become an important source of risk. Recently, several well-publicized instances occurred of institutions suffering significant losses attributed to model error. This has sharpened the interest in model risk among financial institutions and their regulators.> ...
Journal Article
Risk-adjusted performance of mutual funds
Mutual funds are now the preferred way for individual investors and many institutions to participate in capital markets, and their popularity has increased demand for evaluations of fund performance. Many business publications now rank mutual funds according to their performance, and information services exist specifically for this purpose. There is no general agreement, however, about how best to measure and compare fund performance and on what information funds should disclose to investors. ; Risk and performance measurement is an active area for academic research and continues to be of ...
Journal Article
Interest rate derivatives and asset-liability management by commercial banks
Bank participation in derivative markets has risen sharply in recent years. The total amount of interest rate, currency, commodity, and equity contracts at U.S. commercial and savings banks soared from $6.8 trillion in 1990 to $11.9 trillion in 1993, an increase of 75 percent. A major concern facing policymakers and bank regulators today is the possibility that the rising use of derivatives has increased the riskiness of individual banks and of the banking system as a whole.> This study uses quarterly Call Report data to shed some light on the pattern of derivative use by U.S. commercial ...
Journal Article
Why do banks syndicate loans?
Loan syndication, where a group of banks makes a loan jointly to a single borrower, offers several benefits. Syndication allows banks to diversify, expanding their lending to broader geographic areas and industries. Second, syndication allows banks that are constrained by their capital-asset ratios to participate in loans to larger borrowers. ; Despite these benefits, loan syndication could pose additional risks for the banking system, if the originating or lead banks withhold information about the borrower from participating banks, misleading them into making loans that are riskier than they ...