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Working Paper
SBA guaranteed lending and local economic growth
Increasingly, policymakers look to the small business sector as a potential engine of economic growth. Policies to promote small businesses include tax relief, direct subsidies, and indirect subsidies through government lending programs. Encouraging lending to small business is the primary policy objective of the Small Business Administration's (SBA) loan-guarantee program. Using a panel data set of SBA guaranteed loans, we assess whether SBA guaranteed lending has an observable impact on local economic performance. We find a positive and significant (although economically small) relationship ...
Report
Central banks and crisis management
As 2007 began, historians prepared to reflect on several anniversaries of financial turmoil. It had been 10 years since the East Asian crisis, 20 years since the Black Monday stock market crash, 100 years since the Panic of 1907, and 150 years since the Hamburg financial crisis of 1857. Not many, however, could have predicted that 2007 would write its own chapter in history with the subprime mortgage meltdown.
Journal Article
The national depositor preference law
A critical analysis of the probable effects of national depositor preference--a provision of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993--showing that although the FDIC may experience some cost savings in the short term, the long-term benefits are likely to be greatly diminished.
Journal Article
The truth about hedge funds
Do hedge funds help or hurt the financial markets in which they operate? The highly publicized troubles of Long Term Capital Management have once again focused the attention of policymakers and the press on the hedge fund industry and the cry for its regulation. This Economic Commentary refutes some of the commonly held myths about hedge funds and examines the rationale for regulating them.
Journal Article
Who benefits from increasing the federal deposit insurance limit?
This Commentary seeks to shed light on the issue of deposit insurance coverage by examining who would benefit from increases in the insured-deposit limit.
Journal Article
FDICIA's prompt corrective action provisions
A review of the origins of FDICIA's early intervention policy and the political economy arguments for supporting it, with emphasis on the specific sections of the law that pertain to this policy and the ways in which the new guidelines will impact the future of the nation's depositories.
Journal Article
Credit spreads and subordinated debt
Stock and bond prices contain all sorts of information about investors? beliefs and expectations. For example, the interest rate on bank debt not insured by the FDIC has information about the health of the banks issuing the debt. Unfortunately, difficulties in extracting information from these subordinated debt prices reduces the information? usefulness to regulators and policymakers.
Journal Article
The history and rationale for a separate bank resolution process
Everyone recognizes the need to have a credible resolution regime in place for financial companies whose failure could harm the entire financial system, but people disagree about which regime is best. The emergence of the parallel banking system has led policymakers to reconsider the dividing line between firms that should be resolved in bankruptcy and firms that should be subject to a special resolution regime. A look at the history of insolvency resolution in this country suggests that a blended approach is worth considering. Activities that have potential systemic impact might be best ...
Journal Article
Network externalities: the catch-22 of retail payments innovations
An investigation of one of the reasons why electronic payments have not yet supplanted cash and checks in retail transactions: Consumers willingness to use an innovation depends on the number of merchants who have already adopted it, and merchants willingness to invest in the innovation depends on the number of consumers who are already using it.
Journal Article
Are SBA loan guarantees desirable?
Over the last 10 years, the Small Business Administration has been responsible for well over $100 billion in small business credit extensions, more than any single private lender. This Commentary explores the motivations for such a large investment of taxpayer dollars.