Search Results
Journal Article
Policies and prescriptions for safe and sound banking: shocks, lessons, and prospects
The author illustrates the extent to which ensuing regulatory changes conform to the prescriptions of Perspectives on Safe and Sound Banking. He probes whether relatively untested regulatory strictures, such as prompt corrective action, will prevail when banking is heavily stressed. He then discusses how "home-run regulation" extends the reach of individual states' bank charters nationwide and whether the Fed will eventually regulate financial institutions marketwide.
Conference Paper
Bank credit and economic activity
Journal Article
A real, affordable mortgage
Homeownership has long been a cherished American goal, but many now find that homeownership is no longer possible. The median household income of potential first-time homebuyers is now estimated to be only three-quarters that required to afford the median-priced starter home. As a consequence, the 1980s was the first decade since the Great Depression during which the aggregate homeownership rate fell. ; The Price Level Adjusted Mortgage (PLAM) represents a genuine and substantial advance in housing finance in an inflationary environment. PLAMs rearrange the timing of the mortgage payments so ...
Journal Article
Tax rates and interest rates on tax-exempt securities
Working Paper
The measurement and determinants of single-family house prices
We assess the conceptual and empirical features of a number of house price series for the United States. We then calculate a measure of the net upgrading of the existing stock of houses that took place during the 1950-1989 period and adjust price indexes for this net increase in quality. Judgments about the trend, volatility, and determinants of house prices are shown to depend crucially on which price series is used. The Freddie Mac upgrade adjusted house price measure rose 5.7% over the past four decades, falling 7.7% from 1950 through 1970 before rising 14.5% from 1970 through 1989. Real ...
Working Paper
Hidden cost reductions in bank mergers: accounting for more productive banks
Over the past decade, the banking industry has undergone rapid consolidation; indeed, on average, for the past three years there were more than two bank mergers every business day. Before the 1990s, most bank mergers involved banks with less than $1 billion in assets; more recently, even the very largest banks have merged with other banks and with nonbank financial firms. ; Globalization, technological advances, and regulatory retreat are often cited as factors that have stimulated and allowed more banks to merge. Mergers may reduce costs if they enable banks to close redundant branches or ...
Journal Article
Real rates and recovery
Journal Article
Consumer sentiment and consumer spending
This Economic Letter reviews research on whether measures of consumer attitudes improve forecasts of consumer spending.
Journal Article
A new view on cost savings in bank mergers
Journal Article
Credit unions, conversions, and capital
While credit unions have been able to convert their charters more easily since the late 1990s, two conversions of very large credit unions--over $1 billion in assets each--in 2006 have put the issue on the front burner for the industry. ; This Economic Letter outlines some costs and benefits to their member-owners of credit unions' converting to stock thrifts and describes one way to reform the process in order to spread the benefits of conversion more broadly to credit union members.