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Working Paper
Risk-Shifting, Regulation, and Government Assistance
This paper examines an episode when policy response to a financial crisis effectively incentivized financial institutions to reallocate their portfolios toward safe assets. Following a shift to a regime of enhanced regulation and scaled-down public assistance during the savings and loan crisis in 1989, I find that thrifts with a high probability of failure increased their composition of safe assets relative to thrifts with a low probability of failure. The findings also show a shift to safe assets among stock thrifts relative to mutual thrifts, thereby providing evidence of risk-shifting from ...
Working Paper
Financial Failure and Depositor Quality: Evidence from Building and Loan Associations in California
Flightiness, or depositor sensitivity to liquidity needs, can be an important determinant of financial distress. I leverage institutional differences that attract depositors with varying flightiness across building and loan associations in California during the Great Depression. A new type of plan, the Dayton plan, involved less restrictive savings plans and lower withdrawal penalties. Dayton plans in California were more likely to close during the Great Depression. Archival evidence on lending rates and returns supports the flightiness mechanism.
Journal Article
Did Local Factors Contribute to the Decline in Bank Branches?
Although the total number of bank branches in the United States increased from the mid-1990s to 2007, this number has declined since the 2007-08 financial crisis. A loss in bank branches is potentially problematic because it may reduce customers? access to financial services as well as small businesses? access to credit. Changes in local conditions may partly explain this loss: the number of branches varies signficantly across geographic areas, and local conditions have been shown to influence past trends in bank branching. {{p}} Rajdeep Sengupta and Jacob Dice examine the relationship ...