Journal Article
Rule of law and economic growth
Higbee, Jason; Schmid, Frank A. (2004-08)
International Economic Trends , Issue Aug

Journal Article
Wages and risk-taking in occupational credit unions: theory and evidence
Schmid, Frank A.; Emmons, William R. (1999-03)
Most occupational credit unions serve (in part) as a means for corporate sponsors to deliver tax-favored benefits to their employees. Credit union managers administer this transfer of benefits, but their performance is difficult to measure, particularly in larger credit unions. In this article, William R. Emmons and Frank A. Schmid develop a model of efficiency wages and optimal risk-taking and then provide empirical evidence from a large sample of occupational credit unions. Higher wage expenses are found in larger credit unions. In addition, the authors find a negative relationship between ...
Review , Issue Mar , Pages 13-32

Journal Article
Macroeconomic news and real interest rates
Schmid, Frank A.; Kliesen, Kevin L. (2006-03)
Economic news affects the perceptions of investors, forecasters, and policymakers about the strength or weakness of the economy. These expectations are updated on the basis of regularly occurring surprises in macroeconomic announcement data. The response of asset prices to positive or negative announcement surprises has been a regular feature of the literature for more than 20 years. In this vein, the authors evaluate the responses of the yield of 10-year Treasury inflation-indexed securities to nearly three dozen macroeconomic announcements. They find that the real long-term rate of interest ...
Review , Volume 88 , Issue Mar , Pages 133-144

Journal Article
Fear of hell might fire up the economy
Schmid, Frank A.; Kliesen, Kevin L. (2004-07)
In those countries where a large percentage of the population believes in hell, there seem to be less corruption and a higher standard of living.
The Regional Economist , Issue Jul , Pages 10-11

Journal Article
e-cash
Schmid, Frank A. (2000-06)
Monetary Trends , Issue Jun

Journal Article
Credit unions and the common bond
Schmid, Frank A.; Emmons, William R. (1999-09)
A distinguishing feature of credit unions is the legal requirement that members share a common bond. This organizing principle recently became the focus of national attention when the Supreme Court and the U.S. Congress took opposite sides in a controversy regarding the number of common bonds (fields of membership) that could coexist within a single credit union. In this article, Emmons and Schmid develop and simulate a model of credit-union formation and consolidation to examine the effects of common-bond restrictions on the performance of credit unions. The performance measures are ...
Review , Volume 81 , Issue Sep , Pages 41-64

Working Paper
Conjectural guarantees loom large: evidence from the stock returns of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Schmid, Frank A. (2003)
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) with publicly traded equity. Although these companies hold government issued charters, their securities are not legally backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. Yet, investors and rating agencies seem to believe that the U.S. Government would "bail out" Fannie or Freddie if they became distressed. We provide evidence of a conjectural guarantee in GSE stock returns. Stock that contains an option on returning the shares at a given price to the issuer -- the government, in this case -- show ...
Working Papers , Paper 2003-031

Working Paper
Banks vs. credit unions: dynamic competition in local markets
Schmid, Frank A.; Emmons, William R. (2002)
One interesting aspect of the financial services industry is that for-profit institutions such as commercial banks compete directly with not-for-profit financial intermediaries such as credit unions. In this article, we analyze competition among banks and between banks and credit unions using a dynamic model of spatial competition. The model allows for the co-existence of (for-profit) banks and (not-for-profit) credit unions. Using annual county-level data on banking market concentration and credit-union participation rates for the period 1989-96, we find empirical evidence of two-way ...
Supervisory Policy Analysis Working Papers , Paper 2002-10

Working Paper
Pricing and dividend policies in open credit cooperatives
Schmid, Frank A.; Emmons, William R. (2000)
This paper develops an integrated model of pricing and dividend policies in open credit cooperatives (those that do business with members and non-members on a non-discriminatory basis). We show that both the distribution of member preferences and the amount of non-member business the cooperative does influence its optimal pricing and dividend policies. For a fixed distribution of member preferences, the larger the fraction of business done by members, the smaller the optimal dividend and the larger the optimal pricing subsidy (hence, increasing demand). On the other hand, for a fixed fraction ...
Working Papers , Paper 2000-008

Working Paper
Corporate governance and corporate performance
Schmid, Frank A.; Emmons, William R. (1999)
National corporate-governance traditions are distinctive, deeply rooted, and difficult to change. Recent research points to a country's legal traditions and its stage of economic development as important determinants of corporate-governance institutions. Common-law countries tend to provide more explicit investor protections than civil-law countries. Richer countries tend to enforce corporate law more strictly. Broader and deeper financial markets emerge in the presence of strong investor protections, fostering more outside financing and better corporate financial performance. ...
Working Papers , Paper 1999-018