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Journal Article
Roundtable discussion: reflection on twenty years of bank regulatory reform
In 1986 the American Bankers Association asked five banking academics to assess and recommend policy options to improve the banking system's efficiency, performance, and safety. The report these five economists produced, Perspectives on Safe and Sound Banking: Past, Present, and Future, has in many ways served as a roadmap for ensuing bank regulatory reforms. In this roundtable discussion, each of the five authors reflects on the past twenty years and the current status of the banking industry and, in some cases, shares thoughts about the industry's future direction.
Journal Article
How should banks account for loan losses?
The agencies that regulate banks are involved in an ongoing debate about the appropriate way for banks and other lenders to account for default risk on loans. Accounting authorities are concerned with whether the accounting method meets the needs of general-purpose users of financial statements, particularly investors. In contrast, bank supervisors are concerned about banks being inadequately capitalized and possibly failing. ; To shed light on this debate, this article reviews the generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) currently used, which are based on historic-cost values for ...
Working Paper
Potential diversification and bank acquisition prices
Working Paper
Bank capital structure, regulatory capital, and securities innovations
Although financial instruments that, in effect, permit corporations to treat preferred stock dividends as tax-deductible interest have been used by nonfinancial corporations since late 1993, bank holding companies (BHCs) did not issue these trust-preferred securities (TPS) until 1996, when the Federal Reserve qualified them as Tier-1 capital. We delineate and test hypotheses with 1) analyses of the stock-market reaction to the Fed?s ruling and to TPS filings and 2) comparisons of BHCs that issued TPS with those that did not. We conclude that regulatory capital requirements, tax savings, and ...
Discussion Paper
Economies of scale and scope in banking
Discussion Paper
Scale economies in banking: a restructuring and reassessment
Journal Article
Deposit insurance reform in the FDIC Improvement Act: the experience to date
In 1991, the U.S. adopted fundamental deposit insurance reform in the FDIC Improvement Act. This article reveals why such reform was necessary in light of the severe banking crisis of the 1980s and analyzes its success to date.
Working Paper
FDICIA after five years: a review and evaluation
At yearend 1991, Congress enacted fundamental deposit insurance reform for banks and thrifts in the FDIC Improvement Act (FDICIA). This reform followed the failure of more than 2,000 depository institutions in the 1980s. Many of these failed because of the incentive incompatibility of the structure of federal government-provided deposit insurance, which encouraged moral hazard behavior by banks and poor agent behavior by regulators. Insurance was put on a more incentive compatible basis by providing for a graduated series of sanctions that mimic market discipline and first may and then must ...