Deregulation and technological change are transforming U.S. commercial banking from an industry dominated by thousands of small, locally focused banks into an industry where a handful of large banks could potentially span the nation and control the majority of its bank deposits. This paper...

This study introduces a general intuitive framework for analyzing start-up firms with innovative business plans, and uses it to investigate the performance of Internet-only banks and thrifts inthe U.S. Internet-only banks historically have underperformed branching banks, leading some to conclude...

We address the causes, consequences, and implications of the cross-border consolidation of financial institutions by reviewing several hundred studies, providing comparative international data, and estimating cross-border banking efficiency in France, Germany, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S....

This study examines the level of unsecured borrowing done by the firms that would ultimately rescue Long-Term Capital Management in the days leading up to the hedge fund's rescue. Although there is some evidence that these banks borrowed less at the height of the crisis, further examination...

We test whether the gains from hiring an outside manager exceed the principal-agent costs of owner-manager separation at 266 small, closely held U.S. commercial banks. Our results suggest that hiring an outside manager can improve a bank's profit efficiency, but that these gains depend on...

This paper uses over two years of weekly scanner data from two small US cities to characterize time and state dependence of grocers' pricing decisions. In these data, the probability of a nominal adjustment declines with the time since the last price change. This reflects differences over time...

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the effect of employer-provided health insurance and Medicare in determining retirement behavior. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we estimate the first dynamic programming model of retirement that accounts for both saving and...

In November 1991, federal lawmakers threatened to place a binding cap on credit card interest rates. I find that credit card rates declined following the regulatory threat, more so for larger and more politically visible credit card issuers. A set of stock market event studies reveals that...

Currency crises that coincide with banking crises tend to share four elements. First, governments provide guarantees to domestic and foreign bank creditors. Second, banks do not hedge their exchange rate risk. Third, there is a lending boom before the crises. Finally, when the currency/banking...

We use a two-sample instrumental variables approach to estimate a time series of intergenerational economic mobility using the decennial U.S. Censuses. We find that the intergenerational income elasticity (IGE) followed a roughly U-shaped pattern from 1940 to 2000 that is similar to well known...