In moral hazard models, bank shareholders have incentives to transfer wealth from the deposit insurer - that is, maximize put option value - by pursuing riskier strategies. For safe banks with large charter value, however, the risk-taking incentive is outweighed by the possibility of losing...

This paper analyzes the effect of asymmetric information on investment efficiency and the ways in which government credit can mitigate the inefficiency caused by asymmetric information. The inefficiency caused by asymmetric information critically depends on the way in which the project return is...

Fundamentally, stocks are a good hedge against inflation if corporate profitability keeps up with inflation. Using monthly stock-market data covering over 151 years from 1871 to 2022, this paper analyzes the relationship between inflation and corporate profitability, measured by...

The Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 limits thrift goodwill that can be counted as regulatory capital. This paper examines if and why the goodwill clause adversely affected the market value of thrifts. Main findings are that good will had a large negative...

In moral hazard models, bank shareholders have incentives to transfer wealth from the deposit insurer - that is, maximize put option value - by pursuing riskier strategies. For safe banks with large charter value, however, the risk-taking incentive is outweighed by the possibility of losing...

This paper derives conditions under which concerns about relative income cause an individual's optimal share of the risky investment to increase with the aggregate share (rational herding). The model uses a measure of relative income that can flexibly capture the effects of both consumption...

The current review of the 1988 Basel Capital Accord has put the spotlight on the ratios used to assess banks' capital adequacy. This article examines the effectiveness of three capital ratios - the first based on leverage, the second on gross revenues, and the third on risk-weighted assets - in...

Yields on long-term municipal bonds reflect both current and expected future tax rates. This paper derives expected changes in tax rates from yields on short- and long-term municipal bonds and examines the relationship between expected changes in tax rates and the financial condition of the...

[Deposit insurance involves catastrophe risk because bank failures spike during a banking crisis. Although mutual insurance is ill-suited for catastrophe risk, the U.S. government structures deposit insurance like a mutual company owned by policyholders. The mutual structure produces several...

[...]We focus here on three types of capital ratios—riskweighted,leverage, and gross revenue ratios. For each ratio, weexamine what makes it actually or potentially useful for bankregulation and we ask whether it is indeed significantly relatedto subsequent bank failure. Perhaps not...